Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul Read online

  When I came to the dock in the morning, the old bird was already sitting there. I moved my gear and put some cut mullet on the hooks. In a minute I hit something, and I had to hold on for dear life. It felt as though my arms were being torn from the sockets. Mahogany flew over to the new spot, his erect feathers signaling excitement. I finally landed the monster of a catfish and was very cautious with the dorsal and pectoral fins. Each was barbed with a hidden stiletto capable of tearing the skin to the bone. I dispatched the brute and nudged it toward the pelican. But he, too, was wary of those barbs. He snubbed his beak at the fish and walked away. I love to eat catfish and know exactly how to dress them for a tasty meal. I was also curious if Mahogany would take them defanged. With a sharp fillet knife I removed the spikes and cleaned the fish while the bird watched my every move. I tossed him a few chunks, but the usually ravenous pelican turned and again walked away.

  At midday, the two of us dozed in the warmth of the winter sun. It was late in the afternoon when I awoke and was aware of a bevy of pelicans waiting for a meal. My pole bent, and they knew immediately. A few remained on the dock, but the others were already in the water, ready to pluck the fish from my line. I was afraid to pull it up. If they took it, they would get the hook also. I kept the fish underwater and waited for the exact moment. When it came, I pulled hard and watched them slash each other with their swordlike bills. As I reeled in the fish, it dropped from the line. To my horror I saw the loose hook rip into the bystander—Mahogany!

  My feelings were so acute that I could almost feel the hook in my own flesh. My friend had the hook embedded in his back, and for a moment I could feel his weight hanging from the pole. I cut the line immediately, and the bird flew away with fifteen feet of line dangling from his body. My mind was racing. Could he survive with the deeply embedded hook? Would it rust? Would it infect him?

  In the morning I left my poles at home and walked back to the dock, looking for Mahogany, but he was gone. No one had seen him. The poles remained in my house, and I no longer fished. I spent my days just searching for the bird with the dark brown neck.

  And then one day I looked up into a steel gray sky and watched a small group of pelicans come in over the water, stretch their mighty wings, and dive into the tiny cove that was alive with small fish. Again and again they went into their steep dives and scooped up the wriggling fish, which dripped from their huge mouths. Mahogany was leading the pack, still trailing fifteen feet of nylon line. Now for the first time I got my pole, and once again I fished and watched. I had my line near a forest of mangrove whose twisted roots sheltered a variety of fish. I soon had a flaming red snapper tugging on the light pole. Sure enough, the old bird showed me his confidence by dropping down not too far away. I could see the end of the gold hook in the very center of his back. I held the fish high and coaxed Mahogany to come nearer. The huge head was not too far away when I tossed him the fish. Mahogany lunged, and I did also. I clasped him to my chest and held his bill as I ran for help. At a friend’s boat we held him tightly and pulled the hook out with a pair of thin pliers. He flew up as soon as I let him loose. Those huge wings pumped a few times, and then he went into his glide. The old bird banked in a wide turn and landed back on the planks. The sun was up now and everything glowed; in minutes the still water had turned to gold. I looked into Mahogany’s old yellow eyes and smiled; it was nice to have him back.

  Mike Lipstock

  Picasso of the Sea

  Many years ago I was visiting my friends at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys. The director, Mandy Rodriguez, asked if I would like to paint with some of the dolphins. I, of course, wondered how this was going to work and made my way back to a lagoon where, to my surprise, a small group of bottlenose dolphins greeted me with excitement.

  As I sat on the edge of the dock and readied a set of water-based acrylic paints, the dolphins became more excited. I, too, was intrigued about collaborating with these highly intelligent mammals. If any animal on Earth besides humans could create a work of art, it would most certainly be dolphins.

  I passed a paintbrush to a dolphin named Kibby, who took the handle in her mouth. Next, I held up a canvas, and she immediately began to paint with a Picasso flair, laying down each stroke with a twist of her head and, finally, a 360-degree spin. When she was done, she passed the brush back to me and watched as I painted my part.

