,…. Witchlady lifted her head out of the sea and shouted: ”come here, quick!”
Witchdoctor, with a sway of fins reached the spot. There it was.Fast spinning in circles, electric navy blue with golden spots radiating golden beams of light in Witchdoctor eyes – the yellowtail damselfish, young, tiny, small and fun. A Jewel , circling the small , barely live , sprouting Caribbean golden brown elkhorn coral.
A Miracle of creation.
WD and Witchlady finally scratched enough money for the flight and for the stay of about 6 weeks, for the first time in their lives, in the Caribbean, on the cheap.. The long dream come true. They went to see the coral fish and the coral reef. Ok, and zouk…
A new world, very different from the Mediterranean one , opened in front of their eyes.
The current at Point De Chateaux was terrible,we had to exercise the firm grip on the dead coral rocks to not be blown away. But we saw her, L` Etoile Bleu.
It was twenty years ago. It became an addiction.
They called it Poisson Demoiselle a queue jeune – It was the encounter of the third kind.
And half of the world opened for us, the underwater world of the same other Planet. Atolls, Atlantic, Pacific.. the cheapest way possible…
Witchlady convinced WD to buy loads of disposable classic film 36 mm cameras for underwater and to snap photos at anything under. It was stinking expensive, costed more than a good underwater gear , but it was the beginning of a fantastic journey.
“ You already are a photo maniac of taking pictures of the nature overwater” she said, “try this new world”
Witchdoctor became through the years an expert photographer of the underwater world, he bought good equipment compared to the first disposable lousy cameras, he developed a technique in free diving for taking photos of the marine life, calculating the trajectory of the free dive in a concave fashion to reach the fish or a particular coral, calculating the light expected on the the depth to be, he made a complete catalogue of species he encountered and they were several hundreds, he became a sea free dive frenzy… He learned the way of the sea underwater system.
Witchlady and WD bought all important books and learned the names.
They invested, yes, it is an investment for apparently nothing,which is the best you can make in your life,all the money they could afford, mostly for the shore snorkeling/freediving and seeing the reef..
They started roaming the Planet for the coral reefs and fish in the so called winter season. The skill and the photos got excellent, so was the physical preparation in diving for hours each day. We became amphibious, we walked on the land like amphibious creatures..
It is like diving with the turtle. First you go down with the turtle, then slowly up and the turtle pops his head out of the sea surface. If you do the same, together, that is the test in which the turtle tries to establish if you, the strange creature, are amphibious, too. At this very moment, you make a photo. The turtle winks. You smile, happy.The turtle dips down. You never touch, nobody, it is a taboo.
Well, when a huge Balestra fish started to rub Witchlady legs with her body, you know, they are curious from what are you made of. By the way, Witchlady has a much better response from the fish, they are much gentler to her. It must be the smell of female hormones which they prefer! They say Balestras are dangerous. Bollocks, the best way to have fun is to swim along with a big Balestra fish and sway and turn as Balestras do, on the left side, turn to the right side together. You have to understand the mood you are in.
The coral reef is like your house, but it is a biological house creature system of unknown connections. The fish live in this houses, for generations.Each in his own.The first day you visit the reef, the inhabitants are shy and hide. The second day, they look at you. Yes, you have been recognized and acknowledged.. The third day they start to show off, to pose for your camera ,they have learned it is not a danger to them.
Remember, you smell. Badly. Even sharks, the ones not manipulated by shark feeding by humans and other induced Pavlov reflexes, avoid you, a smelling stinking pig ,moving underwater. In lack of other food, a shark develops an acquired taste for stinking humans. Or, they get angry at people poking around.
The sea inhabitants react to different wavelengths -which are all form of light. They use photochromism, they change more or less vividly the color according to the wavelength on a Kelvin scale. They use electromagnetism and electronic signals of the very weak nature for communication. They are light- electromagnetic creatures, they use the electromagnetic radiation to “smell” even fear, as the sharks do. The reef system of coral and fish is a quanta field of electromagnetic radiation as is the hot or cold water, the heat or cold.
If you point a camera and have the green focus beam on, when the beam touches the fish skin, you can see sometimes a reaction, the fish TWITCH. They feel the beam.
The fish move up and down the reef according to the water heat or cold and according to the needs of reproduction. They have more than one house in the cascading layers of the reef.
The tens of thousand of excellent, good, astounding photos. The different light conditions, the colors, the movement, the surprises. The very rare fish and coral. Even one unknown till now , which Witchlady spotted and WD photographed… The close encounters with cannibals- sharks and all.
The Darwinist fight between the vegetarians, the majority, and the carnivores. The idea that the carnivorous species keep healthy the vegetarian majority and keep down the fish numbers is highly debatable. It is the other way around.
