Skeleton Sea

by Dwiggins, Toni

  Walter made a move to go to the woman but I grabbed his arm—did you not see what happened to the boogie board guy?—and anyway you don’t know the first thing about treating anaphylactic shock and you don’t have an epi-pen so what are you going to do when you get to her? But Walter being Walter shook me off and went to her anyway and knelt beside her and started talking to her, something soothing certainly, and I felt selfish and stupid and helpless and scared.

  The boogie board guy was now doubled over, vomiting onto the sand. His buddy hovered over him, helpless as me, hands over his mouth as though he too might vomit just from sheer panic.

  Astonishingly, a man ran over to the vomiting boogie board guy and opened his trunks and peed on the guy’s reddened swollen hand.

  Yeah yeah, I’d read about that, urine is supposed to ease the pain of a jellyfish sting but not now, not this one, maybe pee works on the stings of some jellies and not others.

  But Aurelia stings should not need treatment by pee or anything else so what the hell was going on?

  Swimmers were staggering out of the water. Marked with rashes. Crying softly. Collapsing.

  The lifeguard swimmer towing the ponytailed guy reached shore and tried to drag the ponytailed guy onto the sand but the guy looked like dead weight, and then somehow I was there beside them, getting my sandals wet, looking for a clear patch of arm to grab hold of, watching out for bits and pieces of jellyfish, and Tolliver was there too, and the three of us dragged the ponytailed guy up onto dry sand but our rescue was too little too late because the guy was staring dead-eyed at the sky and his red welted chest was rigid as stone.

  Tolliver started chest compressions.

  The lifeguard swimmer collapsed. His back twitched. Spasms in his back. He yelled ouch ouch ouch oh my god oh my god oh my god. And then he stopped yelling and started gasping and his breathing became shallow and his skin, which had started to dry in the warmth of the sun, turned slick with sweat.

  I heard the wail of sirens.

  I shot a glance at Walter. He was sitting back on his heels. Slumping. The woman in the black swimsuit was still, gone.

  Tolliver sat back on his heels, giving up on the ponytailed guy.

  ***

  Four dead.

  Seven unconscious, being tended by three EMT teams.

  Five welted and stung but upright, being tended by another two EMT teams.

  The onlookers sat huddled on their beach blankets.

  Sand castles had been kicked into oblivion.

  In the water, the bloom had thinned to stragglers riding the current out through the mouth of the harbor.

  I tried to make sense of it. I couldn't.

  Tolliver was working his cell phone, voice like a blade, cutting through whatever confusion was on the other end of the line, demanding information, and then he was on the horn with the Coast Guard talking ocean currents and local tides, and then his sweat-streaked face went gray and he hissed, “Diablo?”

  Walter said, “Diablo?”

  Tolliver put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Diablo Canyon, the nuclear power plant down the coast a few miles. They ran into some trouble.”

  I went cold. Last summer Walter and I had encountered troublesome nuclear material. Again, now? I couldn't understand why a bloom of jellyfish riding the currents—even this extraordinarily toxic bloom—posed a threat to a nuclear power plant.

  But, diablo.

  Now there was a word that raised an alarm.

  I had a little Spanish and I knew that word, the Spanish word for devil.

  When Tolliver got off the phone I explained the translation.

  He said, grimly, “Let's go have a look.”

  CHAPTER 31

  We took the Breaker.

  It seemed that every official vehicle in Morro Bay was on the move. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters and the lone Morro Bay Police Department chopper all headed southward, following the currents, tracking the bloom, heading for the beaches to the south.

  Tolliver had also dispatched one PD boat up the channel to search the back bay, on the lookout for more moon jellies.

  We could have taken Tolliver’s car to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant but the route by road was slower than by sea.

  And so we drove to the dock and piled aboard the police boat.

  Tolliver took the helm and Walter and I stood gripping the rails and the Breaker charged out of the harbor and headed south.