  Two very diverse marine artists, Kibby, the dolphin, and I, the human, shared a single canvas. But we discovered that we also shared something else—the spirit of joy. Together, we had created something uniquely beautiful, a one-of-a-kind collaboration between artists of two different worlds. I told my friends on the dock later that it was just the salt that made my eyes water. But they knew how I felt about making such a wonderful connection with one of these beautiful creatures.

  When the painting was finished, Kibby smiled a big dolphin grin. She nodded her head in approval of the completed work, then lifted her flukes above the surface and dived. A few seconds later she brought me the highest honor a dolphin can give, a gift from the sea—a rock!

  Wyland

  ZIGGY © ZIGGY AND FRIENDS, INC. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

  The Blind Diver

  It was one of those black nights at sea. No shade of gray separated the water from the sky, nor was there a peek of light from a distant shore. Our boat anchored in the dark as oversized swells crashed upon its hull. A huge 16-mm underwater motion-picture camera was lowered over the side to a photographer in the water. The photographer signaled that the camera was secure, and the rest of us plunged into the water, each person carrying a large underwater light tethered to the generator of our boat.

  Slowly, we worked our way down through the ensnaring kelp forest, guided by the lights, until the whir of the generator stopped, the lights winked out, and we were left suspended in utter, complete blackness.

  I tugged on my cable only to discover it had disconnected from the generator. Without it, there was absolutely nothing to guide me to the surface or to the boat. Suddenly, it became impossible to know which way was up or down. There was no right, no left. I was completely disoriented. A chill crept over me. My breath choked midway to my lungs. I had become engulfed in a paralyzing fear. But my survival instincts weren’t ready to give up yet. I am not going to die here, I reassured myself. Not now. Not this way!

  My calm prevailed and effectively saved my life. I’ve gone diving many times after that terrifying experience, but never at night. I could not force myself to, despite the survival lessons I had learned. However, it was on another dive that I learned what it is truly like to dive without sight. This remarkable experience occurred off the coast of Florida, where I went diving with a blind man. I had met him onboard a commercial dive boat many years ago, and although I knew him for only a few hours, he changed my life forever.

  Blind from birth, he had never seen a ray of light in his entire life. For his sixty-fifth birthday, he gave himself the gift of scuba diving lessons. He said he had always dreamed of someday diving off the Florida Keys, and from the moment he first learned of scuba diving, he had been consumed with the idea of floating, weightless and free, in the inner space of the ocean.

  But this was more than his first attempt at diving. It was the first time he’d ever been more than fifty miles from his home in Michigan. He had never traveled alone and had never been near the water, except in a swimming pool and, later, in a Michigan quarry where he took his qualifying dive.

  Once he earned his scuba diving certification, he started calling dive shops in Florida. Each call was met with disbelief. “No way!” “Blind?” “You’re kidding!” were the responses he heard over and over again.

  Finally, a dive-boat captain agreed to take him diving near Key Largo. I was there as he lugged his gear onboard. The sight of this man walking down the dock with a white cane in one hand and a diving bag in the other was a surreal experience in itself.


  At sea, he dressed for the dive on the teetering boat, just like the rest of us. And when one of the divers tried to help him put on his tank, he said politely, “No, I can do this. But I appreciate your thought.” Then he made his way to the rail of the boat, boosted himself up and flipped backward into the water.

  I imagined he must have experienced the same disorientation underwater that had filled me with terror during my earlier night dive. He was, after all, completely blind!

  How did he know which way was down and which way was up?

  How did he know where the fish were?

  He extended his hands and opened his fingers, and soon small schools of fish swam in and out of them. It was as if they were petting him. Then a five-foot-long grouper cruised right up to him as if to say, “Let’s play.” The blind diver seemed to welcome the fish, caressing it as if he were petting a favorite dog.

