Pink Boots and a Machete (15 page)

 

Kingo and his son, Ekende, share a moment.

 

Coming full circle: 1978 and 2010

 

I married my Tarzan, Roland. But this Tarzan wears suits. And he's German.

 

So excited, nervous, thrilled, and terrified

 

My little newborn monkey, Emma. It was love at first sight.

 

Just call me Dr. Mommy!

 

Roland is an amazing father. I can go off deep into the jungle knowing my girls are in the best hands.

 

My wild life…happily ever after

I was met at the airport by the assistant producer, who was waving from behind the fence wearing a large Mexican sombrero and several local necklaces and holding a Corona in each hand. He had not been able to sign for the car because he was slightly inebriated, but they had let him drive off with it, anyway. I offered to drive us to the hotel, where we would meet up with the rest of the crew.

The next day our journey to the sharks began with a 12-hour boat ride to scout the remote cove where as many as 20 great whites had been spotted from the air. Guadalupe Island is a wild, harsh, forbidding place. Located 200 miles off Mexico's coast, it's a starkly scenic collection of cinder cones, ridges, and dramatic offshore rocks. The sea can be flat calm or brutally rough. This remote island is host to a large number of northern elephant seals, California sea lions, and Steller sea lions, all of which inhabit Guadalupe year round.

It was the second group, California sea lions, that raised the question of why these sharks were coming closer to shore. Hundreds of them frolic on the rocks and in the waters off Guadalupe Island, and they're usually the sharks' first choice of prey. So why were these sharks congregating in shallow water and not feeding on their usual diet of sea lions? Bob was no scientist, but he had an interesting theory. He believed that the sharks were after tuna, a somewhat bizarre hypothesis
since tuna swim at about 40 miles per hour and are the fastest creatures in the sea. Even a determined great white would have a tough time catching one tuna, let alone enough to satisfy its enormous appetite.

While Bob surveyed the water conditions, I spoke to Terry Ingram, Al Schneppershoff's spearfishing buddy, who in exactly the same spot a year to the month after his friend was killed barely survived an attack by the same bad shark. Terry explained how Guadalupe Island used to be known for the biggest fish around, which is why the participants in his sport held their competitions here. Thirty years before, large schools of tuna were easily and frequently hunted by the Bottom Scratchers Dive Club, which both men belonged to. Yes, the Bottom Scratchers. The tuna disappeared, perhaps due to overfishing, at the same time the sharks vanished, and now that the tuna were back in numbers, the sharks were, too, lending credence to Bob's theory.

But it was this next piece of information that sent chills down my spine. It seemed that no one knew exactly how long these predator sharks lived, but some scientists had speculated it could be as long as 40 years. According to eyewitnesses, and Terry is one of them, the shark that attacked both him and Al was relatively small for its species, about 12 feet long, probably a young one. This meant that the rare man-eater might still be among the school of sharks we'd be diving with. The chilling part is that we would be filming on the exact day of the fatal attack, which also happened to be my birthday.

Bob and I began preparing our gear. He was diving with a re-breather instead of scuba (acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). A re-breather recycles exhaled breaths and allows a diver to spend up to 11 hours underwater. It has an added advantage in that it emits no exhaust of bubbles, thus not scaring away the tuna. Having more tuna swim nearby would attract more sharks. If the sharks became overly aggressive, and there's a good chance they would around the tuna, Bob would need to wait unobtrusively on the bottom until they left the area. Too rapid an ascent, especially with a re-breather, risks compression sickness.

Underwater visibility was close to 100 feet, and the sun was just peaking over the barren hills of Guadalupe Island. Bob declared the visibility good enough for a test dive. As far as we could tell, the “monster” shark was not around, but at least six good-size sharks circled our boat, and it was anyone's guess how many remained unseen. As most people know, it's not the shark you see that you need to worry about, it's the shark you don't see.

We had a short safety briefing during which Bob handed me a frying pan. At first I thought it was a joke. My next thought was that it was a weapon. Turns out, it was to bang on the cage we'd be descending in. The metal box offered a very false sense of security. To begin with, I would still have to swim for at least 20 minutes among the sharks before I could reach the cage, which was submerged far below the boat (we didn't have the mechanical apparatus to get in the cage and then have it lowered). They'd be the longest 20 minutes of my life. To make
matters worse, one side of the cage was open so that the camera could get good shots of the sharks as they swam by. This meant that a shark could also swim right into the cage. More worrisome than a shark coming in was its inability to get out of the small cage, meaning I'd be in a cage with a stuck, pissed–off shark. Awesome.

