smellzlikefish
Contributor
My most intimidating were the series of dives I made in conjunction with an experimental aquaculture project that wanted to put drifting cages as far as 70 miles offshore of the Big Island of Hawaii. Never mind the fact that we were over ten thousand feet of water at any given moment, or the fact that the seas in the middle of the ocean can be crazy, and don't worry about the Alenuihaha Channel that, at any moment, might draw us up into its bat(poo) hellish waters, and I didn't mind that we were well out of reach of immediate rescue. What kept me awake in the preceding nights were the sea monsters. We knew that this cage full of 2000 growing, feeding, pooping fish was going to be the most active Fish Aggregation Device in the world, attracting every ilk of oceanic predator the world has ever known. Sure, I was excited to see a whale shark, some tuna, a few mahi, and an ono or two, but prior to that project, I had never faced down an oceanic whitetip shark (note: absolutely NOT a whitetip reef shark), an animal that still, after squaring off with over 50 or so of them, still commands my utmost respect. And I never expected large marlin to be that scary! I will never forget the clicking/whistling sounds a false killer whale makes underwater, nor will I ever jump so fast as when I turned around to see a monstrous, ominous black figure over my dive buddy. That last instance turned out to be a jet-black pelagic manta ray, but it was a terrifying thing to jump out of nowhere over my shoulder on a dive. Some dives were nothing but blue, and some were like the entire Wild Kingdom nature program vomitted around you. Truly spectacular, but some dives made me realize exactly where we fit on the oceanic food chain.