Randy White - Night Vision

I was relieved to be home. My house and lab are more than a refuge, although they have provided refuge to many. The property, buildings and docks that constitute Sanibel Biological Supply are a local institution, second home to a trusted family of fishing guides, live-aboards and an occasional female guest.

Of late, though, I’d been going through a period of abstinence as well-not the liquid variety. So I was ready for a few beers myself. It had been one hell of a crazy night, and Tomlinson wasn’t the only one who felt a little raw.

There are fewer and fewer houses like mine in Florida. The place is an old commercial fish house built over the water on stilts. The lower level is all dockage and deck. The upper level is wooden platform, about eight feet above the water. Two small cottages sit at the center under one tin roof, and the platform extends out, creating a broad porch on all four sides.

I use one of the cottages as my laboratory and office. The other cottage is my living quarters, complete with a small yacht-sized kitchen and very un-yacht-like wood-burning stove that is a good thing to have on windy winter nights.

When we got to the first flight of steps, I paused to turn on underwater lights I had installed near my shark pen. Underwater lights, to me, are more entertaining than any high-tech entertainment system in the world. The drama that takes place between sea bottom and surface is real. It is uncompromising. There is no predicting what you might see.

Tonight turned out to be a stellar example. Even Tomlinson went silent when I flipped the switch, and the black water beneath the house blossomed into a luminous translucent gel.

Simultaneously, a school of mullet exploded on the light’s periphery, and we watched the fish go greyhounding into darkness.

Beneath my feet, under the dock, spadefish the size of plates grazed on barnacles that pulsed in feathered ivory colonies like flowers, raking in microscopic protein. There were gray snappers and blackbanded sheepsheads, circling the pilings.

In a sand pocket beyond, I noticed meticulous shadowed bars-a small regiment of snook, their noses marking the direction of tidal flow. I also saw a lone redfish, with copper-blue scales, dozing next to a piling, while, above, dime-sized blue crabs created furious wakes as they sprinted across a universe of water, oblivious to the danger below.

“Doc… you see that? Over there-see it? There’s something moving.”

For some reason, Tomlinson whispered the question, and I followed his gaze into shadows of mangrove trees at the shore’s edge. My friend’s tone communicated curiosity, not danger, so I took my time.

I removed my glasses and cleaned them before replying, “I don’t see anything.” But then I said, “Wait,” and began walking toward shore because I saw what had captured the man’s interest.

There was something lying on the sand between mangrove trees and the water. It was a man-sized shape, gray and glistening in the ambient light. Then another shape took form, this one animated and suddenly making a lot of noise as it crashed through foliage.

The shapes were alive, I realized. They were animals of some type.

Red mangroves are also called walking trees because their trunks are balanced on rooted tendrils that create a jumble of rubbery hoops growing from swamp. Whatever the animal was, it was having trouble getting through the roots to the water.

Tomlinson whispered, as if in awe, “My God, Doc-this can’t be happening!” Apparently, he had figured out what was in the mangroves, but I still had no clue.

I jogged down the boardwalk as my brain worked hard to cross-reference what I saw with anything I had ever seen before.

Nothing matched.

At first, I thought we’d surprised two stray dogs, from the way one of the creatures tried to lunge over the roots. But no… the shapes were too big to be dogs.

Feral hogs? A couple of panthers, maybe?

No…

For a moment, I wondered if I was seeing two large alligators. They often strayed into brackish water, and we occasionally even find them Gulf-side, off the Sanibel beach.

Wrong again. Gators don’t lunge like greyhounds. And they don’t make the clicking, whistling noises I was hearing now.

It was one of the rare times in my life when I wasn’t carrying some kind of flashlight, which I regretted, because the creatures began to take form as I got closer. When my dock lights had first surprised them, one of the creatures had been on the bank, several feet from the water. The other had been in the mangroves, many yards beyond.

I watched, transfixed, as first one, then the other animal, finally wiggled its way back into the shallows. Soon, the crash of foliage was replaced by a wild, rhythmic splashing as both creatures hobbyhorsed toward deeper water.

Visibility wasn’t good in the March darkness, but I could see well enough now to finally know what we were looking at. Particularly telling were the fluked tails and the distinctive pointed rostrums of the two animals.

From the deck, I heard Tomlinson whoop, “Wowie-zowie, dude!” then laughed as he called, “This is wild, man! Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?”

No, I had not.

I had stopped running because I wanted to concentrate on what was happening. I watched intensely, aware that it was one of those rare moments when I knew that, later, I would want to recall each detail, every nuance of movement, in the scene that was unfolding.

The two creatures we had surprised were mammals. But they weren’t land mammals. They were members of the family Delphinidae, genus Tursiops. They were pure creatures of the sea-at least, I had thought so until this instant.

I watched until the pair of animals had made it to deeper water, where they submerged… reappeared… then vanished beneath a star-streaked sky.

After a moment, I walked in a sort of pleasant daze to the house, where Tomlinson stood, grinning. He held out an arm so we could bang fists and said in a soft voice, “Bottlenose dolphins. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. Completely out of the water, feeding on dry land.”

I was smiling, too. There are few things more energizing than the discovery of something profound in a place that is so familiar, you think all its secrets have been revealed.

Tomlinson was feeling it, too. “My God,” he said, his head pivoting from the mangroves to the bay. “How could anyone ever get tired of living on the water? This place is magic, man, it’s just pureassed magic. Dolphins foraging beneath the trees while Sanibel Island sleeps. The freaking wonder of it all. Wow!”

He paused, both of us listening to the distinctive Puffffft! as the dolphins exhaled in synch, out of sight now but their images still clear in my mind.

Tomlinson asked me, “Have you ever in your life heard about something like this happening? Not me. Never ever. And I know a lot of devoted druggies who see crazy shit all the time.”

Tomlinson was so excited that he was talking too fast, thinking too fast, and I wanted to slow everything down.

I replied, “Hold on a second, I’m trying to think this through. We don’t know for sure they were feeding. That’s an assumption.” My mind was working on the problem, delighted by the challenge.

Tomlinson tried to interrupt, but I shushed him with a wave of my hand.

I said, “Granted, it’s the first explanation that came into my mind-that they came ashore to feed. But we need to take a look in the mangroves. A close look. And photograph the entire scene, too. If they were feeding, they might have left something behind. I’ll get a flashlight.”

Tomlinson repeated himself, saying, “In all the literature, in all the crazy dolphin stories I’ve heard, this is a first. What about you?”