  With gloved hands he explored every rock he encountered. Inch by inch. Crevice by crevice. Nothing escaped his attention. He ascended, on time, before his air ran out, found the ladder to the boat and climbed onboard, doing everything by himself, just like the rest of us.

  The deck was abuzz as the blind man described everything he “saw.”

  “Did you see that butterfly fish?” he said, a grin spreading across his face. “And what about that angel fish? Wasn’t it delicate, and oh-so-graceful? . . . And those beautiful gigantic coral heads and their tiny little polyps! And that grouper, wasn’t she something!”

  I stood in amazement. He had seen more than I had!

  Finally, one of the other divers blurted out, “You’re not blind. You’ve just been fooling us.”

  “No,” our friend said. “I’m not blind, even though my eyes don’t see.” Then he laughed in a way that has never left me to this day. “Sight, don’t you know, comes from the heart.”

  Joycebelle Edelbrock

  In Harmony

  I have no other wish than a close fusion with nature, and I desire no other fate than to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.

  Claude Monet

  When we were growing up, my dad told us many stories about the islands he had learned throughout his life. The Hawaiians are people who love the land, sky and sea, and their existence depends on its harmony. The locals who grew up in the islands have a deep respect for their beliefs. We hear all kinds of tales and legends, and we choose to believe in them.

  For years and years, the locals thought the reefs and deep ocean surrounding the islands would always hold an abundance of fish. The reefs were full of manini, papio, kumu, mullet and weke, and the deeper water held the ulua and ahi.

  But times changed, and more people were living in the islands. Slowly, the people noticed that each time they went fishing, they came back with fewer fish. Some of these people depended on the sea to put food on their tables and money in their pockets.

  Everyone seemed to have problems catching enough fish—everyone except one man. All would watch him go out alone early in the morning and, as the sun began to set, he’d come home with more fish than anyone. How did he do it? They all asked each other questions, but no one wanted to ask him. No one seemed brave enough to follow and see where he went. It became more and more of a mystery, and the word began to spread. There was one fisherman who could bring in plenty of fish, while all others struggled to make a living.

  Eventually, the story reached the mainland where a sport-fishing writer heard about this Hawaiian fisherman. He was determined to find out how this man was able to accomplish what no one else could, so he flew to the islands and made a surprising discovery.

  On the island of Maui, he met a man with a gentle spirit who had a great respect for the sea. The sea gave him all that he needed, and he gave back part of what he had. This intrigued the writer enough to ask the questions no one else dared to ask.

  The fisherman sat him down on the cool evening sand and began his story. When he was done, the writer couldn’t believe what he had heard. The fisherman then quietly invited him to go out in the morning to see with his own eyes what his heart couldn’t believe.

  Early the next morning before the sun rose, the writer met the fisherman and climbed aboard the boat with his camera, determined to record the truth. They set off into the silent darkness with just a glimmer of light on the horizon.

  They had followed the coastline for two or three miles when the fisherman cut his engine. The fisherman explained to the writer that no matter what happened, he was not to talk, just watch. Going to the side of the boat, the fisherman slapped the side a few times. He waited for a few moments and did it again. Then shielding his eyes from the early morning rays, he pointed into the far-off distance. The only thing the writer could see on the glassy water was a ripple coming toward them.

  The rippling stopped, and the writer looked at the fisherman, who motioned him to wait. In a few moments, the fisherman leaned over the side and placed his hand in the water. Then from the depth of the sea, the writer could see something silvery coming toward the surface. He was shocked to see a five-foot barracuda. Unbelievable! And the fisherman had his hand in the water, just waiting. Speechless, the writer watched as the barracuda came up to the fisherman’s hand and allowed him to rub its head.

  When the barracuda swam away, the fisherman started up his engine and followed it. After a while, the barracuda began to swim in a big circle. The fisherman dropped his net inside the circle. Time passed, and finally the net was ready to be hoisted in. The fisherman looked through the catch, grabbed the biggest fish and dropped it into the water as the barracuda appeared to say thanks with a flip of its tail. The writer stared in amazement. Incredible, was all he could think.

