The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico

by Humberto Fontova

  "All right, lovebirds," I finally said, clapping my hands. "Almost ten o'clock. I gotta get back to the island. We're going on another dive. I don't wanna miss it."

  Nothing to it. They untangled; she jerked up her bikini bottom, shook her mane a bit, wrapped it in a ponytail, and we were roaring back in seconds. Geezuz, what a morning-and early yet.

  We had one more dive to go.

  Paul was in the boat jabbing some ice with an ice pick as I splashed by. He heard me and looked over. "Where the hell where ya? We're gonna hit the long ball today!"

  "Went out fishing with Buzzy and Jenny," I said, pointing behind me as they roared off through the channel. "Shoulda seen that."

  "With who?" He frowned and shaded his eyes. "Oh, Buzzy? What the hell are they doing out here?"

  I told him.

  We'd be leaving in about fifteen minutes for the South Pass blocs, the deep ones, in order to avoid the murk. I'd just been near there, and told Paul that the water had been green.

  "Good," he said. "It'll probably be blue at the SP blocs. If not on top, then it shouldn't be much of a murk layer. Not if it's green this close."

  "Actually, you never know with these crazy currents." I replied. "Look at yesterday. That was some of the worst murk we ever dove in."

  "Right," Paul said. "That was a helluva day to start Tom on rig diving."

  "Shit, man," I said. "He dove like a champ. Helluva lot better than us when we started out. Tom's a trooper."

  "I'll give him that, "Paul chuckled. "He's a trooper, all right ... or nuts.

  And then Paul, Pelayo, Tom, and I were roaring over the swells due southeast. Up ahead and a little to the left was Buzzy. It looked like they were trolling now. I leaned close to Pelayo's ear. "That's Buzz and Jenny," I said. "Pass close. We'll moon 'em."

  Pelayo swerved to within fifty yards. We bent over and slapped our cheeks while Jenny made biting and grabbing motions. Buzzy shot the bird. He looked pissed that we'd come in that close.

  "That's a dizzy chick, boy," Pelavo blurted. He looked at me nodding. "Never forget that bar shower. Toni packed up and moved to her momma's for a week after it. I did all right by myself. . ."

  "Right!" I said, remembering the bachelor apartment that he and Chris had maintained for two years before marriage.

  "Yeah, man," Pelayo continued. "She came back and the house looked like the inside of a dumpster. Freakin' fungus on the walls. Bathtub was green. Showed her."

  We roared east toward deep water, fleeing the murk, the Gulf floor sloping away below us. The depth finder went from 300 to 500 feet in twenty minutes. We were approaching the continental slope, where the continental shelf gives way to the perpetual black void of the abyss-the waters over 1,000 feet deep. Helldivers haven't quite gotten down there yet. But give them time.

  We also hoped to evade the sharks-or at least dive an area where we could see the damn things if they were around. You can't really evade sharks out here. Not completely, and definitely not on this side of the river. They're everywhere-the big ones that is. Their capacity to pop up anywhere and without warning lends a nice edge to every dive.

  An hour later we were still roaring east. The water was a darker green now-but not quite blue. A foamy current line loomed ahead. "Is that the rip?" I said, while pointing ahead.

  "Yep, looks like it," Pelayo rasped.

  It was the rip with bells on. It was dramatic; the water went from dark green to almost purple. We plowed through a mass of sargassum as we hit it-high-fiving around the boat.

  "Yeah-you-RIGHT!" Paul howled. WHOO-WHOO!" Cobalt blue water always has that effect on us. It was glorious. A delightful dive was imminent.

  "Lookit that wake!" Pelayo boomed. White foam streaked through a backdrop that looked like grape juice. We were pumped. The rigs loomed ahead, another three or four miles away. Scanning around, I saw no menacing cloud patterns on the horizon, but it was early yet. These things pop up out of nowhere this time of year down here.

  "Saw that!" Tom suddenly screeched. I looked over and his eyes were like saucers, but bright, excited.

  "Wow-saw it?" Pelayo yelled a split second later while hauling back on the throttle. They were both wide-eyed, with crazy grins, almost like groupies. What the hell, I thought. Did we drop something? Did something fly out of the boat?

  "It was huge!" Tom gasped, while pointing left. His eyes glowed. "Something huge jumped outta the water right over there!"