Despite knowing how exaggerated the danger factor is, there was something very eerie, not to mention terrifying, about jumping into the water with aggressive great whites, in the exact place someone had been killed three decades before, on the very day I was born. Nevertheless, clutching my frying pan, I jumped in and, with my heart pounding out of my chest, began swimming like crazy for the cage.

But as I swam past the sharks, my fear turned to awe. I couldn't help but notice the beautiful fluid motion with which their mammoth bodies pierced the water. They were graceful like ballerinas, menacing-looking ones with big teeth.

Once inside the cage, we began testing our equipment. You see, my job was not just to stand in the cage. I had the important role of keeping a constant lookout for sharks that might sneak up behind or beneath Bob while he was filming outside the cage. My breathing air was supplied from the surface and fed through an apparatus nicknamed a “hookah” that would allow me to communicate underwater. That meant I could breathe normally through my nose and also speak, keeping in constant contact with both Bob and surface support.

Bob slowly swam off, spinning into the blue. Between us swirled hundreds of tuna. Soon I could make out several curi
ous, 12-to 14-foot adolescent sharks gliding toward Bob. I apprised him of the whereabouts of each as they appeared and then disappeared amid the sea of tuna. Their proximity to the tuna seemed to further support Bob's hypothesis, though their taste for these lightning-fast fish was still a mystery.

One of the sharks started swimming straight toward my cage, and my eyes became locked on his. Looking into the eyes of a shark is nothing like looking into the eyes of the gorillas I am used to. When you look into a gorilla's eyes, you can see there is thought, insight, and emotion. Looking into the eyes of a shark, I saw nothing but steely black circles attached to an eating machine. I felt foolish but grabbed the frying pan. The shark swam right up to the cage opening and took a quick bite at the metal bars. He then just as quickly turned and disappeared into the blue abyss.

While I watched my shark swim off, a “monster” shark appeared like a ghost ship. One look and Bob signaled his belief it was the one that had been haunting him. This wasn't just another predatory fish; this shark was colossal. As it swam toward me, growing ever larger, my heart rate doubled and my respiration sped. I gripped the frying pan. Everyone topside was on edge. The crew strained to see over the side of the boat, but Bob was too far away for them to tell what was going on. As best I could, I continued to give them a play-by-play account. “Holy crap!” I yelled into my helmet. “Do you see this? It makes Bob look like Raggedy Andy in a wet suit.” Just then something caught the enormous eating machine's eye,
and it started zeroing in. “Ummm,” I said in one of my more brilliant microphoned moments, “I think Cujo just noticed Bob.” The giant shark was becoming too interested in him for anyone's comfort. No one knows why a shark turns aggressive toward humans, but it may be that fishing and chumming waters make them confuse us with their food. It was time for Bob to head back to the boat—fast. But there was a major problem: The enormous shark was now between Bob and the boat. I let the crew know to lower the cage.

The boat crew manned the winch, and the cage descended deeper into the water. Still filming, Bob started a steady kick to safety. As he grabbed on to the cage, the great white circled slowly. The crewmen gradually lifted the cage, keeping the shark closely in sight. Not a moment too soon, they yanked us into the boat. Huge, angry jaws shot skyward as the immense predator hurled nearly half its body out of the water.

Bob had finally faced the shark that had given him nightmares and perhaps obtained some closure. I, on the other hand, now had fodder for nightmares of my own. What brought the sharks back up to shallow waters was still uncertain, though Bob's idea about the renewed presence of tuna made as much sense as anything.

We breathed a giant sigh of relief to have survived our encounter, but we weren't done yet. Sharks are not the only underwater giants with a reputation for bloodthirstiness. There are far lesser-known man-killers lurking in the ocean's depth.

Next we would be going into deeper waters to film the giant Humboldt squid.

These extraterrestrial-looking sea creatures have powerful arms and tentacles, excellent underwater vision, and razor-sharp beaks that easily tear through the flesh of their prey. The elusive Humboldt, or jumbo, squid have a reputation so fearsome that they have earned the nicknames “devils of the deep” and “red devils.” They are also known to eat each other, at least when one squid is caught on a fishing line. Such cannibalistic behavior has fueled the squid's reputation.

