Making a life-changing transition to the live in the other side of the world is logistically intense, so it would be insane to make a 2.5-week pitstop en-route, right? Well, some opportunities are simply too good to pass up, so…. screw it! Let’s go! A few fellow fish-nerd friends and I have been lusting after a some exceptionally rare species that would look great in my Aliens Collection, and a roll of the dice on an expedition to a rural part of Japan with a nearby deep-water trench seemed like just the thing to find them. It wasn’t easy, but oh yeah, I’ve got some new freaks from the deep to show you!
After selling all our personal and business vehicles, we had a rental SUV to finish up life in the USA, and drove it to MIA airport packed with 4 overweight checked bags and 4 massively overweight (45-75lbs) carry-ons (a carry-on, and a “personal item” each) full of camera gear, and began our usual highly-organized process of trying to go unnoticed by the airline staff. MIA to Chicago ORD to Tokyo HND to the tiny, rural island of Kume in Okinawa in the far southern region of Japan. All half-empty flights, so life is good. Jet lag has never been too much of an issue for me, so 11 hours time zone difference is quickly recovered with a little nap. Dinner with Japanese friends brought a bit of an embarrassing shock – at this tiny 4-table restaurant, there were two TV’s on the wall both showing the WWII atomic bombs going off in Japan over and over and over – multiple stories, newsanchors, interviews, etc. I get a bit nervous, and sheepishly ask my hosts, “the bombs – is this all people think about when they see gaijin-American me? Is this all people talk about here?” Of course, I arrived on the 80th anniversary, and they told me no, the people here now are very friendly with Americans, and while sure, it’s a paramount part of their history, it’s rarely discussed here or anywhere in Japan these days. “Whew!” In my mind, every set of eyes in the room was on me, but yeah, that was just me being paranoid. A beer and some sake later, and everyone in the restaurant is having a blast with the gaijin. Waiting for the sun to go down the next day, we were shown around the small island, touring an algae farm (food for people, and many other industries), we walked through the geologically-famous Tatami Stones, and were the only ones to visit the 15th-century Uegusuku Castle ruins.
As friendly as the people are and as good as the food was, I’m here on a mission. Japan, as a whole, is quite challenging for westerners who want to dive the amazing reefs. Fortunately, our awesome guides had already scoped out some of the nighttime planktonic opportunities over a nearby deep oceanic trench, and the reports were good enough to draw us and a small group of fellow uber-fish-nerd friends to give it a try. The plan was this; each night for the next 15 nights, get into a small boat at sunset, drive about an hour out to sea over an 2000m-deep oceanic trench, jump in, and see what freaky planktonic fish & creatures have come up that night. Get home by 1am-ish, drink sake, sleep from 3am-noon, and do it all over again the next day. Now THAT is my kind of “vacation”!!! I just can’t believe other people enjoy laying around all day getting massages and getting dressed up for dinner at an all-inclusive – booooorrrrring!!! Okay, let’s go! We get 45 minutes from shore, and the captain say’s the storm is getting too big for our tiny boat, and we need to get back to port. Damn. Drink sake. 2nd night, a little calmer, but kinda more of the same, so we compromise with a sheltered bay with some deep water nearby. BAM – like 5 new species within the first two hours!!!! Oh this is going to be good!
The term is now called “Blackwater Diving”. Effectually, you jump off a boat on SCUBA in the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night, where the water is
deep. Very deep. No bottom in sight – typically 600-10,000’ beneath you. In certain parts of the world, a magical “diel migration” happens every night where countless trillions of organisms (many in their pre-metamorphosis larval stage) rise from the abyss up towards the surface. I dive in the top 130’, or what divers call “within the recreational diving limits”. I hunt for these tiny critters, usually between a few millimeters to a few centimeters, with a spotlight in the nighttime blackness. I started doing this way before there was a term for it – back several decades ago when I lived in the Turks & Caicos Islands, my boat would often be moored at the edge of an underwater cliff that dropped down to several thousand feet, and I’d often jump in a float around near the back of my boat with my camera around midnight and marvel at the crazy freaks from the deep. We’ve come a long way from then, in camera technology, in our understanding of what the creatures are via partnerships with the scientific community, and via trial and error establishing good practices to maximize efficiency, and yes, to not die.