  "Manta ray!" Pelayo said. "Man, that sucker came flying outta the water like a GI-GAN-TIC flying fish! Remember we saw one last year? Maybe he'll jump again. There, lookit!"

  This time I saw it. The thing erupted from the base of a swell and sailed for what must have been twenty feet over the Gulf, like some giant bat, then crashed back with a thunderous splash.

  "WOW!" I was speechless. It had been years since we'd seen it. "And look!" The monstrosity was airborne again, looking more like a flying grand piano than a bat this time, and then SPLASH! Back in, with a huge explosion of water and foam.

  "My God! Don't see that very often, Tom, my boy." Pelayo looked around while nudging the throttle up. "Shoot, we've only seen it, what, twice?" he said, looking around. "The whole time we been diving. That's eighteen years."

  "That's all I've seen it." I said. "And never on any of those nature shows either, or anything. Remember the first time? We didn't know what the hell to think. We didn't know mantas jumped like that. Who'da thought it? Big thing like that getting airborne? Makes no sense."

  Five minutes later I had the rig hook as we approached the immense rumbling platform from down current.

  "Lookit that!" Paul whooped. You could see down the beams forever. Fish everywhere. No spooky clouds on the horizon. No murk. No current. No waves just a gentle swell. The sun, bright and blazing. Two guys waved from the top of the rig, and pointed down at the water, or at us. I clanged the hook on a beam and we commenced another round of high-fives. "We were due for this." Paul smirked. "Been a while since we seen it this pretty"

  Tom looked ready to go. He was looking over the railing, smiling, issuing a low whistle, rapt. What a change from yesterday. "Beats Belize," he said finally, looking up, wide-eyed, still smiling. "This water's unbelievable." Then he turned back to the water and his face jerked. "Hey guys!" he yelled. "What's THAT? Another manta?"

  "Freakin'-aay!" Pelayo said looking over and trying to sound calm. "A freakin' manta ray!"

  "Will ya ... will ya look at the size of the thing!" Paul said with a low whistle.

  That's what the guys up above had been pointing at. They had a beautiful view from up there. Not that this was too bad. The mantas finned slowly through their realm about twenty feet below the boat against the deep purple backdrop. They were mostly black, with white near the tips of the wings and on those horns that sweep out from the head. "Devilfish" they were nicknamed. Legend had it they wrapped divers in their wings and carried them to their doom. Other legends said they sailed into the air to crash-dive on boats and demolish them.

  I guess anything this big and ugly just had to be bad. Yet here for the first time we looked at a fish without the urge to spear it. No one was scrambling for the guns and the tanks. We must be slipping, getting soft. An impressive sight nonetheless. The monstrosity was just flying along. His massive wings flapping like a condor on slow motion. From white wing-tip to white wing-tip, he looked three times as wide as our boat.

  "Another one! Hey look!" Tom was pointing behind us nowand sure enough, another one was looming into view, if anything bigger than the first. Unreal. "Man, I've never seen things like this," Tom said excitedly while clutching the rail. "Fed the stingrays in Cayman. And seen eagle rays all over Belize and the Keys ... but wow! These things are awesome."

  He had it exactly right. "Awesome" was the only way to put itnot scary. Nothing about them inspired fright. They inspired awe ... sheer awe. Then, suddenly, the wing flaps quickened andswoosh! They vanished into the blue.

  "Geezuz!" Paul chuckled
. "Saw that? Those things can turn it on, hunh?"

  Then we saw why. "There he is, gentlemen!" Pelayo said from the bow while pointing. "There's big boy ... that's why those mantas scrammed." The guys on the rig were pointing again, cupping their mouths and yelling.

  We looked up. "YEAH, we see him!" Paul shouted and we all waved.

  He was a huge shark, making a slow pass under the boat. Every detail visible through the calm, crystalline water, which was 650 feet deep here. Three miles away it dropped to 3,000 feet. So big ones popped up all the time. Even oceanic whitetips-bona fide oceanic whitetips, the ones who rip into shipwreck survivors and Cuban rafters, the kind that attacked Cousteau on his first underwater film expedition, the kind my Baton Rouge chum, Clay Coleman, ran into while snorkeling out here.

