PREMONITION

1978 October 12^th, Thursday found me on the island of Minorca, one of the Balearic group, a hundred miles off the coast of mainland Spain and surrounded by the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean. I am not a believer in omens but for the first time ever my wife, who had seen me off on many trips abroad, told me to be careful. She had a bad feeling about this trip and did not really want me to go. My team consists of three divers, Mick Veal, Don Battrick and myself, all members of the Sussex Club who had been invited to participate in an international competition called the Villa Carlos Cup, in which a British team was also competing, so it would be a real feather in our caps if we could beat them.

We had been on the island since Monday and had already dived three times out of the competition zone to get experience of the Med. It is so different from fishing on the Sussex coast, no kelp, few fish and crystal clear warm water with visibility sometimes over one hundred-foot. This day we were at a beautiful bay called Cala Morel were a small harbour was surrounded by clean white holiday homes with red roofs and neat well-laid out gardens. To the right round the first towering headland, sheer grey cliffs plunged straight into the water meeting the sand fifty-foot below the surface before getting slowly deeper as it went out to sea. Large boulders, some as big as houses, had fallen off the cliff face during the storms of many years and were now scattered around the bottom in jumbled heaps. This was perfect Grouper country. I should explain, the Grouper is one of the most prized fish in the Med and is not only hard to catch but is also very strong when caught, weighing up to 80lbs, it makes a worthy adversary.

I must explain the dangers of Grouper fishing in the Med at this stage. As I have already mentioned, the Grouper is a very powerful fish, a twenty pounder can pull a diver several yards whilst getting back to it’s lair. Here it will find a suitable crack and jam itself in by opening its large bony gill plates to lock itself solid in the hole. This usually happens in at least fifty to seventy foot of water and it can take a great deal of time and countless dives to dislodge the fish and bring it back to the surface.

The deeper the Breathold Diver goes the more his lungs become compressed, this makes it easier for the lungs to extract oxygen from the air. As he returns to the surface the process is reversed and oxygen becomes harder for the body to find. This happens as the large leg muscles are being used to push the diver back to the surface and oxygen can run out. The result is Shallow Water Blackout with the diver sinking back to the bottom and possible death in about four minutes. The harder you work on the bottom the more oxygen you expend and the greater the chance of trouble.

Mike Bradshaw, a member of our Club but in the British team for the coming competition and Don Battrick, a very fit twenty eight year old with very little experience in the Med, decided to pair up to fish this area.

Mick Veal and I decided to fish the left-hand area where the cliffs were less steep and the bay swept round in a magnificent curve for about two miles. We changed into our gear, this involved slipping on 3mm soft neoprene wet suits specially made to fit us like gloves. At home, in the English Channel, we usually wore 5mm suits but the warm water here allowed us the luxury of 3mm, which in turn meant we could reduce our weight belts, worn to compensate for the suits buoyancy, down from twenty five pounds to fifteen. Our plastic fins, three foot long with rubber foot sections, allowed us to dive to depths of one hundred and ten foot without too much effort. Our facemasks had good all round vision and very low internal volume. This made it easier to blow air into them to relieve the pressure that increases with depth. By the time we had finished changing the temperature had reached ninety degrees and it was a real pleasure to drop into the cool clear blue water.

Mick and I soon became separated; this can occur quite easily despite of our bright orange surface marker buoys. After swimming for a while I spotted a large Grouper of about forty pounds lying in a sandy gully some way below me. Taking three deep breaths I up ended and gave a few gentle kicks of my fins to send me gliding noiselessly down towards him. As I got within fifteen foot of him he turned and gracefully slipped under a large under hang to disappear effortlessly between some boulders.

Returning to the surface to get my torch I lay quietly for five minutes. This not only calmed me down but an inquisitive Grouper will sometimes come to the front of the cave to see where you area. On returning to the bottom he was not in the entrance so I slid quietly between two boulders and shone my torch into the darkness beyond. My beam revealed the interior to be two foot high and twenty-foot deep with several medium sized boulders jammed between the floor and roof. It took me a minute to realize that one of the boulders, although being the same colour and looking just like all the others, had an eye that was looking at me. It was the biggest Grouper I had ever seen. Relying on its camouflage the fish lay perfectly still enabling me to take aim just behind the eye. The spear struck home right where I had aimed but bounced off as if it had hit a lump of concrete. The Grouper exploded into life, smashing straight into me with a noise like thunder and knocking my facemask off as it bolted into deeper water. My visibility was instantly reduced to a blur but luckily I was able to grab hold of my buoy line and find my way back to the surface. Here I found my facemask had been knocked down round my neck to hang by its strap. Boy these fish are tough. Not stirred but well shaken would be a good description of how I felt.

A few minutes floating on the surface checking my spear was straight and making sure my facemask had not been damaged gave me time to get my composure back. About twenty minutes later and four hundred yards further round the bay I spotted a shoal of Corb (these are beautifully coloured fish with a grey sheen and yellow fins) in the shadow of an overhang. They were watching me very carefully, so I carried on swimming pretending not to have seen them until I was out of their sight then diving to the bottom fifty foot below I swam slowly hugging the contours of the sea bed until I could peer over the top of the ledge. Not a sign! These Mediterranean fish are something else! Sweeping my torch around the hole at the back of the ledge I found it completely smooth without a Corb in sight. This I could not believe.

