It was an ordeal getting here, but well worth it. Our scuba-diving trip was to turn into something special, for we were going to encounter the world`s largest fish, a shark so large that it`s called a whale shark.
I had been to this island off the Caribbean coast of Honduras a year earlier and knew what to expect. But my 15-year-old daughter, Karen-put off by the daylong flight and numerous connections-was having second thoughts about a trip that I had promised would be unforgettable.
Once on the island, we still faced a 20-minute drive crammed in a mini-van on a narrow, unpaved and dusty road through the jungle.
Anthony`s Key Resort is on a hillside overlooking the ocean and two football field-sized islets or keys, Anthony`s Key and Bailey`s Key. Anthony`s Key is a palm tree grove, with about 30 small wooden cabins circling the islet, tucked in among the trees at the water`s edge.
We awoke to our first day of real vacation when the sun came streaming through the wooden slats in our windows. The constant ocean breeze of about 85 degrees, a bit less at night, had rejuvenated us, and we were ready to go.
”Dad, I see what you meant,” Karen said. ”This is paradise; the sort of place you read about in books.”
Karen had just recently passed her scuba course but still had to take her open-water test. Elmer Monk, her instructor, would dive with her on the next four dives to qualify her for certification. Once that was accomplished, she and I became dive buddies. We kept to two dives a day, although we could have done more. The water around Roatan is ”gin clear and bathtub warm.”
To see the best of the reef, Karen and I often tagged along with more experienced divers like Myron Siciak, Elmer or our local divemaster, Alvin Jackson.
The coral off Roatan is unspoiled and the reef almost as pristine as it was before man learned how to breathe underwater-not many divers choose to go to the trouble of getting here.
Some days were better than others for viewing marine life, though usually it was excellent. All within easy reach were puffer fish of all sizes, filefish, trunkfish, schools of blue tang, queen and French angelfish, the largest parrotfish any of us had ever seen (four feet long), peacock flounder on the sandy bottom, barracuda from babies of less than a foot to a great barracuda of five or six feet), and even my first shark, an eight-foot nurse shark lying in a trench.
By the fourth day Karen was right at home under water and had even begun to feed the fish. Each morning she would take three bananas from breakfast and put them in the pocket of her dive suit. I carried a can of bacon-cheddar cheese spread in my pocket. Yellow-tail snappers would eat the bananas and go crazy over the little worm of cheese spread when I squeezed the nozzle.
We were down about 70 feet when suddenly I heard an unmistakable sound, a combination of ”squeech” and a high-pitched clicking sound, that meant dolphins.
Karen and I were floating just off a coral reef wall. I looked at her and pointed at my ear and nodded my head to ask whether she had heard it. She nodded yes, she had. At the same time, someone was tapping his tank with a knife, a sound we all know as an alert signal.
I looked around and saw Myron pointing out toward the deep at a dolphin.
It was then that Karen saw the dolphin, and her eyes showed a smile that I knew was from the excitement of watching this graceful creature show us clumsy humans what swimming is all about.
It wasn`t until we got back on the boat that we realized that our dolphin was not alone. When we pulled away from the site, someone at the bow screamed. All around the boat scores, maybe a hundred dolphins, were all over the water. We slowed the boat and then stopped so we could get a closer look, and to our surprise they did not swim away as they usually do. Then, as if on cue, everyone on board began to scramble to put on mask, fins and snorkle, leaving our tanks aboard. All of us were in a frenzy to get into the water with the dolphins.
Not only did they stay around, they put on a show. These are wild animals, not dolphins from Sea World or an aquarium. Even so, we could tell that these creatures possessed an intellegence far beyond our understanding.
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I was wearing red spandex running tights and a multicolored bike shirt that I usually wear under my wet suit. But since I had removed my wet suit on the boat, I was left wearing this wild outfit.
When I went into the water I could hear the dolphhin raced toward me. It stopped a few feet away and looked at me floating motionless on the surface, looking for all the world like a big singing red cigar.
It must have gotten quite a laugh when it saw me because after a few moments it took off back to the depths and returned with three of its friends. The four of them swam around me for a minute or two, probably laughing, and then took off again.
Moments later the four returned with four more of their buddies. Now eight dolphins were swimming around, making sounds and getting closer and closer. Then they were only three or four feet away, zooming around, checking me out. I decided not to move but to hold my nonaggressive position, hoping they would give me a chance to touch them.
But as soon as they seemed to want to make contact, more members of my group came splashing over to see them, and the dolphins swam away. As they left they screeched as if to say goodbye. I never stopped singing and tried to say goodbye in a humming sort of way.
Back on board, after nearly an hour with the dolphins, we were all on Cloud 9. Each of us had had time to interact with these wonderful, intelligent mammals. Alvin, our divemaster, said, ”It`s good luck, man, to swim with the dolphins.”