  Not often you can snorkel in 1,000-foot depths. But Clay was out here, nailing mangroves and cobia. "I took a deep breath," he says. "Went down to about twenty feet, leveled out and there he was! Staring me in the face! Man, his pectoral fins stretched six feet from tip to tip-I swear ... looked like wings. He was only about ten feet away when I saw him, coming head on. I freaked. Now what? I thought. The big sucker kept coming ... comingfinally at five feet he turned. I was getting ready to jab him but he turned away. Then he turned back, slowly. I started finning backwards-keeping an eye on him. My gun ready. I finally bumped the boat with my head-ouch! I clambered aboard raving and stuttering and we decided to try another rig."

  But this wasn't a white-tip. This was another great hammerhead. No mistaking these ugly suckers. He came up and circled us once, his top fin slicing over the swells, so tall it actually bent over at the top. His hideous head, spanning almost four feet across, just ten feet away from us. He just cruised by, his gray body almost as long as the boat, wider than the console. He seemed to be warning us. Or daring us-so much for our former enthusiasm.

  "There can be no covenant between lions and men," wrote Homer in the Iliad. Sounds like an ancient version of "you can't fool mother nature." And this shark seemed to say that the same applied for sharks. "This is my realm," he glowered. "My 'hood. No trespassing. Violators will be chomped."

  Homer was right, of course. The Born Free cubs grew up to kill men. The real life Grizzly Adams was killed and partly devoured by his lovable pet. And though they keep trying for that covenant with sharks on TV, you'll notice the men usually stay in cages.

  "Well!" Paul said as the shark faded into the glare. "At least here we can SEE 'em right? They won't surprise us here."

  "Yeah, boy," Pelayo snorted. "We'll see them charge from a hundred feet away. We'll have plenty of time to crap our disco pants and have a freaking heart attack before they hit us."

  "Could be worse," Paul chuckled. "Could be killer whales." He had a point. A local charter captain captured a pod of them on video, rolling, blowing merrily on the surface not five miles from this rig. Now that might make for an interesting undersea confrontation. But what dated and reactionary nomenclature: "killer" whale. Why it's just Willie, the lovable Orca. Just a big dolphin, really.

  Yet I remember back in pre-PC days a story in Outdoor Life about some guy getting chased over the ice floes by one. The thing would ram them, trying to topple him into the water. I believe it. Makes perfect sense. That's how they snatch seals. Watch in those Time-Life videos. Why wouldn't they grab a human?

  Tom was mum. No response. What a shame. He'd been pumped seconds before. Not that we were exactly itching to get in the water. I sure as hell wasn't. Then we heard a splash behind us.

  The guys on the rig just threw something. We turned around and the shark was heading for it. Swoosh!-it bolted towards the splash and we saw a great swirl.

  Another splash. Another swirl. We looked up. The rig-workers were throwing snapper carcasses. "Wonderful!" Paul yelled. "They're feeding the goddamned shark!"

  "Hey, thanks!" Pelayo screamed. "Thanks a lot!" He shook his head and waved his arm at the rig workers, one was coming down the steel stairway. He leaned on the stairway smiling. He seemed friendly.

  "We'll be sandblasting in a minute," he said. "You boys might wanna dive another rig."

  "Yeah, sure!" Tom blurted. "Great idea! No problem! None at all! We were just leaving!"

  "Yeah, all right." Pelayo smiled and nodded. "Get the hook, On-the-Ball. The guy's right. That silica gets all over the boat when they do that. Once we went down-remember that?" Pelayo turned to me. "When we surfaced that crap was all over the boat, covering the floor, everything. A pain. Let's go." Pelayo leaned on the throttle and we roared off. The next rig was a halfmile away.

  The water was equally gorgeous here. But only barracuda-big ones-and mangroves finned under the boat. "Let's get down there before we see something scary." Paul said while jerking up his tank. Look! That another shark? Or a cobia?"

  "Cobia," Pelayo blurted.

  "Sure about that, hunh?" Tom croaked.

  "It's a cobia, Tom." I said. "Hey ... and there's another. TWO!"

  "And I'm getting them," Paul snapped. He bit into his regulator and backflipped off the bow. Pelayo was next to him, spitting into his mask. He jerked it on, looked at his gauge, and plunged backwards.

  I went next ... splishhh! The water always feels a little cool when you first hit. The sun had been scorching my body for almost two hours. But the shock lasted mere seconds ... What a delight to immediately look around and see everything-except the cobia ... where'd they go?