  We skimmed the coastline and passed a gray sand beach that was uninhabited save for a couple of horseback riders. No swimmers in sight. Indeed, the entire stretch of coastline was wild and uninhabited, just bluffs and rocky coves and crashing waves.

  Along the way Tolliver explained everything he’d learned.

  Trouble, in spades.

  Ten minutes later we saw two white reactor containment domes hulking up above a long low-slung building on a bluff at the ocean’s edge, and then Tolliver skewed his boat into a sharp turn and charged into the little cove where the nuke plant sat.

  ***

  The Breaker idled just offshore of the waterfall of heated water tumbling into the sea.

  Tolliver was on his phone again, consulting with plant officials, getting the latest details.

  He updated us.

  The Diablo Canyon plant cooled its hot fuel rods by sucking in seawater and circulating it through pipes to absorb the heat from the active rods and to cool the spent fuel pools, and then discharged the now-warmed water back into the sea—that pretty waterfall spilling out of a concrete mouth.

  Today, the intake system had sucked in moon jellyfish.

  As soon as the jellyfish hit the cooling-water intake racks, alarms sounded and operators took one reactor offline and reduced power to the other.

  They knew the drill.

  It had happened before, gelatinous sea creatures coming in on the tide, plastering themselves against the debris screen, clogging the crucial intake system.

  The cleanup had been costly and messy.

  Divers had to go down to scrape off the intruders.

  The Diablo people knew the drill.

  This time—while we were rushing to the Morro Rock beach—divers at the Diablo plant were being sent down to scrape and clean the debris screen.

  The two divers had joked about making sushi.

  One diver got moon jelly tentacles across the face. The other diver did not, and survived, but he was not making jokes.

  I listened to Tolliver relate the story of Diablo Canyon, and I thought about the beach at Morro Rock. In effect, there were two concurrent events involving deadly moon jellyfish. Where the hell were they coming from?

  ***

  Tolliver was instructed to move to the next cove southward.

  The plant facilities sprawled along a sloping terrace, spanning several coves cut into the rugged coastline. The Breaker motored around the corner to the next cove, which was embraced by two brawny breakwater arms.

  This was the intake cove, where pipes sucked in cooling seawater.

  And jellyfish.

  There was nothing to see now, save for another long low-slung building perched on the bluff with a concrete curtain that dropped down into the sea. Some sort of debris shield, I assumed, which could not be expected to screen out slippery gelatinous debris.

  Tolliver nosed his boat over to a small dock, cut the engine, tied off the mooring rope.

  We disembarked and headed up the dock.

  Our way was blocked by a plant official, a guy in a hard hat with a harried expression who pointedly asked how he could be of assistance to the Morro Bay PD.

  Tolliver said, “We're following up a lead on a case.”

  “Here?” the official said.

  I looked around. The water was placid in this sweet little cove. The ambulance and the coroner's van had come and gone for the stung divers. The jellyfish still clogged the intake screens but they were under the water and well out of sight. I wasn't sure where to begin. All I had was Lanny Keas
ling’s devils, which may or may not have referred to moon jellyfish, which may or may not have referred specifically to moon jellyfish at Diablo Canyon. And if Lanny had been referring to this morning’s event, how could he have predicted that last night?

  But diablo meant devil in Spanish.

  Tolliver said, “To start with, we're trying to find out where the jellyfish came from.”

  The plant official said, “Then you'd better talk to the jellyfish lady.”

  We all three came alert.

  “From Cal Poly, just down the coast. She consulted last time jellies clogged our pipes. Manager called her this time and she came right away. You wait here. I'll go get her.”

  ***

  Violet Russell swept down the walkway to the dock.

  The stylish professor who had commanded the auditorium stage three days ago now looked like a harried student rushing to class. She wore a blue T-shirt and jeans and sneakers and there was no clever comb in her Afro.

  She halted in front of us. “Welcome to the intersection of Weird and Main.”

  No movie-star smile, just a coiled intensity that made me nervous.

  Tolliver gave her a weary nod.

