Shark Bait
EXTREME
ADVENTURES
SHARK BAIT
A large swell lifted me up. For a moment I was higher than Michi and I could see what he was pointing at. Roughly fifteen metres to my left, a patch of water fizzed and rippled as a shoal of tiny minnows leapt into the air.
Suddenly I found a hidden reserve of energy. The splashes made by the leaping fish were nothing compared to mine. Arms swinging like windmills, I went churning away from the unseen menace that swept towards me beneath the terrified minnows.
But I wasn’t fast enough…
Puffin Books
Also by Justin D’Ath
Extreme Adventures:
(can be read in any order)
Crocodile Attack
Bushfire Rescue
Scorpion Sting
Spider Bite
Infamous
Astrid Spark, Fixologist
Echidna Mania
Koala Fever
Why did the Chykkan cross the Galaxy?
EXTREME
ADVENTURES
SHARK
BAIT
JUSTIN D’ATH
Puffin Books
For Mitsumasa Aoki
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd, 2006
Text copyright © Justin D’Ath, 2006
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
puffin.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74228-094-3
1
RUN!
No other fish on the Great Barrier Reef is quite as cute, nor as harmless, as the tiny orange and white clown fish. Yet I blame a clown fish for what happened. One made famous right around the world thanks to a movie.
‘Nemo!’
I looked round in surprise. The Japanese boy was waving at me. Up until that point, we had mostly ignored each other. We’d both been too busy exploring the narrow shelf of reef exposed by the low tide. Besides, there was the problem of communicating.
‘Nemo!’ he called again, and pointed down into a shimmering tidal pool.
I made my way towards him, skirting a colourful coral garden and being very careful where I placed my good foot. The Reef might be a ‘natural wonderland’, like all the tourist brochures say, but a whole range of dangers lie in wait for the unwary: stonefish, stingrays, fire coral, blue-ringed octopuses and deadly sea wasps, just to name a few. But little did I suspect, as I wobbled up to the Japanese boy crouching on the coral shelf at the very tip of the island, that the greatest threat to our safety that afternoon had nothing to do with the reef. It would come from the sparkling aquamarine expanse of the Coral Sea behind us.
The Japanese boy was wearing yellow inflatable water wings over his T-shirt. It wasn’t a good look, but who was I to judge? I had one foot encased in plaster with a huge black rubbish bag taped around it, and split tennis balls jammed onto the ends of my crutches to help me walk on the reef.
‘What have you found?’ I asked, laying my modified crutches on the coral beside me as I crouched to look.
He removed his wraparound sunglasses and pointed into the water. At the bottom of the pool, partially obscured by a semicircle of yellow plate coral, a pair of clown fish nestled among the fleshy tentacles of a large mauve sea anemone.
‘Nemo,’ he repeated.
He knew no English, I knew no Japanese. But we had both seen the movie.
‘Nemo,’ I said, returning his smile.
The sea breeze ruffled the boy’s short spiky hair. Without his sunglasses he reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who. He looked only about ten or eleven, much younger than me. But that didn’t matter; it would be good to have someone to hang out with besides the twins. My family had been at the resort for nearly a week and we were all growing a bit tired of each other’s company. The Japanese boy and his parents had the cabin next to ours. We were neighbours, but the language barrier had kept us from introducing ourselves. Until now.
I tapped my chest. ‘I’m Sam.’
He gave a little bow. ‘Oai dekite uresii desu, Sam,’ he said shyly. Then he touched his own chest. ‘Watashi no namae wa Michi desu.’
It sounded complicated. ‘So you’re called… Michidesu?’
‘Michi,’ he corrected me.
‘Glad to meet you, Michi,’ I said.
He bowed again, and for a moment Michi and I smiled at each other. Then, because there was nothing else we could say, we turned our attention back to the fish. They were cute, all right, and very much like the ones in the movie. But soon I would wish we had never laid eyes on them. If we hadn’t been so preoccupied with the two Nemo lookalikes, we might have noticed the danger before it was too late.
Michi saw it first. Suddenly he gripped my arm and yelled something in Japanese. I reached for my crutches and struggled upright. Holy guacamole! I couldn’t believe my eyes. Something weird was going on. The horizon had changed – it looked higher than it had a minute ago. And much closer!
Michi started talking flat out in his own language. Most of it meant nothing to me, but one word snagged in my brain: tsunami.
Then I said an English word – Run! – and Michi didn’t need a translation for that either.
2
FISH FOOD
You can’t run on a coral reef. Especially if you’re on crutches. There are slimy ridges, unexpected holes and big, fragile sea fans that break away beneath your soggy sneaker. There are gorgonian whips that wrap themselves round your crutches, razor-sharp staghorn corals that graze your shins, and spiny black sea urchins that sting your hands when you fall over. You spend half your time on your hands and knees. Or up to your waist in water. Wading, wallowing, staggering, falling, and who cares about the threat of stonefish or the fact that you’ve dropped your crutches.
