The Israeli Scuba Diving Terrorist

He was an Israeli scuba diving terrorist. It is important to realise that those traits were not a coincidence. He was not a terrorist that happened to be a scuba diver, nor was he a scuba diver that, by chance, was born in Israel. I would like to tell you he had a good cause, that he was fighting for the freedom of his people or to end a great injustice. Sadly, as is usually the case with men like him, his cause was a selfish one. A cause of his own making which he speaks about now with great pride as if, in completing his task, he was achieving his destiny.

Looking back now, the signs were all there but they are easy to miss if you are not looking. The glaze that would come over his eyes as he talked about the reef and the way he never seemed quite comfortable as if at some point he expected to be assaulted by an unknown entity. The copious amounts of Semtex he carried around with his dive gear. Yes the signs were there but I missed them. Not that I blame myself you understand. It wasn't just me who missed them. He fooled all of us with his wit and banter. Charmed his way passed the stringent security and health checks of the dive school and before you know it he was in. One of us, diving every day, drinking every night. After that he had the run of the place. We sometimes wondered where he would disappear to during the dives turning up again right at the end... I'm jumping ahead of myself, lets go back to the beginning. Of which there are two. His, and then ours.

His story starts on a reef, well actually, his story starts when his mum happened to meet his dad, in a random bar, in a random city after which they went to a random motel and then never saw each other again. 9 months later a little baby boy entered the world and 2 days after that he was named. We will call him Dan. Lets just say you don't want to be putting the real names of Israeli scuba diving terrorists on paper, it would have consequences. So little Dan entered the world and led a pretty ordinary life for 17 good years. His mum loved him and made sure he had everything he needed. It was a good life. At the age of 17 he went to Egypt to complete his Open Water course. Once complete and with 9 dives to his name he and a buddy went out diving by themselves.

Dan knew the motto, PADI had drilled it into his head, “leave nothing but bubbles, take nothing but photos” but, with no instructors around to stop him, he couldn't resist the temptation. He went around picking up coral, poking at rays and teasing the trigger fish. The thrill of fear as the triggers came for him was like a drug. Their teeth biting into his fins was the ultimate rush but like all drugs and all drug addicts it wasn't enough. On that fateful day he found himself an octopus. I don't know if you have ever seen one but they look pretty harmless. None of this monster of the deep crap you see in the movies. More like a blob of jelly dragging itself along the rocks.

I don't want to describe the scene for you, no-one deserves to have that in their memory. But it is only fair to tell the whole story. Dan pursued that octopus all over the reef, pulling it off rocks and watching it float helplessly in the water, poking it and teasing it. It is no surprise that it turned on him, everything will if you push it hard enough. 8 tentacles... eight! It is hard to imagine being violated so completely. Every inch of his body covered in sucker marks, not one orifice left unexplored. Only the octopus can tell you if it knew what it was doing but the damage was total in mind and body.

Serious amounts of surgery and pain medication kept his body alive. Hours and hours of psychotherapy returned his sanity to him. It took 3 years for him to get out of hospital. You would think that after an experience like that you would never dive again but he did, many times. I still remember the first time I met him. He was wearing a wetsuit, he always wears a wetsuit now, a pink bandanna and a black and white checked neck scarf. And he had this crazy look about him as if the whole ocean was waiting for him and he was working himself up to face it.

So this is where our story begins, on the back of a blue and orange boat bobbing in the Thai gulf off the coast of Koh Tao on a dive site called South West Pinnacle. I loved that site and I miss it dearly now. If we had known we would have done something we could have... should have stopped him... He was sitting at the back of the boat in his pink bandanna waiting. We were both doing our divemasters and, in spite of the alarm bells, we started talking. He had a wit which didn't match the look in his eyes and a good taste in music. You couldn't help liking him and, as I said before, it wasn't long before he had worked his way into the group. I realise now that it was all an act, the smiles and banter were a mask covering a darker side but it was a good mask, the cracks showed but we chose to see the good in him. It was that damn pink bandanna. Don't ask me why but it disarmed you. How could anyone wearing such a thing be dangerous? He couldn't hide in a crowd, couldn't sneak up on you. Even wore it when diving so you always knew who he was.

It was 1 month after he arrived when it kicked off. I've checked the schedules since and he would have been about a mile off the coast on a boat back to the mainland when it happened. The bastard saw the whole damn thing. Obviously, on his little excursions by himself he was setting timers and planting the Semtex around the island. There are many dive sites in Koh Tao but there are a lot of divers to see them. I can imagine him hovering along a rock face pretending to peer in on the life inside but really plotting its destruction. Quickly checking no-one was looking before setting the timer and sliding the little stick of Semtex into a crack. The fear of being caught swelling through your body and then the bitter sweet relief of success. Another dive, another site, and still no-one suspecting a thing.

The loss of life was uncountable. Only 5 divers were caught in the explosion as it was timed to go off at night and all at the same time. The divers bodies were never recovered. It is assumed the explosion ruptured their air tanks assuring their deaths many times over. Several boats sank but in most cases people escaped uninjured. On the beaches people partying got caught up in the huge waves that crashed to shore and, in their drunken disorientation swam out to sea instead of to the shore. Jets of water were launched hundreds of meters into the sky taking coral and fish with it. Most died instantly but we were finding angel fish with burn marks washing onto the beach for weeks after. Shark island still stands but looks nothing like a sharks fin any more and there are certainly no sharks.

We tried to dive the next day, tried to understand what happened and how bad it was but you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. It took a week for the debris to settle completely so we could see the extent of the damage. It was total. A war zone under the sea. Turtles cooked in their shells, A lone Nemo crying out to a wife and child who will never come home. I think the worst were the butterfly fish. I swear the survivors lost all their colour in mourning their partners. The surviving fish who didn't or couldn't flee the sites seemed to be dying of sadness. Otherwise healthy fish not even bothering to swim. Cleaner fish sitting still on the seabed ignoring everything around them, puffer fish not puffing. Even the trigger fish seemed to have given up.

There is no happy ending here, the terrorist won hands down. It took a few months but in the end all life left the reef. After that the island started to close down too. With no sites there were no divers and with no divers there was no money coming in. Businesses closed down one by one and with them went the employees. Thais left the island in their hundreds. The lady boys become just ordinary boys again and eventually they left too. before long even the ferries stopped coming. It's a ghost island now. Sometimes I walk the streets and imagine the crowds of people that used to be here, the excited chatter of new divers about to go into the sea for the first time and the wonder on their faces when they got back on the boat. The bar at 6pm just starting to fill up before a long nights party. It's all gone now and it will never come back.

Why Dan? I understand your pain, even thinking about what you went through makes me lose a bit of my sanity but dammit Dan we didn't even have any octopus on the reef!