  She said, “How can I help you?”

  I explained devil moons with the caveat that I might have misunderstood.

  She gave a strained laugh. “Devil moons is good a name as any, for what we have this morning.”

  Walter said, “Do you have any ideas about what we have this morning?”

  “I can give you theories. Until I get a necropsy done on the jellies I collected, that’s all I’ve got.”

  “Shoot,” Walter said.

  “Theory A, we’ve got a mutation. In fact, there’s a program right now that monitors sea life in the vicinity of the heated water discharge, to see if that's altering the marine ecosystem.”

  Tolliver said, “But if they originated here, how'd they get up to Morro? They were riding the outgoing tide from the back bay.”

  “It's doable,” she said. “Aurelia are nearshore creatures. They like to hang in harbors and embayments. In their developmental stage, they're notorious for planting their polyps on nearshore structures like oil rigs and aquafarms and breakwaters and piers....”

  I looked down at the dock beneath our feet.

  “...so yes, they could have originated here. Or elsewhere, up or down the coast. Currents are changeable, take them south, take them north.”

  Walter said, “But if you’re considering mutation due to the warm-water discharge, then you're saying they originated here?”

  “I’m saying mutation is a hypothesis, and point source is up for grabs. Aurelia is highly adaptable. Common throughout the world’s seas. Conditions are changing throughout the world’s seas. You get a mutation in, say, Japan and Aurelia can hitch a ride in the ballast of a ship or on floating trash and be transported far and wide.”

  “Japan?” Tolliver said. “Are you talking about that nuke plant over there that blew up?”

  “Melted down,” she corrected. “I wasn't referring to the Fukushima disaster but yes, a couple of researchers have speculated that sea creatures near the plant might be in danger of genetic mutations—especially soft-bodied creatures like jellyfish.”

  “Jesus,” Tolliver said, “some kind of Godzilla thing?”

  She said, “Some kind of over-reaction there, Detective.”

  “Over-reaction, my ass. I just watched four citizens of my town die.”

  She snapped, “I just saw a diver from my town die.”

  Walter stepped in. “We're all distressed at what happened today.” He added, “And puzzled.”

  Violet Russell took in a long breath. “You got that right. We don't get jellies this toxic here.”

  I asked, “Exactly how toxic?”

  She frowned, inverse of the movie-star smile. “Again, I'll need to do the necropsy, but I would put today's toxicity in the realm of Chironex fleckeri. You might have heard of him. Box jellyfish.”

  I thought, holy shit. I said, “You mean on the Discovery channel's top ten deadly creatures list?”

  “That's the one. He's a tropical jelly. We do get his cousin, Carybdea marsupialis, but...”

  “Box jellyfish in California?”

  “Yes, Carybdea is a cubozoan, like Chironex, but his sting is milder.”

  “That's what you said about the moons. Mild sting.”

  “That's what's got me worried.”

  Tolliver passed a hand across his face. “Sorry—for what I said. I see you're worried. I'm just hoping you can figure out what the hell's going on.”

  She said, “Me too.”

  “You gave us Theory A,” Walter said. “Do you have a B?”

  She nodded. “A new species of Aurelia, which is not out of the question. For instance, there's an invasive species known as the clinging jellyfish in Atlantic waters that's recently become more numerous, and venomous. It’s either new, or the existing species has evolved. With Aurelia, take your pick. Mutation, new species.”

  I said, “If it is new, and it originated here, planted its polyps here, are you...”

  “I already collected,” she said.

  I looked down at the dock again.

  “No, not here, I sampled at the breakwater. This dock isn't a good candidate. The pilings have been wrapped in an anti-fouling material, to discourage polyp attachment.”

  Walter and I exchanged a look. Small world. Earlier this morning we'd come across anti-fouling paint. And then we'd established that the red float paint was not the anti-fouling variety. Still, small world.

  And then a word jumped out at me—pilings—and a comment made last week, something heard and forgotten and now ringing like a bell in my memory. It could be nothing relevant, but added to Lanny’s devils it made me take notice.

