Pass Time

The pass appeared navigable as we slowed our pace to analyze the conditions. From outside the atoll, we hovered at the mouth, evaluating the width, depth, waves and surface texture. With broad shoulders and a cavernous trough, it seemed to be a spacious gateway into the protected inner lagoon. We pointed our bows inwards. Standing watch on deck, I held my breath and clenched the lifelines as head-high standing chop sloshed against the hulls. Within a hundred meters the turbulence rolled into heaving waves fringed by swirling eddies along the banks. A torrent of water ripped beneath the bridge deck as we motored against the ebbing current, demonstrating the resolute nature of this ancient osmotic system.

With traction from the head current, we traversed the pass, turned to starboard, and found a feasible sandy patch within a seabed of bombies. Upon dropping the hook and floating the chain, we gathered our gear to dive the pass. Though it was late in the day, our enthusiasm seemed to expand time and extend the countdown to dusk. Masks, fins, weight belts and tanks were assembled, wetsuits were adorned— but then we spotted the incoming squall. A grey veil skirted the northwest horizon, closing the curtain on our window of time and turning the tide of our trajectory.

That night, after the storm passed, the moon’s glow penetrated the translucent water so we could count the coral heads that studded the seafloor like stars. It was so calm, so still, so silent, I swear the universe was put on pause.

So, I laid my head to rest that night trusting someone or something would eventually hit “play.”

As the sun rose, I was awoken by a giddy Miss Mary Grace making friends with the unicorn fish that had taken residence in the shadow of the boat. They circled the stern, meeting her face-to-face through the liquid glass. Excited to see more, we slid our paddle boards onto the slippery surface and skated upon water as smooth as ice. The wind was barely a soft whisper, eliciting the slightest of flutters from palm fronds fencing the shoreline. And the sky was so lucid, it could barely contain a cloud. Beneath us, life reflected reason as parrot fish tended to their crystal coral gardens and blacktip reef sharks prowled their territory.

Our charts showed high tide at 11:23 that morning, so we had planned to dive the pass just before to catch the incoming current at flood slack. This way, theoretically, we could drop outside the pass and gently drift into the lagoon. However, upon our return from paddle boarding at 0700, the conditions looked favorable, especially compared to the previous evening’s extreme. So, we donned our wetsuits and assembled our gear and loaded into the tender.

As we entered the pass, Frank switched the throttle into neutral to check the tide direction, which was barely incoming, so we decided to go with the flow. We dropped just outside the mouth of the pass, into an underwater ecosystem teaming with vibrant life. Swarms of blacktip and grey sharks cruised the ledge, taking inventory of pelagic life upwelling from navy blue depths. Schools of trevally and tuna swam along the oscillating currents, feeding on the rich waters at the threshold of this atoll.

We drifted inwards, over fields of coral colonies with iridescent damsels and neon flashers peeking out from their calcium carbonate shelters. Groupers would slowly turn to look you straight in the eye, while pairs of butterfly fish fluttered along indifferently. Parrotfish continued their grazing and every now and then a solitary white tip shark would slide by to say “hi.”

We were mesmerized, entranced, completely hypnotized by the harmony of life that had enveloped us into its rhythmic cycles.

Then, all of a sudden, we stopped. Our legs kept kicking and our fins kept flapping, but we remained stationary, suspended in fixed position. We all looked at each other, slightly confused, and then it clicked. The tide just turned. So, with half our tanks still half full, we went with the flow. And back out we went.

We banked to the southern edge and soared over an entirely different seascape. We drifted and, if I didn’t have a regulator in my mouth, I would have drooled. For, the water clarity alone was stunning. As the sandy southern side started to funnel us closer to the surface, I thought our dive was just about done when we sailed over a berm that dumped us right onto the ledge.

Once again, the seafoam greens faded to aqua marines that gave way into electric blues that darkened into deep midnight hues. Shiny barracuda and dogtooth tuna appeared and disappeared like mirages. Sharks circled concentrically— many sidled up to the verge of my arm’s reach, some skirted the extents of my visual periphery, though I surmise even more remained unseen. All the while, silhouettes of stoutly Napoleon wrasse lumbered along the ledge, making a lasting impression. I kept an eye on my depth gauge, which indicated a swift descent and steadily decreasing PSI.

Eye contact and corresponding hand signals from my dive buddies confirmed. It was time to ascend. I took one last encompassing scan at the aquatic spectacle surrounding me, breathing in the salty beauty as if I had gills, and slowly kicked my way to 15 feet below the surface. There, for three minutes of decompression, I realized I had just taken in enough information for a lifetime of assimilation.

