Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
He watched a play of chromatophores on the haculites's head region—
shivers of color passing from tentacles to head, increasing in strength and
hue when a particularly large crustacean was found. He came closer, and the
creature remained ohlivious, or indifferent, to his presence. He was now only
inches away, lying prone on the soft sediment, watching this ancient organ-
ism feed, one of hundreds similarly engaged on this muddy hottom. He tried
to peer into the mantle cavity and felt almost like a voyeur, but he had to
know. "How many gills? Where's the ink gland? What does the septal man-
tle look like? How does it make its intricate and florid sutures, among the
most complicated sttuctures ever produced by nature? And what are the su-
tures for?" He swung the Nikonos underwater camera with its flash unit
around, centered the nearest baculite in his viewfinder, and shot pointblank
at the long, thin ammonite.
The flash, a detonation of light in this near-darkness, precipitated the
most amazing spectacle. A hundred slim cones blasted off the bottom as one,
the entite school streaking up in concert, leaving a great trail of black ink in
their wake, and thus looking for all the world like an ICBM strike in
progress. He watched them rise to 20 or 30 feet above the hottom. There
they slowed, finally hung motionless in the water column, and then began
sinking slowly back down to the bottom, still vertical, a hundred rockets fot-
getting their fright, returning to their launching pads—and feeding grounds.
He savored the sight and shivered with pleasure, or was it the invading cold?
The cold was a wake-up call; it was clearly time to go. He rose up with
his bubbles, carefully following the smallest and slowest, ascending into
warmer and brighter water, and soon neither the bottom nor the surface was
visible. He ascended in this cocoon, watching jellyfish, small herring, and
once a compressed, planispiral ammonite swimming just at the edge of visi-
bility.
Near the 30-foot level he began hearing sharp cracking noises, and he
pirouetted to scan the water around him. He was surprised to see powdery
and chunky white and brown material falling atound him. A larger piece
cartwheeled downward several yards away, and he interrupted his ascent to
swim after the falling material, catching it at a depth of about 40 feet. It was
