The Girl of the Sea of Cortez (27 page)

This magical encounter gave Peter the idea for an adventurous, dramatic, and poignant story about the tension between humanity’s ever-growing need for food and the enormous pressure that overfishing is putting on our oceans
. The Girl of the Sea of Cortez
was prescient in its message that the sea, like everything else on Earth, is finite and fragile
.

The fate of these beautiful mantas is in serious jeopardy. Because of their particular anatomy and the fact that mantas can’t swim backward, they are prone to getting entangled in fishing lines and nets. As a result, they often turn up as incidental fishing “by-catch” or, worse, they are deliberately hunted down by frustrated fishermen who have lost too many nets. And the alarming rise in the past five years of the use of manta gill rakers in Chinese medicine is devastating manta populations globally—putting them at risk of extinction
.

This excerpt from
Shark Trouble
captures the spirit of adventure, wonder, and fierce loyalty to the ocean that gives The
Girl of the Sea of Cortez
its soul
.

Enjoy!

Sincerely,
Wendy Benchley

Advisory Trustee for the Environmental Defense Fund, President of the board of Shark Savers, international board member of WildAid, and Co-founder with Blue Frontier Foundation of the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards

Excerpt from Peter Benchley’s
Shark Trouble

Twenty years ago I had an experience with a ray that changed my life. Literally. Not only did I hurry home and write a book about it—
The Girl of the Sea of Cortez
—but it altered forever my perception of animals, people, the sea, and the interconnectedness of everything on earth.

I was in the Sea of Cortez, doing an
American Sportsman
segment on hammerhead sharks, which for reasons no one has ever been able to ascertain gather there periodically in huge, peaceful schools of hundreds, perhaps thousands, at a
time. The gatherings seem to have nothing to do with either breeding or feeding; the hammerheads are simply there, in crowds so thick that, seen from below, they block the sun.

The underwater cameramen on the shoot were old friends, Stan Waterman and Howard Hall; Howard’s wife, Michele, who’s now a producer, director, and partner in Howard’s film company, was along in the dual capacities of nurse and still photographer.

One afternoon, when we returned to our chartered boat, the
Don Jose
, full of macho tales of death-defying diving among the anthropophagi, we were interrupted by a very excited Michele, who directed us to look beneath the boat.

There, basking in the boat’s cool shadow, was the largest manta ray any of us had ever seen. (We’d soon learn that it measured eighteen feet from wing tip to wing tip; for the moment, all we knew was that it looked as big as an F-16.) Its unique cephalic fins, which would unfurl during feeding and become supple sweeps to gather food into the immense maw, were rolled up tightly now, and they looked exactly like horns—thus, the manta’s age-old traditional name, devilfish.

For centuries the manta was one of the most terrifying animals in the sea: huge, horned, winged, with a mouth big enough to swallow a person whole and a proclivity for leaping clear out of the water, turning somersaults, and
slamming
down upon the surface of the sea, obviously daring any foolish sailor to fall overboard into its ghastly grasp. Equally obviously, such hideous monsters deserved no fate better than death, and spearing mantas used to be a popular sport among the few, the bold, and the brave.

In fact, mantas are harmless. They eat only plankton and other microscopic sea life. They breach (soar out of the water) for reasons no one knows for certain, probably to rid themselves
of parasites but possibly, as I prefer to believe, just for the hell of it.

Usually, they avoid people, swimming—
flying
seems more accurate—slowly away from approaching divers. Sometimes, however, they seem to seek the company of people; witness the manta that now rested peacefully beneath our boat. Before any of us could ask, Michele told us how she had discovered the magnificent creature.

The air temperature was well above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The
Don Jose
was not air-conditioned. To keep bearably cool, Michele went overboard frequently, and on one of her plunges she had seen the enormous ray hovering motionless beneath the boat. She swam toward it. It didn’t move. As she drew near, she saw that the animal was injured: where one wing joined the body there was a tear in the flesh, and the wound was full of rope. Michele supposed that the manta had swum blindly into one of the countless nets set by fishermen all over the Sea of Cortez. In struggling to free itself, which it had accomplished not with teeth (they have none) but with sheer strength, it had torn its wing and carried pieces of the broken net away with it.

Michele kept expecting the manta to ease away from her as she approached, but by now she was virtually on top of it and still it hadn’t moved. She was, however, out of breath; she decided to return to the boat and put on scuba gear.

The manta was still there when she returned. This time she was emitting noisy streams of bubbles, and she
knew
that the manta would flee from them.

It didn’t.

Slowly, she let herself fall gently down until she was sitting on the manta’s back.

Still it didn’t move.

Michele reached forward and, very gingerly, pulled strand
after strand of thick rope netting out of the ragged wound. She had no idea how—or even if—rays experience pain, but if they did, she thought, this
had
to hurt.

The manta lay perfectly still.

When all the rope was gone, Michele carefully packed the shreds of torn flesh together and pressed them into the cavity in the wing. She covered the wound with her hands.