Over a five day window of hospitable weather for that particular anchorage angle, we attempted to recreate that same dive seven more times. We took notes and made charts and ran equations to determine the exact opportune moment to catch ebbing slack in and flooding slack out. We adjusted our clocks to the local tide tables, calibrated according to observable conditions, trying valiantly to align our method with the organic osmotic process of this ecosystem for a particular outcome, but to no avail.

Alas, each dive provided experiences that blew our expectations out of the water. We caught currents so swift it felt like we were flying over coral fields and, one time, we were swept along the less explored outer ledge instead of the pass itself. We encountered trains of feeding manta rays and walls of spawning crescent-tailed big eyes and silver sharks that dwarfed the common blacktip. Sometimes, we hovered for half a tank over a single coral colony, bedazzled by its shimmering intricacies and inhabitants. And, other times, we surveyed the aqueous terrain, discovering new features like barnacled sunken FADS (fish attracting device) and grey shark grottos.

After five days of immersion, the pass and its intrinsic cycles almost felt familiar. Rather than relying on printed tide tables, we read the real-time information displayed by our surrounding environment. And, despite the likeness to a foreign language, for we weren’t ever formally taught to decipher the messages of mother nature, the intelligence required for interpretation seemed to rise to the occasion of necessity from the depths of our evolutionary memory.

On our last day anchored near the pass, I woke up to the full moon setting on the western horizon as the sun rose in the east. The air was still and the water was smooth as an oil slick. One hundred meters off the beam, the soft tips of manta ray wings sliced the buttery surface as they fed on phytoplankton. Feeling a pull towards the pass, I suited up for a swim and leisurely free dive.

Despite the activated celestial bodies in the sky, life underwater was placid. I even swam over a white tip shark nestled on the seabed for a nap. In the pass itself, the same school of crescent-tailed big eye carpeted the floor, but few sharks entertained the buffet. Again, the universe seemed like it had been put “on pause.”

During my swim back to the boat, I was surprised to encounter a slight head-current, which indicated an ebbing tide. When, by our calculations, it should have been flood. I steadied my pace to conserve energy and slowly made my way back to the boat. At one point, a curious lemon shark rode the trailing edge of my dive fins, then descended to escort me safely home. I took note of his toothy grin, double dorsal, and sickle-shaped pectoral fins as he piloted the precise course of my intent.

“The current seems outgoing,” I reported upon my return, which was met by quizzical looks and a bit of disbelief. The tide shouldn’t have ebbed until later that afternoon.

But sometimes the true conditions are controlled by forces larger than our apparent scope of perception.

The ebbing current was confirmed as we motored out of the pass for a midday fishing mission. Water spilled forth from the lagoon like a cup overfloweth. We speculated if it was the magnitude of the full moon, causing the lagoon to swell with more water than usual and thus extending the length of the tides. Or, perhaps the approaching weather system from the south had pushed surging seas in our direction. While the former was a likely contributing factor, the latter was proven as we entered back into the atoll and approached the southeast corner of the lagoon.

Sheltered from the predicted SSE winds by a coconut grove and SSW swell by a thin strip of low-lying land, this pocket of the atoll was the safest place to weather the storm. Already, the ivory white sand was churned up, clouding the water visibility as organic debris cluttered the surface. Just outside the atoll, on the outer edges of the reef, roaring waves pounded onshore, breaking the osmotic barrier with a flood of displaced water.

That night, we watched the swollen moon rise over a strip of land smothered in water. I tried to imagine the conditions of the pass as it continued to discharge the insurgent swell back to open ocean. The bulk of the storm system hadn’t even arrived yet. So I hypothesized an exceptionally long and strong ebbing tide. But that was just a guess, because who knows what other unknown, unforeseen, unexpected influences were at play. Try as we may, it all seems to be theory until life comes along a proves us right or wrong— which leads me to rely on the sophisticated evolutionary process of life itself.

Nature may not tick to the same rhythm as our watches or tide tables or set schedules, but it does operate like clockwork to create life as we know it. It’s a perfectly calibrated system, aeons in the making. It’s comprehensive and regenerative. It’s self-regulating and self-sustaining. Sometimes it’s clear and sometimes it’s chaotic. It can be beautiful and it can be brutal, but each phase is a necessary part of the whole. And, as nature has evolved over time, I hypothesize life as we know it will continue to change too. So, I tend to trust the process and apply the age-old approach of going with the flow, because it’s produced quite the spectacle of life so far.

pas·time | ˈpasˌtīm |

Definition

: that which serves to make the time pass agreeably. (Etymonline)