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A swarm of the “rare,” bright-orange Clarion angelfish. (Photo by
author)
Finally out of air, we returned to the boat with our catch, which in-
cluded dozens of the prized Clarion angels. Immediately, we began to
discuss the puzzling noises we had heard. On a previous occasion, Bob
and I had heard a mysterious moaning sound when night diving in the
wreck of a fishing boat at the tip of the Cape. We mentioned it to a
local Mexican fisherman, who said, “Eet ees the cry of the hongry tiger
shark,” but we dismissed that story as simply his attempt to scare us.
In all our night diving around the world, none of us had ever heard
anything quite like this sound. We were still ba›ed when we called it
a night and hit the sack.
The next morning after a hearty breakfast we looked out from our
cove and were astonished to see a humpback whale leap from the water
and come crashing back down with a giant splash. All of a sudden the
strange sounds made sense: they must have been the song of the male
humpback! We were familiar with the recordings Roger Payne made
in the late 1960s in the Caribbean, but what we'd heard underwater
didn't sound anything like Payne's record. One striking feature that was
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