On my second dive to the hole I could hear the fish clicking (as Corb do) and realized the only place they could be was in an inaccessible depression just above my head in the roof. By lying on my back I could feel the softness of their bodies with my fingertips. Twisting slightly to one side my face came within two inches of a very large moray eel that had slid out from some unseen crack to see what was going on. The inch long teeth in the gaping mouth so close to my face made me recoil backwards, cracking my head on the side of the hole in my haste to get away. Morays can grow up to eight foot in length with a mouth full of needle sharp teeth angling towards the back, so once they bite they cannot let go. One once bit a diving friend of mine on the hand, as he tried to retrieve a fish stuck in a crack. Their skin is so loose it rotates round the body if you try to cut it, so he did the only thing he could think of to relieve the pain, took his snorkel out and crushed its head in his teeth. I decided to leave the Corb with their own personal guardian to live their lives in peace. This was not my day.

A mile further on I found another Grouper in shallower water, this time about thirty feet. It had obviously been out on the sand as its colour was white with the eye showing as black. It weighed about twenty-five pounds and was lying near the bottom on its side watching me carefully. I tried a different approach this time. After taking several deep breaths, instead of holding it all in as usual, I let half of it out. This made me less buoyant and able to sink quietly straight down towards the fish with my gun held in front of me. The Grouper was very alert as I glided closer and was at any moment going to bolt into its hole close by. After what seemed an eternity, I thought I was near enough and fired. The spear shot out and stopped one inch from the Grouper pulled up short by the fifteen foot of line. The clarity of the water had deceived me into thinking the fish was closer. In the blink of an eye it darted into it’s hole making a loud bang with its tail. A few more dives revealed the hole went in a long way and was much too tight for me to get into. The Grouper sat at the back in full view picked out clearly in my torch beam. The fish knew full well that it was out of my range and safe.

I had swum two miles from where we had started and as we had arranged to meet at six thirty, started the long swim back with some urgency, arriving an hour later. Mick and Mike were getting changed and looked despondent and tired having caught no fish. Seeing no sign of Don I asked where he was. Mike said they had been separated about four hours earlier. He had last seen him diving about four hundred yards out about a mile round the headland. Neither of them seemed too concerned as Don enjoyed his diving and was often late back but I had what I can only describe as an uneasy premonition that something was wrong. The others tried to assure me he would be back soon but I could not shake off the feeling that he was in trouble..

Leaving my wet suit on I ran, walked and scrambled up the steep cliff path to the right, which got higher and higher until it leveled out giving me a panoramic view across the bay some three hundred foot below me. I spotted Dons bright orange buoy almost immediately standing out against the blue water some way out from the cliff face. Timing four minutes on my watch (which seemed an eternity) to make sure he had not just dived on my arrival I then leant over the cliff as far as possible to see if he was resting on the beach below. I considered for a moment diving off the cliff top but quickly scrapped the idea. There was no way I could have survived the drop. Despite my growing feeling of alarm I ran back, hoping he had swum to get help after leaving his buoy marking up something of interest on the seabed.

The other two were looking increasingly worried as I ran down the cliff path towards them. It was hard to know what to do next. He might be just round the corner out of sight swimming back having left his buoy or returned earlier and gone to look for us. Mike Bradshaw decided to go for help while Mick Veal (who by now had pulled his wet suit back on) and I ran down the nearby beach and started throwing covers off the boats that were pulled up there. The fourth boat we uncovered was a twelve-foot Zodiac inflatable with a twenty-horse engine on it and ready to go. It started first pull and with Mick at the controls we roared out of the harbour skimming across the flat calm sea.

We spotted Don’s marker buoy several minutes later just as it was getting dark and, pulling up to it, shouted his name in case he was nearby or in under the cliff face. As we stopped the outboard there was a deathly silence, just the buoy line going down into sixty foot of now inky black water with who knows what on the end. Being the more experienced diver I elected to go down the taut buoy line to see if I could find him. Slipping my weight belt on I fell over the side to be met by an eerie sight. A shaft of light like a search light beam shone straight up from the inky black sea bed sixty foot below. After taking several deep breaths and with my heart pounding in my chest I dived down the beam to find Don sitting in a depression on top of a large rock, as if he was in an armchair and had all the time in the world. He was silhouetted in his own torch beam and had probably passed out on his way to the surface, sinking back down to settle gently on the rock. His buoy line was still attached to his gun, the line of which disappeared into a cave below his fins, perhaps leading to what would have been his first big grouper.

After swimming all round him to check he was not snagged up I took hold of him under his arms from behind and started to swim back to the surface. After thirty seconds of hard fining I realized we were not going to make it and felt myself starting to black out. Managing to reach Dons quick release buckle a tug sent his lead weight belt plummeting back to the sea bed (something I should have done in the first place). Freed by the loss of his heavy lead belt Don started to accelerate towards the surface, dragging me up with him. I don’t remember hitting the surface but came round with a mouth full of water and Mick’s vice like grip on my wrist. I remember looking down and seeing the torch fade out, as if someone had flicked the switch off and as we pulled Don into the boat the bung came out of his buoy, sending it into the abyss leaving no trace on the surface as if it had never happened. Even with our limited knowledge of such matters we soon realized Don had been dead for some time. We could not find a pulse and rigor mortise had already set in, all thoughts of CPR were dismissed as we headed back to the beach in a state of shocked silence. We sat with Don for two hours before Mike reappeared with the Marine police who took the body of our friend away in a covered wagon.

Sleep was impossible that night. Every time I closed my eyes I could see that torch beam shining up from the inky darkness leading me down to Don’s lifeless body. I still find it a mystery how a torch with batteries that normally last only forty minutes could still be on after three hours. Eric Smith

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