  I glanced at Walter. He was frowning. Remembering?

  Tolliver’s antennae were up. “What?”

  “Give me a minute.” I moved to the end of the dock and got down on my hands and knees.

  The others followed.

  I leaned over the water and saw the pilings reaching down to anchor the dock to the seafloor.

  Violet Russell joined me, sinking to her knees, the two of us now staring through the water at the pilings.

  I saw what she had been referring to—a slick black material wrapped the concrete pillars. It seemed that the anti-fouling jackets were effective for I saw none of the organisms one sees on submerged surfaces. No sea muck. Certainly, no jellyfish polyps.

  It was what Russell had said it was.

  And nothing more.

  But she was still looking. And then she reached for something in the water, at one of the pilings.

  Tolliver said, “Will somebody goddamn clue me in here?”

  She said, “There's a rope.”

  Tolliver and Walter crowded in beside us.

  It was a black nylon rope, and as Russell reeled it in, we saw what was attached to the end: a black rectangular plate. She let it rest just below the surface.

  “I'll tell you what,” she said, “that's not right.”

  “Looks like a serving tray,” Tolliver said.

  The plate was caked with sea scum. There were organisms I could not identify—white daisy-like blooms, toothy-shelled cups, spongy bits and pieces—and then there were clumps of little pale balls.

  Walter said, “Is that some sort of collection medium?”

  “A recruitment plate,” she said. “Somebody has installed a recruitment plate to collect samples.”

  “Collect?” I asked. “Or deploy?”

  Tolliver said, “Deploy what?”

  Russell looked at Tolliver. “Jellyfish. I'll need to have a look under the microscope to be certain but I'd say those disks are moon jellyfish polyps.”

  “You mean, to keep them coming?”

  “This would do it,” she said.

  “You mean, somebody's creating a goddamn invasion?”

  She said, after a long pau
se, “This would do it.”

  Walter said, “Theory C?”

  I stared at the pale balls on the black plate and I wondered if somebody was growing a serving of devil moons here.

  And then the comment I'd heard and forgotten, the comment I'd been trying to retrieve, resurfaced in full. I asked Russell, “Who did the piling wrap job?”

  “I'm afraid I don't know,” she said.

  Didn't matter. I knew.

  CHAPTER 32

  We headed back to Morro Bay and as Tolliver guided the Breaker through the harbor mouth we watched the water.

  It was innocent of jellyfish.

  We passed the beach, where gawkers were taking photos of the empty water. We turned a right hook into the channel and I spotted a TV news truck driving the waterfront road. We passed Tolliver's favorite cafe and there were gawkers taking photos of the channel water—innocent of jellyfish here too, now. It did not seem to matter. There had been an event, and people came.

  When we reached the end of the channel, where it began to widen into the back bay, Tolliver skewed the Breaker toward shore. He parked at a long wide working dock, in front of a barge-like boat bristling with cranes and equipment lockers.

  By the time we'd disembarked and clambered up a short stairway onto the dock, Fred Stavis was there waiting.

  “Heck of a day,” Stavis said.

  “A terrible day,” Tolliver replied.

  “Will this take long? Need to tackle that baby.” Stavis jerked a thumb at the dock, where a huge compressed-air tank sat on an equipment rack.

  “You'll have time for us.”

  Stavis's mouth quirked into a tight smile. “You want to go up to the office?”

  The dock gave onto a bulky two-story building sheathed in weathered planks, a workshop-style building.

  I studied Fred Stavis. He wore the ubiquitous camo pants, along with a white oil-stained T-shirt. Working clothes, but for the familiar sockless boat shoes. I thought, suddenly, he's going for the Oscar Flynn cool-guy look. Making it his own, with his awkward Stavis style.

  “Here's fine,” Tolliver said.

  “If it's good for you, it's good for me.”

  “This shouldn't take too long. Ms. Oldfield has a question or two for you.”