12-Oct-2012, Japanese Wreck, Aas, Amed, Bali
This site is about as far south as you go in the Amed area, on the east coast of Bali. We’re staying at the Good Karma Bungalows in Selang, also in the south part of the Amed area, about 2km north of Aas. There are no taxis here nor any form of public transportation other than something called a Bemo (basically a minivan) that runs once at around 8AM. So, to get to this Japanese Wreck snorkel site we’d read about, we rented a motorbike for the day.
That bit alone was an adventure, considering neither of us had ever ridden a motorcycle before (if you don’t count the one time I rode on the back of my grandfather’s motorcycle when I was about 10). Since I at least ride bikes somewhat regularly, and since I typically drive (between the two of us), I drove the scooter. It’s not as easy as it looks. It takes very fine control to get the throttle just right. If you don’t get it right, you can (theoretically) end up getting a sudden burst of speed and (potentially) go lurching up a bumpy driveway and (allegedly) almost scrape your partner’s foot along a stone wall because not only don’t you have that fine control over your speed that you’re used to, but the faster you go, the less sensitive the steering gets, so it’s hard to accelerate and simultaneously turn away from a (hypothetically) fast on-rushing wall.
I also hate having the throttle be in the same place as my steering. Anyway, it wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t exactly a smooth ride, but we got there (with no actual crashes and only minor close calls), and the motorbike was the only way to do it. Ultimately, it wasn’t a bad dead. It cost us $5 for the whole day, and we also used it after snorkeling to scout for our next hotel farther north in town, so we did at least take good advantage of it.
Anyway, when we got in the water at the wreck site, it wasn’t immediately clear where the wreck was. None of it stuck out of the water, and there wasn’t a flag or anything. There were some pretty decent corals, but nothing blow-your-mind by local standards. I finally decided to head to where some snorkel boats were parked, figuring that if that’s where they park when they bring in snorkelers, that’s probably near the boat. Yep. It was.
So… being the first underwater wreck we’d ever seen, it was definitely neat and interesting. It was pretty small, though. We explored around the surface of it, and I even made a couple free dives down to look under a couple things, which was neat.
As a side note, I’ve actually been reading and teaching myself to free dive, and I’ve been getting pretty decent at it. I can now pretty consistently do about 45 seconds without too much trouble. That may not sound like a lot when you’re sitting at your desk, lounging on your couch, or laying on your bed. But when you’re kicking with fins to get down to 5 or 7 meters deep and then stay down (I’m not using weight or anything to help), you have to learn to not just hold your breath, but hold your breath while working out, and also trying to be as slow and relaxed as possible. Forty-five seconds is pretty good for me after just a week of figuring it out.
Anyway, with all that, we had pretty much seen what there was to see after about 15 minutes. We decided to head back out and just enjoy the rest of the corals in the area. I mentioned that they were nothing spectacular by local standards, but… to be fair… local standards around here are pretty damned spectacular compared to almost anywhere else. So, still VERY good shit… just nothing new to us by this point. We didn’t see any new fish.
We did have one incident though, that damned near gave us both a heart attack. We were attacked by a Titan Triggerfish. Reaching up to 30 inches in length (75cm), the Titan Triggerfish is also called the Giant Triggerfish. That’s a HUGE bitch! And it has big teeth, which it uses to eat rocks (technically coral, but you see my point). We’ve seen one pick up and move a huge rock the size of a large watermelon with little to no effort. These fuckers will take CHUNKS out of you if they bite. They could bite off entire fingers without blinking. Also, and here’s where it gets interesting… they get AGGRESSIVELY territorial when they are in nesting mode. The lovely part of that is… you never know when one is going to be in nesting season. I learned later that it’s not like there’s a big season for all of them. If there was, you could just stay the FUCK out of the water for a couple weeks or whatever. But no… they just go whenever they feel like it. Outside that season, they’re perfectly fine. We’d seen plenty swimming around before, and have seen plenty afterward. No other ones have ever had any problems (though, for a few days after the attack, you can bet that we hauled ass anytime one even looked at us funny). We found out later that when they’re not in nesting season, you can go right up to them and take their picture with no problem. They’re funny little fish. In nesting season, though… they’re gigantic, terrifying monsters.