  The fisherman explained that the ritual had begun long ago, when he was out one day and a barracuda had come up to the side of his boat. This went on for years, until the time came when he noticed the barracuda was getting older and slower in his movements. He knew that some time soon, he wouldn’t be seeing his friend from the sea.

  One day he went out, slapped the side of his boat and saw not one rippling, but two. Alongside his old friend was a younger barracuda. The old one let the fisherman rub his head, then nudged the younger one closer to the boat, as the fisherman cautiously put his hand into the water to rub his new friend’s head. Then the old one slowly swam away.

  The next time the fisherman went out, along came his new friend, alone. He leaned over to rub its head as his tears fell into the sea. He knew he would never see his dear old friend again.

  Never in his whole life had the writer heard such a story, but now he believed. Now his heart believed. And now he had a greater respect for the sea—and the special part of life that keeps us in harmony with nature.

  Martha Gusukuma-Donnenfield

  Encounter with a Sperm Whale

  Back in 1981, few people—if any—had swum with sperm whales: forty- to eighty-foot-long masters of the deep sea with enormous jaws containing rows of large, conical teeth. Sperm whales are elusive. They dive hundreds to possibly thousands of feet and seldom initiate contact with humans, unlike the gray or humpback whales.

  We were off the coast of Sri Lanka in a small thirty-three-foot sailing vessel following pods of sperm whales for extended periods of time under the auspices of the World Wildlife Fund. The longest we managed to do this was for a few days, and it was difficult, relentless work because we had to rely on tracking their sounds. Because the whales dive for over an hour sometimes, we could not rely on sight. So we rigged up an underwater acoustic system that could locate the whales’ sounds by receiving the clicks emitted from the foreheads and jaws of the whales to obtain a fix on their position. Of course, the whales sometimes “shut up,” at which point it was highly possible that we would lose the group. But often we were successful, and when we followed the sounds correctly, the whales would surface in the vicinity of our little ship.

  In the process of following individual whales, it was important to know if we were following males or fe
males, so the obvious move was to go and have a look. I, of course, was dying to swim with these enormous beings, so I immediately offered to jump in. With wry humor and twinkles in their eyes, Doctors Hal Whitehead and Jonathan Gordan, my two British companions, reminded me that sperm whales “stun” their prey. The whales feed on the mysterious deep-sea giant squid, a creature that can reach sixty feet in length. The whales stun the squid, then use their long, narrow mouths to delicately seize their mouthful of food. All of this happens in darkness, possibly a thousand or more feet underwater.

  And here we were, in the tropics of the Indian Ocean, dabbling with the delights of swimming with the “gentle” beings of the deep. How did we know they were gentle? Why, I might be just the size of a delectable baby squid paddling about on the surface of the water with the bright tropical sun making me an obvious target! Of course, the sperm whale will know better than that, I convinced myself. Furthermore, I was tantalized by the possibility of swimming with one of the largest and most elusive creatures on Earth!

  I hastened on my snorkel gear, hand-hoisted myself over the stern of the thirty-three-foot sloop, tying myself to a hemp rope fastened to the stern of the ship that would pull me through the water. I had been trained a few hurried moments before about the little Nikonos camera that I held in my right hand while holding on to the rope with my left hand. I was supposed to take a picture of the genitals of the whale to identify it as a male or female. No problem, I thought.

  I could see the outline of the ship’s hull as she plowed through the blue Sri Lankan tropical water with nothing else around her, not a fish or drifting seaweed. I relaxed and enjoyed the rush through the water when I noticed the flukes of a sperm whale slowly appearing about ten feet ahead of the ship’s port bow. The whale was hardly moving, swimming without seeming to notice the noisy propelled ship approaching it. Its massive body was awesome, majestic and powerful, yet it inspired no fear in me. The engines of the ship stopped as I glided alongside the gray body. I held on to my rope in silence.