Michi wasn’t doing much better than me. He was wearing a pair of brown leather shoes with smooth soles, and he kept sliding all over the place. Somehow he stayed on his feet, but he wasn’t going much faster than I was.
We both could have saved our energy. It was obvious from the start that we weren’t going to make it. The long finger of exposed reef extended one hundred and fifty metres out to sea. Michi and I were at the end of it when w
e first saw the wave. But it’s impossible not to run when you turn around and there’s half the Coral Sea steamrolling towards you in a three-metre-high wall.
Michi was wrong: it wasn’t a tsunami. It was just a freak wave, that one in a million when the currents, the tides and the winds all combine to produce a monster.
Umpteen megalitres of seawater came crashing over the reef in a frothy white boil that picked Michi and me up and tossed us like matchsticks into the sea on the other side.
I don’t have much memory of what happened next. I recall a swirl of bubbles and sandy green water and bits of broken-off coral and twisting strands of seaweed and a couple of dislodged starfish turning pinwheels above me. Were they above me? It was impossible to know what was up or what was down. My hands clawed for the surface, but where was the surface? I seemed to be doing cartwheels or somersaults, or perhaps both. It was strangely quiet. After the thunderous roar of the wave smashing across the reef, now there was an almost eerie absence of noise. I found myself in a silent green world. It felt like a dream – a dream that was rapidly turning into a nightmare. My lungs were caving in!
Then the nightmare was over. A sudden flash of sunlight made rainbows in my eyelashes, telling me not only that I was awake, but that my head was above water. I took a series of huge gulping breaths, greedily filling my lungs with oxygen. There was water up my nose and I felt a bit shaken, but otherwise I seemed to be okay. I just needed to get to shore.
But where was shore?
A passing wave lifted me up and I glimpsed a line of miniature coconut palms poking over the horizon about two kilometres away. My heart nearly stopped beating. How could I have come so far? Then it dawned on me: Good one, Sam, you’re facing the wrong direction! I was looking at Cowrie Island, the small, uninhabited neighbour of the popular resort island where we were staying.
Treading water – not so easy with a plaster cast on one foot – I turned a clumsy semicircle in the pitching green sea, and breathed a big sigh of relief when I saw a strip of white sand framed by palm trees – proper-sized palm trees this time – no more than sixty metres away. Utopia Island, right where it was supposed to be.
But it appeared to be moving!
Wrong again, Sam. The island wasn’t moving, I was. A strong current was carrying me along parallel to the beach. If I didn’t get to shore quickly, it would push me past our island and out into the open sea. I loosened my single sneaker and kicked it away. Mum and Dad were going to kill me – first I lose my crutches, now I’d lost my shoe – but the plaster cast on my other foot was a big enough handicap on its own. Besides, my parents could hardly blame me for the freak wave that had washed Michi and me off the reef.
Where was he, anyway?
‘Michi?’ I called, looking anxiously right and left as another wave lifted me up.
There was nothing around me but empty sea.
The waves were coming around the reef and moving through the strait between the two islands. As each one bore me up, I searched frantically for Michi. There was no sign of him. I yelled his name at the top of my voice, but the only reply was the screech of a lone sea eagle circling high overhead. I was becoming seriously worried now. Michi had been wearing water wings, but what if they’d ripped on the sharp corals? Or – worse still – what if they’d caught on an underwater snag, preventing Michi from regaining the surface?
I kept searching for another two or three minutes. I must have called Michi’s name a hundred times, but there was no response.
He isn’t dead, I thought. He can’t be dead!
‘Michiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!’ I yelled with the last of my breath.
I was puffing now and struggling to stay afloat. I didn’t know how much longer I could last. My left foot, with its big lump of plaster, was growing heavier by the moment. Water was getting in, seeping under the plastic. It felt like a bag of wet cement was strapped to my leg. Soon it would drag me down. Too bad about Michi, I thought, I had to save myself.
I was about to turn for shore when I saw a speck of yellow at the top of a distant wave. It was there one moment, then it disappeared behind another swell. But that single glimpse was enough. As well as the flash of yellow water wing, I had seen a waving arm.
Michi was alive!
He was about two hundred metres from me – two hundred metres further out to sea. I trod water, hesitating. To my right, the beach was drifting steadily past. Each wave pushed me another metre or two further away from the deserted shore. In a few more minutes, I would be clear of the island.
Would I be able to swim back against the current with a great lump of waterlogged plaster on my foot?
Not likely. I would wind up feeding the fishes.
Then I thought of Michi. How he’d bowed at me when he’d introduced himself. How he’d pointed out the clown fish and proudly said, ‘Nemo.’