So, we had read about their reputations before we ever got in the water. That’s the main reason we even knew what kind of fish they were. We’d always been keeping on eye on any we saw. The attack, of course, came from the one we DIDN’T see. That’s how it always happens, isn’t it? We were swimming along, blissfully happy, enjoying the sun and the tropical fish and the beautiful corals in the placidly calm water. All of the sudden, Jime does a whole sudden jolt, just like in all the Jaws movies. What the hell? “TRIGGER!! GO!!!” I look in the water, and I shit you not, my sphincter puckered instantly. A very LARGE Titan Trigger was hauling ASS right at me, like a damned missile. There’s no way in hell I had any chance of outrunning/outswimming it, but you can bet I tried!
I knew that the trick with these fuckers was to get out of their territorial “cone”, above their nesting site, that they decide is their private and inviolable space. A dive master later told me that because their space is cone-shaped, you might actually get out of their space faster by diving deep. That makes perfect sense… logically, if you’re already diving. But when you have a finger-chomping, rock-biting missile launching at you at blinding speeds, you don’t think logically, and diving deeper into the water was about the LAST thing I planned on doing (even if I had thought about it then). Maybe that makes perfect sense for scuba divers, but for me snorkeling, that’s a definite no-go.
Trigger fish swim funny. Their main fins are these really long ones on top and bottom, covering roughly the back third of their body. Because of this, they swim with this silly little. .. sashay. They wiggle. When they’re attacking you, though… it’s not so much a cute little wiggle as a high frequency, vibrating death machine. Suffice to say we hauled ass. Jime got ahead, which was good. I stayed on my back and kicked with all my might, keeping my mask in the water as much as I could, to keep my eyes on the fish, and keeping my fins between him and me. Oh, and for the record, calling it a he is not just animal equal male bias as the psychologists would call it. It is actually the males who are the territorial assholes of the Titan Trigger species. In any case… there I was, hauling ass and swimming away with all my might, and this fucker keeps coming at me, again and again, attack after attack. He rockets up at me at top speed, gets close enough for me to kick him (Jime thought I actually did kick him, but I never felt like I actually made contact). I can’t kick fast enough to make me happy… but at least I’m leaving. And then something straight out of a horror movie happens… my fin starts to come off.
I did everything I could to keep it on my foot without actually stopping, but there was nothing for it. A few strokes later and it actually popped off. I had a total flashback to a time when I lost my flip flop as I was running in terror from what I (and my mom) thought was a very close bear back when I was camping with my family when I was about 9 years old. The problem isn’t just that I lost a shoe/fin. The problem is the complete mental vapor lock that happens while you try to decide whether or not you go back and get it or keep moving as fast as you can with one foot. Well, in both cases, I decided that I needed the shoe. With my fin, I figured that if I didn’t get it now, it was lost forever, because I certainly wouldn’t be swimming INTENTIONALLY back into that asshole’s territory. So, I waited until he turned around after his last attack, and as soon as he did, I had about a two second window to reach back, grab the fin, and kick even harder with my other leg. Fortunately, my timing was perfect. I got my fin, and I got the hell away. He came after me about two more times after that. All told, he came at me about 5 or 6 times. He never bit me. He never even hurt my fin. He did, however, scare the ever-loving bejesus out of me, and made me paranoid to be in the water at all for about a week until I finally learned a little bit more about their behavior, and what signs to watch out for.
Honestly, while we may be a LITTLE bit less paranoid about the Titan Triggers now that some time has passed, it’s a good thing Jime was able to get some nice pictures of them earlier, before we knew they had devils living inside them.
I give you now, some of the pictures Jime did manage to get of the Evil Satanfish from Hell (none of which were currently possessed at the time).
(He’s… here… Ray. He’s… LOOKING at me.)
(Here you can see the big fins on top and bottom. You can also see the teeth, which are the size of Chiclets).
(This is a good pic for perspective, compared to a “normal” fish. It’s also ALMOST what it looks like when it’s pointing at you)
(A picture of a Titan Trigger eating coral. It’s also another good pic for perspective compared to other fish)
And finally, I’ll leave you with this… If you do a youtube search on the phrase “Titan Trigger Attack”, you will get MANY results. I wanted to show you what it was like, to the best of my ability, so I watched a few, and picked one that I think best represents my experience. The main difference between this video and my experience as that this fish attacked the camera directly, whereas mine seemed to be going for my feet. I’m guessing that this video is as short as it is because after the first couple hits, he stopped filming and got the hell away. The video is very nice, though, for showing you how fast these fuckers can come at you, and what it looks like when you’re looking right at them when they do. Enjoy…
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