As a giant fish nerd, I had dreams of this trip fulfilling a few bucket-list exceptionally rare larval-stage creatures. 1) A larval hairy goosefish – only one sighting ever, worldwide, but with their adults found in this region of Okinawa, this might be the place for the second! Actually, any of the goosefish would do, but the hairy is the holy grail. 2) A particular type of larval crocodile toothfish that’s super pretty (to me). 3) A species of tiny larval gastropod (in the veliger life stage) known as “sparkles” that has been seen in other tropical locations, and with reasonable probability here. 4) And the rest is just a roll of the dice, or given the environment, a “shot in the dark” as it were. Anything can pop up – you just never know. And the not knowing is part of what keeps me motivated to keep doing this blackwater diving after…. who knows…. around 1000 blackwater dives in about a dozen countries.
So like I said, night after night, drop a lit line in over the abyss, swim around, look for tiny critters. Some nights were good, others sucked. But on average, every night brought at least one thing that left me scratching my head and consulting with scientist and citizen scientist experts around the world. Part of the joy of doing this with a very small group of some of the world’s most experienced blackwater divers, is back on the boat after a dive, sometimes we’re all bored and forlorn at not having found a damn thing, and other times, we’re all excitedly showing each other pics – sometimes to talk about the amazing thing, other times, asking each other WTF the thing is! Underwater, since this group is all friends, we have also established good ways of getting each other’s attention, since we’re all technically solo-diving, and often several hundred feet apart, using loud underwater honkers and insanely bright lasers. It’s generally the plan that after we’ve had a good 10-25 minutes with our prize find, that we signal to someone else to bring them over. It’s part bragging rights on the awesome find, and part comradery.
By the end of the 15-turned-13.5 nights, I had multiple new holy grail critters. Some of my favorites include the biggest (by 5x!) blue button jellyfish (actually a siphonophore) I’d ever seen, several new soapfish with their telltale tutu of pectoral fins, several encounters with behbeh pompano fish shining like mirrors with their reflective scales, and yes… even a goosefish. Not a hairy goosefish, but this was still the fish that made the trip. That aforementioned comradery was in full effect, and I took 90-120 second round-robin turns with a few friends for an entire night shooting this one single fish as we drifted miles and miles in the nighttime open ocean.
And yes, of course, after waking up at noon, I’d often go for a dive. One of those dives where I obsessively sat atop a red-spotted blenny with eggs for 90 minutes trying to create the perfect portrait, I had the most awesome green sea turtle chomping on algae all around me while I was trying to concentrate on the blenny. The turtle eventually won the debate, as I came back a few more days specifically to shoot him, and that’s what has resulted in this month’s new Fish Faces print release, Turtle Eclipse of the Sun. The reefs there are quite striking – full of life, and very topographically dynamic. I’d love to return and explore the reefs by day another time.
All in all, the stress of making this pit-stop en-route to our new Indonesian home was stupid and stressful and a huge risk, but well worth it. On the way to Indonesia, Suzanne & I stopped for a few days to check out Tokyo, and absolutely loved it! What an awesome city – so efficient, organized, polite, and welcoming! I’d highly recommend a Tokyo trip for my non-diving friends who just want to see a new city. As with all my trips, I need a vacation after my “vacation”! But now I’m getting settled into Bali, diving and shooting new images every day on the Liberty shipwreck and around the region. Learning the language and the culture, and looking forward to this next stage of life on the other side of the world!
No promises, but I’ll bet my next blog post will be all about life & the underwater shots so far here in Tulamben…