Wishing that neither of us had seen the movie, I turned my back on Utopia Island and struck out into open water.
3
BOOSS!
The current helped me – it pushed me along. But it did the opposite for Michi. Although he was trying to swim back in my direction, the water wings restricted his arm movements and he wasn’t making any progress against the strong current. He seemed to be going backwards. I struggled after him, doing a kind of splashy dog paddle, with my body hanging nearly vertical in the water because of the weight on my left foot. If I didn’t reach Michi soon, the saturated plaster cast was going to pull me down. Some rescuer! Now I was the one who needed rescuing. I hoped Michi’s water wings were buoyant enough to keep us both afloat.
But first I had to reach him. I was going forwards, he was going backwards. It was a life and death race. I was gaining on him, but my progress was getting slower and slower as I ran out of energy and my plaster cast took on more water.
Finally, just thirty metres short of Michi, I had to call it quits. I was exhausted. I could not swim another stroke. My plaster cast must have weighed ten kilos. It was a struggle just to keep my head above water. I shot a panicked glance back in the direction of Utopia Island. Only the treetops were visible over the heaving green sea. I would never get back there now.
I was going to drown!
Don’t panic, I cautioned myself. I had been in worse predicaments than this and got out of them. The number one rule in a tight situation was to remain calm.
But it’s hard to remain calm when all your energy is focused on keeping your head above water and then someone starts yelling at you in a language you don’t understand.
‘Booss! Booss! Booss!’
I gasped at Michi: ‘Don’t… understand… Japanese.’
He had lost his sunglasses and his eyes were round with fear. ‘Booss! Booss!’ he screamed, pointing to my left.
Just my face was above water; I couldn’t see anything in the direction he was pointing. And I didn’t want to waste my energy talking, especially when neither of us could understand the other. Whatever booss was, it would have to wait until I reached Michi.
If I reached him, said a realistic part of my mind.
A large swell lifted me up and for a moment I was higher than Michi. Suddenly I could see what he was pointing at. Roughly fifteen metres to my left, a patch of water fizzed and rippled as a shoal of tiny minnows leapt into the air.
Big deal, I thought. Here I am drowning, who cares about a few jumping fish?
‘Booss! Booss! Booss!’ screamed Michi.
What was the matter with him? Couldn’t he see I was nearly drowning? Then something clicked in my brain.
Not booss, Bruce!
I watched the patch of broken water come rippling towards me. My whole body turned to jelly. Now I understood what was going on. The minnows were jumping because they were trying to get away from something below the surface. Bruce. It was the name of another character in the Nemo movie – the great white shark.
Suddenly I found a hidden reserve of energy. The splashes made by the leaping fish were nothing compared to mi
ne. Arms swinging like windmills, I went churning away from the unseen menace that swept towards me beneath the terrified minnows.
But I wasn’t fast enough.
THUMP!
It felt like a rugby tackle, only without the accompanying clinch of hands and arms. Just a bone-jarring impact against my hip. I felt myself knocked heels over head. Next moment I was upside down, looking back through the inverted V of my splayed white legs. The sea water made my vision fuzzy, but I had a pretty good view of the shark. It was swimming away from me, its brown streamlined body weaving from side to side as it disappeared into the murky green distance. Hit and run. I completed my terrifying somersault and clawed my way back to the surface, spitting out a big mouthful of sea water, my eyes stinging.
‘Daijoubu desuka, Sam?’ Michi called, splashing his way towards me.
I guessed he wanted to know if I was okay. I was wondering the same thing myself. Gingerly I reached down and touched my hip. It felt a bit bruised, but my shorts weren’t even ripped.
‘I’m okay, Michi,’ I gasped.
I couldn’t believe that a real live shark had just headbutted me and then swum away. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t taken a chunk out of me. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be alive.
That was a BIG shark!
I was in shock, trembling like a leaf, and so distracted by what had just happened that I forgot about the plaster cast on my foot.
Until the weight of it dragged me under.
Suddenly I was back in the blurry green undersea world. And the shark was there, too. Coming straight at me. Fast!
4
KILLING MACHINE
Here’s something I didn’t know about sharks. When they attack something that’s too big to fit in their mouth, sometimes they head-butt their victim first. To stun it. Then they come back to feed.
Here’s something the shark didn’t know about me: I wasn’t stunned. I could fight back.
But it wasn’t an even match. This was a four-metre tiger shark, a six-hundred-kilogram killing machine armed with enough razor-sharp teeth to take out a fully grown tuna with one bite. I was a sixty-two-kilogram boy armed with nothing more than a deep fear of becoming shark food. But survival is a strong instinct. When the shark came rushing in for the kill, I aimed a karate kick at its nose.