Friday was our last dive day. We were to leave early Saturday for the all-day trip back to Chicago. Karen and I went on the first morning dive together. She and Alvin were buddies on the second morning dive. I stayed behind to go out on a fishing boat with Julio, the owner of the resort, and some business friends of his from Tegucigalpa.
Karen`s boat had radioed that they had seen a huge whale shark, 40 to 50 feet long, when they were on their way to the dive site. Whale sharks are rare. All divers would like to see one, but few get the chance.
There is a lot of confusion surrounding these mammoth creatures. They are sharks (Rhincodon typus), which means they are fish-the largest fish in the world, sometimes reaching 60 feet in length. They are the only sea creatures larger than whales, which are mammals. They are said to be harmless to man because they eat microscopic plankton.
People who have seen whale sharks feed say that when they eat, floating vertically, the water around them is filled with yellow-finned tuna that follow the whale shark and eat what the whale shark misses. Then there are other kinds of sharks crowded around to eat the tuna or anything else that gets in the way, including people.
When the whale shark is not feeding, the water around it is fairly safe, as safe as open ocean water can be. (Open ocean is the area away from land where the reef drops off beyond 200 feet. We were chasing the whale shark in water 500 to 1,000 feet deep.)
That day the ocean was as flat as a table top, without a hint of a breeze. After being out for 15 minutes, Jeff, a fellow diver, spotted a dorsal fin sticking out of the water. It was so big that it looked like a sail. Julio raced the boat to where we last saw the fin and slowed to a near-stop. Several minutes passed, then we saw the fin again about 50 yards away. We inched over to the area.
Then we saw him, just off starboard. My heart pounded in my chest. This guy was big. Julio`s boat was about 28 feet long, and the shark looked to be twice as big as our boat.
Julio called for all of us to be calm. Mandy, another diver, squealed anyway. I let out a loud, involuntary, ”Whoooooooa.” Mathis, another diver, got his camera ready. Jeff had already put on his tank, mask, fins and snorkle. I didn`t know what to do. I just stood there and looked at the shark in awe. It was gray-green with white spots, like a submarine with a blunt head.
Julio positioned the boat next to the shark, and before anybody could say a word, Jeff was over the side chasing the brute. The shark started to dive toward the depths, but just as he started to fade from view, we could see Jeff holding his dorsal fin, riding him down.
We froze in fear and disbelief. What had happened to Jeff? We were afraid to ask. Then we saw his bubbles rising to the surface.
Slowly Jeff came into view. He wisely took his time. If he had panicked and shot to the surface, he could have developed the bends (air embolism) and died.
Jeff climbed on board with a big ”Yahoo!” and we all gathered around him, asking, What was it like? How deep did you go? How long were you on him? Jeff answered all our questions after he caught his breath.
Julio was getting low on gas, so we headed back to the dock to gas up so we could try to find the shark again. While they were taking on fuel, I went to the dive shop and gathered up my gear. I had decided that if we found the shark again, I was going to be there to see him first hand.
Within moments of returning to where we had met the whale shark, we saw those magnificent, enormous fins, dorsal and tail, cutting the water.
This time Mathis got his video camera ready, and Jeff prepared the Nikonas camera for still shots. Julio stayed at the controls while his two friends decided just to look on from the boat. Mandy, Tracy (a fellow diver)
and I prepared to try riding him down as Jeff had done.
Julio once again positioned the boat near the shark and cut the engine. Mandy and Tracy entered the water from the port side. Jeff and Mathis, cameras in hand, entered from the stern, and I entered from starboard.
When I could see, I almost spit out my mouthpiece. Coming toward me with Mandy and Tracy on its back was what looked like a locomotive with spots. I kept saying to myself, ”It only eats plankton . . . it only eats plankton.” The shark, which seemed to be moving in slow motion, was going too fast for me to catch. Tracy had already peeled off, and seconds later Mandy also had to let go. The shark was heading toward the bottom faster than Mandy could swallow and equalize the pressure in her ears.
Back on board we hugged and jumped all over the boat like a bunch of kids. We had seen what few in the world have seen or even imagined, a 50-foot spotted whale shark. And Mandy and Jeff had ridden him.
Mathis and Jeff climbed aboard and said they thought they had the event on videotape and film. Later we found they were right.
But our day wasn`t over. On the way back to the resort we found ourselves in the midst of a pod of whales. We followed them for an hour, taking pictures on tape and film. They seemed not in the least afraid of us.
Once again low on gas, we headed back to the dock, where we told the rest of our group what we had seen.
That night, our last in paradise, we reminisced about the week and vowed to meet again at Anthony`s Key. But we knew we`d never top this trip for excitment and wonder.
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What had made it all more than special for me was watching my daughter enjoy this new world. But all of us shared the feeling of having joined an extended family of interesting people who had started out as strangers to one another.
Somo by Rick Frehsee. A cooling breeze through wooden-slatted windows on cabins eased the 85 degrees temperatures.