One Atmosphere: Monkey Dolphin Scubahero

By John Triggerfish

My name's John Triggerfish and I'm a scuba diving legend. Jacques Cousteau has nothing on me. He might have been the pioneer of underwater exploration but I'm the sub aqua king; and what I don't know about diving and adventure isn't worth knowing. I've come a long way in a big way. Especially in a few Thai bar girls; but that was yesteryear and this is now. I'm currently at the top of my game with hundreds of diving hours under my weight belt and this time it's as close to a true tale as you can get, nearly. There's a monkey involved in this story. Everybody loves a cheeky monkey. There's sharks too. Everybody loathes sharks because sharks are sharp toothed evil motherfuckers that cause unnecessary chunky chum filled limb losing watery death. There's a dolphin. There's a beautiful dolphin straight out of a fairytale, because every good book has to have a dolphin in it. This is a story about returning from Mexico in one piece and making friends. Yeah. Real friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9780244651381

Book preview

One Atmosphere: Monkey Dolphin Scubahero

ONE ATMOSPHERE

A monkey

A dolphin

A scubahero

©2017

All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

This is my opinion, and my opinion only, and in no way is this novel intended to disparage the PADI organisation. This is a work of fiction. God's truth.

The right of John Triggerfish to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978-0-244-65138-1

INTRODUCTION.

My name's John Triggerfish and I'm a scuba diving legend.

Jacques Cousteau has nothing on me. He might have been the pioneer of underwater exploration but I'm the sub aqua king; and what I don't know about diving and adventure isn't worth knowing.

I'm 43 years old and at the pinnacle of my scubahero powers. See, I'm that good I just invented a new word:

Scubahero.

That's me.

I've come a long way in a big way.

Especially in a few Thai bar girls; but that was yesteryear and this is now.

I'm currently at the top of my game with hundreds of diving hours under my weight belt and this time it's as close to a true tale as you can get, nearly.

There's a monkey involved in this story. Everybody loves a cheeky monkey.

There's sharks too.

Everybody loathes sharks because sharks are sharp toothed evil motherfuckers that cause unnecessary chunky chum filled limb losing watery death.

There's a dolphin.

There's a beautiful dolphin straight out of a fairytale, because every good book has to have a dolphin in it.

This is a story about returning from Mexico in one piece and making friends.

Yeah. Real friends.

For once life was peachy.

Enjoy the ride.

I nearly did.

PROLOGUE.

DIVE MAGAZINE RESEARCH ARTICLE

South coast, England, Spring 2012

The water was calm, yet to become choppy, with a five knot wind blowing from the south-west; strengthening due to a low out in the western reaches of the English channel.

White nimbus clouds dotted the morning sky like balls of misshapen cotton wool, bowling slowly into the horizon.

The sea surface was grey-blue for the time of year, and the sea bed was visible six metres below, a turquoise paradox of sandy sea beds perforated with dark green patches of sea grass.

I checked my kit and went through the final checks.

There were no bananas in my mouthpiece, nor had my diving knife been replaced with a toy plastic one.

For once in my life I thought it was a remarkable privilege to be here as we back-rolled over the freeboard into the ocean, due south of the small town of Portland in Dorset, England. To my left, airborne in perfect dynamic synchronisation was James Ludrup, the chief of the UK Seahorse Protection Society, a legend among conservationists, humanist award winner and eminent university professor. If you wanted to book him for an after dinner speech you would need a cheque with three zeros on the end of it. What James didn't know about UK diving conservation wasn't worth knowing.

In a mesh kit bag I had packed a variety of scientific equipment that we were going to use to plot and record seahorse populations around a particular stretch of sea grass where both types of the endangered UK species had been discovered in abundance.

Also alongside me as we sailed backwards through the air perfectly (according to the PADI seaboard entry roll speciality I was responsible for registering and documenting) was photographer Karen Lampeter, a multi award winning eco-journalist from Dive magazine. With her were an impressive array of cameras for the photo shoot and documentation of the dive. Karen had also written extensively on the seahorse population distribution around the Portland and Lyme Bay area, and our dive was forming part of her thesis towards a Ph.D under the tutelage of James Ludrup.

In the two years since completing my Instructor Development Course in the Yucatan my diving career had come a long way. It was early April and I had just returned from the Antarctic working as part of the British  Antarctic Expedition measuring the krill population in the most extreme winter on Earth. I had suffered temperatures on the surface of minus fifty, had nearly been killed by a disintegrating iceberg shelf, and once was held captive in the containers we called home for six days due to a lingering female polar bear and her cubs. While there I had received a call from a friend who'd heard about my dive leading qualities, remembered once in a bar in Mexico that I liked seahorses, and thus invited me back to Blighty to be part of an important research and conservation team. There wasn't much money in it apart from expenses and a few nights in the Travelodge, but he'd pay for the flight home and make sure I get my name in Dive magazine, thus furthering my spectacular rise up the competitive ladder of the diving world. In fact it was safe to say that I nearly had my digits on the rung of ''Legendary''.

Karen inverted her thumb and we all slipped beneath the waves. The current was immense, even on the slack tide and the tip of Portland was well noted for having some of the most ferocious drifts known to the UK, if not the world. My body rocked from side to side as the water took me a metre in one direction then two metres in the other. I had a feeling we needed to get to the bottom quickly to try and stabilise.

The sandy bottom had a few pinnacles of rock protruding from the bed that we could grab and then examine the sea grass that rose out of the sand to the west like a thick forest. The metre length grasses were swaying in the current and although the visibility was excellent for the time of year, I wondered if it was possible to achieve a decent level of buoyancy to even see any elusive sea horses let alone measure anything with the plethora of biological field measuring equipment that I had in my mesh bag. However, my buddy for the dive, Karen, seemed to be happy drifting over the sea grass taking shots and getting some video close ups. Her buoyancy control was immense.