Finally back on dry land, the film crew and I headed to the eastern side of the Sea of Cortés. Bob and I met up with William Gilly in Guaymas, a port in Mexico's state of Sonora. To “Gilly,” a biology professor at Stanford University, the mysterious squid, which can reach six feet in length, is a beautiful sea creature that provides important ecological clues. Gilly had studied the biology and behavior of the Humboldt squid for more than two decades, tagging them in the Gulf of California as part of a larger study of their movements in the Pacific Ocean. But very little had been learned about them, as these squid spend 95 percent of their lives at depths of 660 to 2,300 feet, well beyond those safely penetrated with scuba gear. They may be elusive, but they're not rare. Gilly estimated that ten million squid may be living in a 25-square-mile area outside Santa Rosalia, Mexico. At night the squid are known to rise from inaccessible depths to depths that are accessible but dangerous for divers. Bob and I would go in search of them. I couldn't wait to see one. Well, I could…but the prospect had my juices flowing.

For the first few days I spent time around the fishing villages on the Sea of Cortés. One of the benefits of my job is
that I sometimes get to play with the local kids, so while Bob made arrangements for the boat, I watched another Bob get massacred. Armed with a Sponge Bob piñata, I made lots of little friends instantly. A little girl cracked open his head on her third strike. It was brutal, but the candy was a huge hit.

I hired a local fisherman with a beat-up pickup truck to take me around to the villages. I noticed the driver had a framed picture of Jesus Christ on his dashboard and said a little prayer every time he attempted to start the car. I needed to talk to him about the legendary sea monsters I would soon be pursuing, so I prayed with him. Although I'm sure my Cuban accent sounded foreign to him, we spoke Spanish easily together, and it helped me gain his trust.

The fisherman described how every night hundreds of Mexican fishermen nicknamed
pangueros
head out to the rough seas in
pangas,
small skiffs, to fish for the jumbo squid. It's no easy task. The catch is heavy, weighing in at more than 100 pounds, and every squid must be caught on a hand line. But the harvest is lucrative—the squid are sent to Japan, where they are a delicacy—and very important to the local economy. Livelihoods depend on the catch. Each boat, manned by two or three fishermen, typically brings back a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of squid every night. Fathers pass down their knowledge of how to catch them to their sons. The fisherman described how these giant creatures appear like ghosts up and down the Pacific coast and then just disappear. Fishermen sometimes fall overboard and are dragged down into the depths. Many are so scared of the squid they won't even eat them.

In every village I was warned by the local fishermen, “Whatever you do, don't fall in the water. They eat each other, and they will eat you.” Who knew calamari could be so aggressive?

One of the fishermen offered to take me out on his boat to see if I could catch a squid, even though during the day it would be unlikely. Never one to turn down a challenge, I accepted. After so many tales about these alleged man-eaters, I was morbidly curious to see them firsthand. The next morning before the sun was up I helped bail out a panga on the Sea of Cortés. Then we spent five long hours without so much as a squid trace. The waters were rough, and I was feeling seasick. All I wanted to do was get to dry land and lie down. We were about to head back when one of the men announced there was a squid on the line. Ironically, it was the one-eyed man who spotted it; he had lost his eye from a hook on a line cast from one of these small boats. My hopes of getting off this rocking death trap were diminishing. Feeling a pale shade of green, I grabbed on to the line and began pulling the wretched squid in. I pulled and pulled, my arms getting sorer and sorer. I was at it for 20 minutes. They say these jumbo squid weigh 100 pounds, but I was pretty sure the one on my line weighed closer to a ton. Leaning over the edge of the panga, hanging on to this heavy creature, I tried my damnedest not to fall over. More than a half hour later I had it on board. It was massive—at least five feet long and 70 pounds—slimy, and as alien-looking as anything you will see in this world. I was very happy to release it back into the sea.

After a day back on land, it was time to head out again. Gilly had spent the last several days with the fishermen, too, tagging more than 150 squid each day, falling only 4 short of his goal of 1,000. Listening to us talk about our plans to swim with the red devils, the boat captain Bob had hired didn't mince words. He looked at me and Bob and the crew and said, “Ustedes todos estan locos.” I translated it for the crazy gringos. But Gilly insisted that the squid's ruthless reputation was unwarranted. “I've been snorkeling with them at night in just shorts and T-shirt,” he said. “The squid would swim up to the surface, reach out their arms, and gently touch my extended hand. To meet them like this and shake hands was truly amazing.” Gilly could get quite emotional talking about his beloved squid and had been known to shed a tear or two, a sight that made the film crew giggle.