Now the manta came to life. Very slowly it raised its wings and brought them down again, and very slowly the great body began to move forward, not with enough velocity to throw Michele off its back but with an easy, casual pace that let her ride comfortably along. To steady herself Michele put one hand on the manta’s six-foot-wide upper lip, and off they went, with Michele’s heart pounding in her chest, elation filling her heart, amazement and delight flooding her mind.

The boat was anchored on a sea mount, an underwater mountain whose peak extended to within a hundred feet of the surface, and with unimaginable grace the manta took Michele on a flying tour of the entire mountaintop. Down it flew to the edge of darkness, then up again to the surface light.

Michele didn’t know how long the ride lasted—fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour—but eventually the manta returned to its station in the shadow of the boat and stopped. Michele let go and came to the surface: incredulous, thrilled beyond words, and knowing full well that we would never believe her because surely, by the time we returned, the manta would have long since returned to its home range, wherever that might be.

But it hadn’t. It was still there, still resting in the cool, still apparently—impossibly!—willing to have more contact with humans.

We decided to try to capture the manta on film. We knew
we couldn’t duplicate Michele’s experience, but even if we could get some shots of the great ray flying away, with a human being in the same frame to give a sense of its size, we’d have some very special film.

When Howard and Stan had filmed the ray itself from every possible angle, they signaled for me to descend, as Michele had, and attempt to land gently on the manta’s back. I had done my best to neutralize my buoyancy so that, once submerged, my 180 pounds would weigh nothing, and now I used my hands like little fins to guide me down upon the animal as lightly as a butterfly.

As soon as the manta felt my presence on its back, it started forward. It flew very slowly at first, but soon its wings fell into a long, graceful sweep, and it accelerated to a speed at which I—in order to stay aboard—had to grip its upper lip with one hand and a wing with the other and lie flat against its back. My mask was mashed against my face, we were going so fast, and my hair was plastered back so hard that on film I look bald.

I felt like a fighter pilot—no, not a pilot, for I had no control over this craft; rather, like a passenger in a fighter plane. Down we flew, and banked around the sea mount, and soared again. We passed turtles that didn’t give us a passing glance and hammerheads that (I swear) did a double take as they saw us go by.

The world grew dark, and for a moment I was afraid—I knew we had gone very deep, but I had no way of knowing exactly
how
deep because I couldn’t let go with one hand to retrieve my depth gauge.
If we’re too deep
, I worried,
I’ll run out of air, or get the bends on surfacing, or—

Just then, as if to reassure me, the manta returned to the world of light. It rushed for the surface, gaining speed with every thrust of its mighty wings, and I had the sudden, terrifying
conviction that it was going to burst through the surface and take to the air—and me with it—and when we slammed down again on the water I would be reduced to pudding. But long before it reached the surface, the manta swerved away and began to cruise twenty or thirty feet below the boat.

Finally, it slowed, then silently stopped directly in the shadow of the boat. I let go and made my way to the surface.

Like Michele, I didn’t know how long my journey had lasted, and there was no way to find out. My air tank was almost empty, and Stan and Howard had each run through a full load of film, which meant that I had been under water on that magical ride for at least twenty minutes. But how deep, and for how long, at what depth? The only way I would know how much residual nitrogen remained in my system—the villain that brings on bends—was to wait. If I came down with the agony of the bends, in my joints or my guts, I’d know I had gone too deep for too long.

If I didn’t, I’d know I hadn’t. Simple as that.

The manta, meanwhile, remained beneath the boat. Over the next three days, every member of the crew had a chance to swim with or ride on the manta, and always, without exception, the wonderful ray returned its passengers to the same exact spot beneath the boat.

As soon as I returned home, I began to write, for a story had been born, entire, in my head. I wrote it at record speed (for me) and with thoughts, feelings, and perceptions I didn’t know I had.

It was published as the novel
The Girl of the Sea of Cortez;
it is my favorite of all my books about the sea.

Photos by Underwater Cinematographer Howard Hall of Peter Benchley Riding the Manta Ray in the Sea of Cortez

In the early 1980s, Peter Benchley traveled with a crew from ABC’s
American Sportsman
to document the schooling of hundreds of hammerhead sharks in the Sea of Cortez. But a majestic manta ray that was injured ultimately became the center of their attention and affection. Michele Hall, wife of photographer Howard Hall, gently removed fishing line that was tearing the wing of the manta ray that hovered under their boat. After it was freed, the manta stayed with the boat for three days giving “rides” to Benchley and the rest of the crew before finally returning to the open sea.

The following photos were taken by Howard Hall of Benchley riding the manta in the Sea of Cortez.

Peter Benchley cruising the waters of the Sea of Cortez in 1980 on the back of a giant manta ray. The gentle beast, eighteen feet wide, accelerated so fast that Peter had to grip its lip with one hand and its wing with the other and lie flat against its back.
Howard Hall/
www.howardhall.com

Framed by the manta’s unique “horns,” or cephalic fins, Peter flew to dangerous depths, banked around seamounts, then soared again toward the ocean surface. He described feeling like a passenger in an F-16 jet fighter who had no control over his thrilling, majestic craft.
Howard Hall/
www.howardhall.com