I suddenly heard some tank banging and looked to the east. James was waving me over. Next to him in an inverted position holding onto a rocky protrusion was the fourth diver in our group, the chairman of the UK Hippocampus Protection Society; a man called Alan Snodgrass, initially from Glasgow in his younger years, having made over four thousand dives in and around the Western Isles. He'd moved south after having met his wife and now lived in Portland and dived daily in the summer months. He was currently writing his second Ph.D on the short nosed seahorse and its population distribution, and had been responsible for getting government legislation for the protection of the two native sea horse species.

I found it hard to swim over as the power of the current thrust me southwards but it was a good job that I was in the shape of my life. I hadn't had any beer for over a year and cigarettes and weed were a thing of the past. I had a six pack that an eighteen year old gym freak would die for and leg muscles made of iron from the constant finning that extreme diving brought. Still I had to push hard though, and barely made it to the rock. I grasped at a small hole with my gloved finger as my body was pulled sidewards one way then violently the other. James was pointing to a brown blade of sea grass, part of a clump with long narrow leaves, rounded at the top. Alan was reaching for his net. I managed to grab Karen as she came past in the current and steady her as she focused in on what James had seen. It was a remarkable sight. Two short nose seahorses were clinging onto the apex tip of the sea grass swaying in the current, not feeding off the fast flowing plankton but involved in a rarely observed phenomena known as the ''courtship dance''. Karen managed to latch on to the rock, giving me the opportunity to release my camera and housing from its straps on my BCD.

I took a white balance against the back of the plastic recording slate and set it to high definition. I zoomed in and held the seahorses in centre frame. This ritual could last up to eight hours and culminated in the female inserting her oviposter into the male's brood pouch and depositing thousands of her eggs. The water around the two seahorses took on a milky hue. Karen closed in to get some close ups, probably for the front cover, probably also for the wildlife photographer of the year award too. We were at six metres and the vis was great. There was no need for any camera flash, and already we'd agreed that camera flash was bad for seahorses as they were aquatic life super sensitive to stress. The female was about to let go and sink away to the sea bed having done her job. There'd been permissions given on this dive to capture and measure any sea horses but this was difficult as we were buffeted about in the current. James suddenly lost his grip and the current forced him backwards. There was no returning for him but Alan nearly had the two pretty mating hippocamps in his net. I looked around for the first time glimpsing the surroundings. There was something buried in the sand between a clump of sea grass covered in brown kelp a metre to my left. It was an old anchor with one of the tips forming a sea arch a few inches above the sea bed. There was something in there.

I flicked my fin and inverted, letting the current take me over. The top of the anchor was big enough to grab as I drifted on past and I reached into my own mesh bag for my highly expensive scientific net trap. Lowering myself gently down, all the while fighting with the current, I peered into the arch. I placed the net around the other side and poked what was in there. Astonishingly I noticed a rapidly fluttering dorsal fin. A large seahorse swum into the net which I hastily covered and closed. There was something odd here though. I looked at Alan and could sense his excitement. He gave me the thumbs up. No need for a safety stop here since we were only at six metres anyway.

It was time to end this dive.

We climbed up the dive ladder onto the fifty foot long charter boat. On board we had a tank full of the local seawater into which we could place any item of scientific interest and thus study and document it. Alan had managed to net both the short nose seahorses which was a remarkable feat in itself and had only been done around these shores a few times. That alone would have snared the lead article and front cover itself for Dive magazine.

We stood on the deck exhausted in all the weight of the dry-suit equipment. Two young students called Mason and Kim acted as the surface support staff, all standing around the four feet square glass scientific tank. I gently emptied the contents of my soft nylon net into the water. Everyone was standing around with mouths agape, staring intently in wonder.

Finning between some rocks placed on the bed of the tank in between a few sea grasses was a seahorse with a rather different anatomy. It was at least four centimetres taller than the native short nose. It was a different colour, with an orange hue. There was a larger prehensile tail with a white band just below the neck and it had a longer snout. Alan walked up to me and tapped me on the back as we peered at the newcomer.

'Jesus Christ, John,' he muttered with gravity and aplomb, 'I do believe you've just found a new species of seahorse. This is the rarest thing I've come across in my entire life.'

I welled up with pride and accomplishment. Immediately I felt my hand solidly cling to the elevated rungs of the sub aqua world. I may be a long way off Cousteau but boy was I catching up quickly. I took a deep breath and expanded my chest in front of the group, legs slightly splayed, chin elevated towards the heaven's of the Dorset coast.

'This is a new species, without a shadow of a doubt,' James murmured, taking a picture on his Nikon DSLR through the clear glass walls of the containment unit. 'We should name it. This is a completely new discovery.'

I pursed my lips with pride and nodded to my eminent friends.

'The Triggerfish seahorse?' I modestly suggested, achieving consenting nods from all the distinguished scientists at the pinnacle of their careers.

Karen approached, took my cold cheeks in both her hands  and stuck her lips on me.

Remarkable.

No one seemed embarrassed by her gesture.

There was even the feeling of tongue possibilities.

Then everybody clapped.

Her lips were soft and her body folded into my embrace, even in her drysuit.

She grabbed me by the balls and winked.

I smiled and thought about making a porno video below decks with various uses for the champagne bottle I was about to crack in celebration.

Strangely though she then proceeded to smack me in the face really hard with the palm of her hand.

She pushed me over the guard rail.

This must be some kind of photographer's mating ritual I surmised as I hit the choppy waves on the