A species, a biological system in the making, the same goes for a physical system, Seizes the Opportunity. The making (evolution) of a shark carnivorous species is a making of an opportunity being sized. The Outcome-the apparent balance,as a system goal, Is not a boundary condition, it is only a shark seizing the opportunity for a free lunch! . Sizing the opportunity and the idea that this is some holistic balance of a system is the concept of balance the humans derive out of the complex systems and is only a chimera. There is only one concept which can be used, but is of no great help – the dynamic balance, which is, at the end, a tautology with lack of boundary meaning. The boundary meaning of this notions is the finite space where it happens. It is how we see it and it means a little. When a species sizes the opportunity it creates a new layer of communication and of Relation within an expanding system.The balance moves into a new paradigm between the participants..
The reef can do it for itself, without the predators. The physical limit of the reef is , in WD opinion, enough constraint for too much proliferation. The cannibal species are a ledger of intruders- parasites , free lunchers, and not the evolution necessary response to balance the complex system.. The reef is enough symbiotic and complex, without the help of cannibals. Ok, it is debatable…
Any way, after the Clusterfuck, it is all hypothetical, the object of research is gone in its complexity and existence…and soon it will be you also, extinct.
The best shore coral reefs have resorts built on the shore.Not some simple thing for real coral reef and fish fanatics, the fanatics of the other Planet, right there, underwater…
No, it is a tourist industry selling Stereotypes. Dazzling blue sky, white powder coral sand beach, by the way, made from the poop of the fish, like parrotfish, who graze the dead coral, eat algae, clean the reef from algae proliferation and in the process shit out the coral munched in the form of sand. You are sitting on the parrot fish poop.
Dazzling turquoise water in front of you , a laying stereotype cloned types stretched on the white plastic sunbed.
And you need also a pool, not any pool, it has to be a sweet water pool. The majority of the stereotype tourists – are not even decent swimmers. They are also afraid of the deep blue. They , at the best, soak in the shallows. They definitely are there on excuse and under false pretense, which is the exotic coral reef and fish.
The pools need a petrol running desalination plant.
The pools need chlorine disinfectant. Chlorine and too much salt from the desalination plant go into the see and kill the coral reef. In a few years. The resort has killed its reef, which was the excuse of its existence. The Stereotype tourist clones need the reef to present their vacation in some mythical term of visiting the exotic reef, which, they do not understand, and do not care about, if not only as the mythical cultural window dressing for their vacation..They stump on coral, break it, they make noise underwater, they chase fish and turtles, they make damage. We have seen all. From drunken russians and europeans, to the completely out of place chinese in martian gear.
Years ago there was only one big pool for them. Now they have each his own one embedded in the bungalow, where they soak and look at the sea. It is hot there, and humid. They run all day the airconditioner, which needs a petrol electricity plant.
If one does not swim or free dives for hours , the outside temp is killing. If one stays in the water for the whole day off and on, the feeling is that outside it is almost freezing, as your body gets accustomed/adjusted to the sea temp for so long that it seems a normal temp.
But that was not enough for the CLUSTERFUCK ENDING.
On top was the rabbit proliferation of the local inhabitants which, without education and contraception, hypnotized in the patriarchal rule, proliferate like rabbits and try to catch all they can from the sea. They reverted to the use of chemical poisons with which they kill the coral and catch the the fish and after 5 years nothing grows back there. Or using Dynamite for fishing. Or whatever.
Raw sewage running to the reef. Industrial agriculture and pesticides,artificial fertilizers killing the reef and fish..
So, they killed, same as the tourist clones, the place which feeds them or by which they make profit.
And, the big chinese or whoever fishing boat factories arrived, too, depleting all.
But that was not enough for the CLUSTERFUCK ENDING.
The Global warming Came.
In 2016 and 2017, over 85% of the coral reef died. In just a year. It was so hot, that under 30 meters it was over 30 degrees Celsius for days. The life went extinct. The sea became and smelled like sewage from the dying biotop, sea oxygen depletion, the toxic algae proliferated, like the sargasso in the Caribbean. Deadly fumes, the stench deadly even for the humans.
A few survived.
That was the time Witchdoctor started this blog.
OK, how do you feel when half of you dies suddenly?
You still smile, you bitch and joke, but, there is a tear, a hole, the light is dimmer…
You think this is far fetched? A tore in you because almost all Planet coral reef and a lot of its inhabitants have died or went displaced, migrating aimlessly.?
Now, do not tell me there are some reefs deep down somewhere in the middle of nowhere which still exist. Jerk, pay me to see them.
You took away the ones which could be reached normally.
A tore, because Wd spared time to spend it underwater, not seeing or avoiding to see your makings and doings, your mega achievements ending in a CLUSTERFUCK?
WD and Witchlady in 2016, were planning a 5-6 weeks visit (yes, we are not Calvinist types of constant sweat and tears, working for the household economy) to the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan.
In early autumn,almost the whole archipelago reef was dead.Not bleached here and there, bleached to death.
The only thing left to see is the Cat Island.
We might meet Witchdoctor Cat there, again.
The CLUSTERFUCK ENDING
PS: they still sell and promote the coral reefs on the internet like nothing has happened. It is fake, like all your doings. They invent and lie to hide the facts, like the political charlatans of virology or economy.
They now pretend that the dead, bleached, crumbling coral rocks are the coral reefs, and they say this dead rocks are beautiful.