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For whom the eye rolls |
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Part 4: The dives All of the dives were brilliant. We generally each dove from three to five times per day. The buddy pairs worked themselves out over the first several dives and everyone became accustomed to their buddy. I was paired with Mary most of the time. She is a very competent diver and we had some great dives. However, in the spirit of support for her fellow divers, Mary always tries to make dives challenging for her buddy so they have an opportunity to improve their skills. She put me through my paces one night while we were diving on the wreck in strong current. Not that I don't need the practice, but at night while doing a swimthrough on an unfamiliar wreck is not really the place to practise recovering from having your regulator kicked out and mask kicked off. Thanks Mary! You can get better descriptions of these dive sites other places. I thought I would relate a couple of incidents to you about our particular dives. We did see an abundance of rare sea creatures. We saw ghost pipefish, leaf fish, ribbon eels, snake eels, pygmy seahorses, sharks, etc, etc, etc (see the Bali gallery for photographs).To tell the truth, although I am told ghost pipefish are somewhat rare, I actually got tired of seeing them on just about every dive we made here. Now the ghost triggerfish, they are a find and they showed themselves several times on this trip. These next few paragraphs will also be a good time for me to explain the title of this story. After we had accomplished several dives a few of us had stories of titan triggerfish acting somewhat aggressively towards us. But when Ai Lin assured us they weren't in season we all felt better. Now I haven't been diving all that long, but have had the opportunity to see several triggerfish attacks. Mostly they were just charges where the diver turned and kicked at the fish with their fins and the attack was over. This was all about to change. One afternoon, Jase, Shirley, Mary and I were doing a dive on the house reef. I witnessed a triggerfish swim right past Shirley's mask. Of course Shirley does not know fear so she ignored it. On its second pass, Shirley turned and kicked at the fish, which then retreated. It all seemed fairly routine. A few minutes later, I looked to my left and saw a good-sized triggerfish swimming parallel to us. He swam past the whole group at a distance of about five metres, but began to close that distance when he got up near Jase who was leading us. He swam directly for Jase's head and Jase made a defensive move. I think it was defensive. I can only describe it as something John Travolta did in the movie Saturday Night Fever. We'll call it 'the flail' from this point forward (see the intro page for a demonstration). Anyhow, it seemed to work. The triggerfish disappeared and Jase swam rapidly and immediately, with no concern for his own safety, to the other side of Shirley. I was a little confused by this until Jase later explained to me that triggerfish will not attack from the same direction twice. He said although it appeared that he was hiding behind Shirley, he was actually trying to protect the group. What a guy! Huey Bing also reported an encounter with a trigger... or rather, her buddies reported it. Apparently she was chased by a huge triggerfish on the wreck, but while her buddies were sucking down air and flailing off around the corner, she was calmly looking at all the other fish. Eventually she did wonder why everyone else had disappeared! When we were back at the resort we talked about the incidents. There were several guide books available and we looked for information regarding these aggressive fish. Most of the books said these fish were only aggressive during nesting season, but none told us when that was. Many said the attacks were almost always defensive and all a diver need to do was swim away from the fish's territory. That is good information to know. Titan triggerfish have a large eye on each side of their head and sometimes these eyes look in what might be considered odd directions. It makes the fish look a little deranged. One of the reef guides suggested that when the eye rolls around, the triggerfish is agitated. Another good point to keep in mind! The following morning, Jase and I were scheduled to dive on the wreck. We were planning to go deep, ascend to check out the seahorses and finish the dive near the shallow part of the wreck. The dive went exactly according to plan for the first 90 seconds. That was about how long it took as to reach the stern of the wreck where we were to begin our descent. As we approached the stern, a very large (I mean abnormally large) triggerfish started a charge towards Jase. Jase's skill and experience as a diver was apparent. He wasted no time in performing what I now recognized as 'the flail'. Unfortunately, the flail wasn't working and this triggerfish was chasing Jase deeper and deeper. I very bravely tried to get the triggerfish's attention by swimming at a distance and angle I thought would annoy it. It was a difficult manoeuvre for me because I was laughing extremely hard. My moments of comedy would be short lived. The distance between us grew to a point where I could only see Jase's fins thrashing about. When I noticed them drop straight down, I figured the attack was over and I proceeded to swim towards Jase. I was at about 18m and five metres from Jase when I saw this monster of a triggerfish barreling for me with its eyes spinning in circles. I immediately flipped on to my back and started my best impression of the flail while attempting to fin out of his territory. I must have been doing something wrong because this fish just kept coming. This went on for a good three minutes. I figured I must have flailed my way along for at least 100m. How big can this fish's territory be? As quickly as the attack started, it was over. The fish disappeared from sight. I took a moment and caught my breath... flailing is exhausting, you know. I was now at six metres and proceeded back in the direction I last saw Jase. I only got to 10m when the fish attacked again. This time he ran me all the way back up to five metres before he turned back. I was at a loss for what to do. I hadn't seen my dive buddy in four or five minutes and I didn't want to head back towards the trigger although I obviously needed practice doing the flail. I relied on my training, completed a safety stop and surfaced to look for my buddy. My dive lasted nine minutes. I waited on the surface for a while and Jase finally surfaced. It turned out the triggerfish kept chasing him deeper and me higher. We decided to abort the dive since Jase had already been down to 30m and back up. I had a nine-minute dive and Jase had a 17-minute dive. All wasn't lost though. We did learn a couple of pieces of valuable information. First, the clowns who said it is all about territory haven't got a clue and second, the eye is a dead giveaway. When I volunteered to write this story, Mary suggested I call it 'A Tale of Two Triggers'. How English of her [I'm not English! Mary]. It was a good idea but I decided to stick with my heritage. I thought it might be more fitting for me to butcher a quote from an American author and hijack an idea from a reef guide. Always remember, ask not for whom the eye rolls... it rolls for thee. |
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