  There's the 'cuda, three of them, inside the rig glaring at me and almost motionless. Damn those things are ugly. Yet they also look calm and pensive, never in a rush-until you stick one. And I was in no mood for that. Everything's bright and shimmering down here today, from the boat's propeller to the amberjacks blazing past to the bubble-lines from Pelayo and Paul, already well below, their guns pointed to the fore, their angel-flights billowed aft. Their flapping collars were visible even from here. I guess they scared the cobia off. These fish don't see a get-up like that every day. In this clear water the fish see everything too. No murk to block the sun today. No gloom for this dive. My mood was shimmering too.

  Splishh! and here comes Tom, tumbling off the bow in a cloud of silver bubbles. He doesn't even wait for me, doesn't even look around. He's heading down, cocking his bands. The old boy's taking to this sport with the zeal of a convert. You'd think he'd been at this for years-instead of a day. Always happens that way. People either take to this sport immediately or bail out immediately. He was already a hunter, and a diver. So it really wasn't much of a conversion. Anyway, there was no apprehension for Tom on this dive.

  What a difference the visibility makes. Ten minutes ago we'd watched a fourteen-foot hammerhead at pissing distance. With heavy murk around, I dare say we'd have suited up more slowly for this dive, might have bullshitted longer, might have stalled further by grabbing a bite or a beer-or even two. No need for that today.

  The panorama was glorious, the entire structure in all its sprawling, coral-encrusted, fish-surrounded glory. Everything blue and silver and shimmering. The huge legs stretching into the deep-blue void below. Two bubble lines way down there already. Pelayo and On-the-Ball were already prowling the depths, closing on the big AJ's no doubt. They still think they can beat guys like Gerry and Terry and Stan. Ten years have taught them nothing.

  Tom's on his way, too. I'm savoring the scenery up here for a minute. No current to fight this time. No "icy-clutch" in the gut while descending. Hey, it's nice to relax on a dive, too.

  I always scan the perimeter of the rig first, looking for any big, big shape or shadow, any that stands out, that dwarfs the others. Cobia like it up here, but damned if I can find those two. Only those lazy 'cudas stand out. Mangroves are everywhere. Schools of them fin near the beams. Big jacks, their flanks streaked by sun-lines, flutter around them. They're faster than the snapper, always in a hurry it seems. Bolting this way, now turning, now off in another direction. Now back. They suffer from a piscine version of attention deficit disorder.


  I started drifting down and caught up with Tom who'd stopped at around 80 feet. Suddenly he was pointing behind me, jerking his head, pointing with the gun now, but his finger wasn't on the trigger. He looked excited.

  Suddenly we were enveloped in a shadow. But Tom still wasn't fleeing, or preparing to shoot. I turned around.

  "Holy shit!" I said to myself. The mantas were back-or maybe it was another school. Yes, a school. Four of them. Incredible. We'd never seen them underwater before. These things were huge, looked wider than my garage. They flapped lazily just outside the rig, slightly above us, showing their white bellies splotched in black with the long gill slits. Long thin tails poked out behind them, like anterior antennae.

  They were in no hurry. Their monstrous wings flapped lazily, like giant silver bats on slow motion-actually they looked more like flying saucers from this angle. These twin-horned devilfish things looked pretty weird against a reef or sand backdrop. But next to the rig's surreal structure it's a scene from Star Wars. If mantas didn't exist, George Lucas would have to invent them. They're a dead ringer for those half mechanical-half natural creatures he dreams up. Damn, what a sight. I doubt that Timothy Leary or Ken Kesey ever saw anything like this.

  And again, we must be slipping. Because I wasn't tempted to shoot. But we definitely wanted a closer look and started finning over, Tom ahead of me. He was eager this time.

  I followed him to the edge of the rig and grabbed a beam. He kept going towards the big flapping beasts. Good God, I thought. The boy is in a trance. Now I could see three remoras clinging to the belly of the closest one. Another manta had a chunk of his wing missing-a rounded chunk, suspiciously similar to the contours of a shark's mouth.

  The mantas were probably fifty feet away now, and showed no alarm. Yet that hammerhead had sent the others zooming off. He was a natural predator. Us they couldn't figure out. They're not accustomed to predators in disco suits. Angel-flights and flowered, flapping collars don't register in the manta brain as belonging on anything that'll rip a chunk out of them.