pounds.
One sunfish was swimming. He was waving his top fin and bottom fin, using his pectoral fins as stabilizers and his tail fin as a rudder. And he was spitting water out of his mouth to help steer.
He dove deeper and deeper and deeper into a cold current to cool off, and when he resurfaced, he rolled over to let the sun warm the other side of his body.
Grayson maneuvered between the shimmering sunfish; they seemed oblivious to our intrusion. And we continued heading toward the oil rig. I felt very exposed; my legs were dangling like worms in the water.
Four hundred yards from the oil rig’s base, we entered a sea garden. It was filled with long ribbons of golden brown kelp, which had short ruffles and a mermaid’s necklace of pearl-shaped air bladders attached to the main stem that enabled the kelp to float and dance on the water, signaling the speed and direction of the water currents.
On the seaward side of the oil rig, a large cluster of kelp smoothed the waves and we were able to swim to within two hundred yards of the rig.
The oil rig rose above our heads like a mini–Eiffel Tower with metal cranes and drilling equipment that towered twenty feet or more above our heads. These were connected to a large metal platform and the platform was attached to multiple metal stilts that had been drilled deep into the ocean floor.
The oil rig was an amazing and yet ominous structure. As the rig pumped oil out of the ocean floor, I could feel its energy emanating through the water. It felt very different from the natural energy of radiant sunshine or the quiet energy of the earth.
It felt like being in New York City. Being among the city’s skyscrapers was like standing between power transformers with the energy flowing all around all at once. All of this energy bounced off the surfaces of the buildings and was amplified by the wind blowing through the open spaces. The energy from the oil rig was like that, but it was more diffuse, a softer force that was transmitted in waves through the water.
The energy from the oil rig was a constant hum—a sort of
ooommm
. And there were loud metallic noises, creaking, groaning, clanging, and hammering.
Men who worked on the oil rigs had told me that they noticed the energy attracted fish into the area and lulled them to a state of inactivity. There was a deep-water-fish metropolis around the oil island.
As I breaststroked closer to it, I noticed schools of sunfish clustered together near the base of the rig, floating peacefully on the water’s surface, their bodies conforming to the shape of the waves rolling under them.
Grayson swam past the sunfish, and he didn’t even notice the green sea turtles paddling by, like a green turtle swim team. They all pushed off near the oil rig and swam together as if they were setting off on a series of sprints.
Slowly, a school of sea bass swam past, moving like a shimmering curtain of silver blue.
Grayson took a big breath and dove five feet down, past a cluster of clear moon jellies. They were beautifully transparent except for white circles on top oftheir domes. Grayson swam by purple jellyfish that were larger, like large Jell-O salad molds, and they were beautiful, graceful swimmers. They moved by contracting and expanding their domes, like opening and closing umbrellas.
Their long, flowing tentacles stretched up to six feet beneath them. I hoped they would stay below me. The moon jellyfish didn’t sting, but the purple ones did. The purple ones had tentacles that had tiny little barbs attached to them. The barbs were trigger-loaded with stinging cells called nematocysts. When a swimmer brushed up against a tentacle, the barbs snapped off or stuck to the swimmer and that movement fired the stinging cells. I had been stung before and it hurt. The intensity of the sting depended on the type of jellyfish. The sting of the Pacific jellyfish wasn’t as bad as a bee sting, but a swimmer could be stung multiple times at the same time.
One sunfish was swimming. He was waving his top fin and bottom fin, using his pectoral fins as stabilizers and his tail fin as a rudder. And he was spitting water out of his mouth to help steer.
He dove deeper and deeper and deeper into a cold current to cool off, and when he resurfaced, he rolled over to let the sun warm the other side of his body.
Grayson maneuvered between the shimmering sunfish; they seemed oblivious to our intrusion. And we continued heading toward the oil rig. I felt very exposed; my legs were dangling like worms in the water.
Four hundred yards from the oil rig’s base, we entered a sea garden. It was filled with long ribbons of golden brown kelp, which had short ruffles and a mermaid’s necklace of pearl-shaped air bladders attached to the main stem that enabled the kelp to float and dance on the water, signaling the speed and direction of the water currents.
On the seaward side of the oil rig, a large cluster of kelp smoothed the waves and we were able to swim to within two hundred yards of the rig.
The oil rig rose above our heads like a mini–Eiffel Tower with metal cranes and drilling equipment that towered twenty feet or more above our heads. These were connected to a large metal platform and the platform was attached to multiple metal stilts that had been drilled deep into the ocean floor.
The oil rig was an amazing and yet ominous structure. As the rig pumped oil out of the ocean floor, I could feel its energy emanating through the water. It felt very different from the natural energy of radiant sunshine or the quiet energy of the earth.
It felt like being in New York City. Being among the city’s skyscrapers was like standing between power transformers with the energy flowing all around all at once. All of this energy bounced off the surfaces of the buildings and was amplified by the wind blowing through the open spaces. The energy from the oil rig was like that, but it was more diffuse, a softer force that was transmitted in waves through the water.
The energy from the oil rig was a constant hum—a sort of
ooommm
. And there were loud metallic noises, creaking, groaning, clanging, and hammering.
Men who worked on the oil rigs had told me that they noticed the energy attracted fish into the area and lulled them to a state of inactivity. There was a deep-water-fish metropolis around the oil island.
As I breaststroked closer to it, I noticed schools of sunfish clustered together near the base of the rig, floating peacefully on the water’s surface, their bodies conforming to the shape of the waves rolling under them.
Grayson swam past the sunfish, and he didn’t even notice the green sea turtles paddling by, like a green turtle swim team. They all pushed off near the oil rig and swam together as if they were setting off on a series of sprints.
Slowly, a school of sea bass swam past, moving like a shimmering curtain of silver blue.
Grayson took a big breath and dove five feet down, past a cluster of clear moon jellies. They were beautifully transparent except for white circles on top oftheir domes. Grayson swam by purple jellyfish that were larger, like large Jell-O salad molds, and they were beautiful, graceful swimmers. They moved by contracting and expanding their domes, like opening and closing umbrellas.
Their long, flowing tentacles stretched up to six feet beneath them. I hoped they would stay below me. The moon jellyfish didn’t sting, but the purple ones did. The purple ones had tentacles that had tiny little barbs attached to them. The barbs were trigger-loaded with stinging cells called nematocysts. When a swimmer brushed up against a tentacle, the barbs snapped off or stuck to the swimmer and that movement fired the stinging cells. I had been stung before and it hurt. The intensity of the sting depended on the type of jellyfish. The sting of the Pacific jellyfish wasn’t as bad as a bee sting, but a swimmer could be stung multiple times at the same time.
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