Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

“Jesus,” Lisa said quietly, watching white ceramic pieces scatter over the turquoise sea.

Darryl nodded coolly. “Don’t mess with the Big Dog.”

“I won’t. So you guys don’t know why Ackerman’s here?”

The two men shrugged.

“Maybe to follow up on that talk he had with Jason earlier.”

They turned. It was Monique Hollis, Darryl’s catwalk-pretty wife, up from below deck in cropped khaki pants and a navy polo. Monique was in her early thirties, exceedingly bright, tall, elegant, and with an easygoing down-home attitude that made her impossible to hate despite her looks.

Lisa nodded. “What was that about anyway?”

Monique shrugged. “Somebody came in saying they might have seen a new species.”

“Really?” Normally, Lisa wouldn’t have cared about a new species sighting, but strange things were happening in the world’s oceans. The plankton supply had been behaving particularly oddly, and Lisa and her colleagues in the oceanic nutrition community had no idea why. Plankton were tiny, even microscopic, plant and animal organisms that drifted near the ocean’s surface in large masses. With a PhD in oceanic nutrition from UCLA, Lisa Barton had dedicated a large part of her life to studying the stuff. During the past weeks, with the aid of the Expedition ’s onboard Plankton Measuring System, she’d seen levels drop alarmingly. Typically, plankton masses congregated around thermoclines, zones of abrupt temperature change between overlying warmer waters and colder, deeper waters. But recently, a number of thermoclines Lisa had personally sampled indicated levels 62 percent below normal. In addition, measures of turbidity, conductivity, temperature, and photosynthetic radiation were all way off.

In the vast, interconnected ecosystems of the oceans, plankton were at the very bottom of the food chain. Problems with them usually led to problems elsewhere. Lisa didn’t know if it was related or not, but she’d recently read reports about several of the Gulf’s medium-depth species—the Sargassum triggerfish, medium-bill wall fish, among others—migrating to considerably shallower waters. Then, six months ago, the government’s annual midocean survey had reported that for reasons unknown, there had been a significant depletion in the Gulf’s midocean plant life, especially crinoids, a type of starfish, and gorgonians, a type of coral.

Something significant was going on in the ocean. It had affected many animals, and Lisa wondered if it would affect more. She paused. Or had it done that already ? She suddenly turned to Monique.

“What new species?”

MONIQUE HOLLIS cleared her throat. “It was sighted off L.A., I think.”

“What was it?”

“I only heard bits and pieces. I think it had something to do with a flying fish.”

“Oh.” Lisa rolled her eyes. “One of those.” Then she considered the possibility more seriously. “A real flying fish or just something that leaped out?”

“This woman thought a real flying fish.”

“In the Northern Pacific Ocean ?”

There were fifty known species of “real flying fish,” part of the Exocoetidae family, and almost all of them were found in the tropics, a number in Barbados. Exocoetidae were basically regular-looking fish with oversize pectoral fins that could spread out and be used like wings. Lisa recalled that several species of squirrels, lizards, and snakes flew by the same principles. Typically, these fish glided just above the water’s surface for a few hundred feet, usually to escape predators. But Exocoetidae were nowhere near the Northern Pacific Ocean.

Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “Did this woman identify the species?”

“I think she said it was some sort of ray.”

“A ray? Really?” Rays had nothing to do with the Exocoetidae family. “Well, what did Jason say?”

“What could he say? He was polite to Ackerman, but you know Jason.”

Lisa shook her head. Yes, she knew Jason. “Why would Ackerman care about something like that anyway?”

“I guess if he really thinks it’s a new species, he might want us to go look for it. We’re doing next to nothing down here, and we’re still under contract after all.”

Lisa shook her head. She hoped Ackerman didn’t make them go off on some wild-goose chase. “It was probably just a little bat ray that wanted to get some air.”

Darryl shrugged. “Who cares what it was.”

Craig looked up at the blazing sun. “Agreed.”

“Then again,” Darryl added enthusiastically, “if Ackerman paid us more, I’d love to go look for a new species.”

Monique eyed her husband sadly. “He won’t be paying us more money, Darryl.”

“Yeah.” Darryl suddenly looked morose. “I guess not.”

All soccer-mom jokes aside, the Hollises wanted to start having kids in the next couple of years, and the topic of money was a sore one. Children were expensive.

Seeing how down they suddenly looked, Craig gently turned to them. “Take it easy, guys.”

Darryl and Monique nodded, almost obediently.

Lisa smiled to herself. The Hollises and Craig Summers were an odd, yet strangely copasetic triumvirate. Lisa admired their loyalty and often wished she had something like it.

She looked down at the turquoise water, wondering where Jason was. “Jason’s been down there a long time. Do you think…”

She suddenly spotted something enormous and black rising fast from the depths. She backed up nervously…. It continued to rise, ten feet from the surface, turned, and flapped away. She breathed again. Just a manta ray. A diver rose up right after it and climbed quickly onto the boat.

Standing in fins, Jason Aldridge was five-ten with intense eyes and dark hair. He was male ambition in a wet suit, no interest in firing weapons, working on his tan, or anything else. A lean thirty-four, he was a single-minded workaholic, the type who liked to be busy every minute of every day and got antsy when he wasn’t. He was also more than a little depressed, but that wasn’t easily detected.

No one turned when a second diver with a yellow underwater camera draped around his neck popped up. A chunkier thirty-four, his name was Phil Martino. He climbed up happily and grabbed a towel to dry his curly dark hair. “Hey guys.”

There was no response. With the exception of Jason, no one liked Phil Martino. He was the only one of the six who didn’t have a PhD in ichthyology—though it wasn’t intellectual snobbery that made him unpopular. It was more that he served no purpose at all. As Darryl once put it, he was always “just hovering around, an all-around annoying dude.” Phil’s connection to the group was Jason. The two had met during an introductory marine-bio class at UCSD. While Phil later flunked out of that class, he and Jason never lost touch. Since college, Phil had held many jobs, including one as a professional photographer. So at Jason’s urging, Ackerman hired him to document the original manta aquarium’s progress pictorially. Phil Martino had been with the team ever since.

Lisa turned to Jason, seated on the deck now. “FYI, Ackerman’s here, Jason.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He angrily yanked off his fins. “I thought you were coming down to take that jellyfish sample.”

“Oh,” Lisa paused. “I was, but then I saw Ackerman.”

“You should have come down before that.”

“Whatever.”

He stood. “No, not whatever, Lisa. You don’t tan well anyway, and we needed a sample.”

She faced him fully, not backing down. “Yeah, why’d we need that again?”

“Because the only thing these mantas seem to be eating lately are jellyfish.”

“Yeah, so?”