My wife can walk on water.

Inside the reef on Cousin Island

My wife can walk on water. Well, to be honest, it’s more like running on all fours, wearing flippers. But it’s true: I’ve seen it myself.

Hanna and I lived with our infant son on a tiny island in the Seychelles where life was practically idyllic but, being ex-pats, we had to complain about something, and that was mosquitoes. I know you have them where you live too, but are yours tough enough to bite giant tortoises and sea birds?

Our Crusoe-island looked like a wide-brimmed hat. It had a crown of granite and a flat brim composed of coral rubble cemented with guano. It turned up at the edge to form the beach crest which was higher than the land behind; useful because it captured sweet, life-sustaining rain-water for us, but after heavy rain the plateau became one large puddle; ideal for mosquitoes. Every evening we escaped them by trekking to our favourite swimming hole.

Nervous? Who, me?

Our tidal pool attracted a bewildering assortment of tropical fishes but they were small compared to those in deeper water. Most of them were reef-residents that we saw every day. They included a little convoy of Goat Fish with dangly beards; a few blue and white, immature Angel Fish; pairs of bandit-masked Raccoon Butterfly Fish; Convict Tangs in striped fatigues; Powder Blue Surgeon Fish; small, unsigned Picasso Trigger Fish, and dozens of young Wrasses and Parrot Fishes. Toothy Lizard-fish lurked motionless in the coral-heads and Cleaner Wrasses and Peppermint Shrimps set up shop around crevices where the bigger fish would come to be manicured.

Identifying all of the species was really tough because so many fish change shape, colour and pattern as they mature. An added complication was that they also changed colour at dusk. For example, male Red Fusiliers turned blue even before they went to bed and Green parrot-fish faded to grey as they sealed their hollows with mucous.

Predators from the open ocean took advantage of the twilight hour to grab a meal off the reef. Pug-nosed, plate-shaped “Karangs” eagerly swept in to have a go at the locals; much like sparrow hawks at a bird-table.

When I first witnessed Hanna’s remarkable talent, she simply lifted out of the water on all fours and wind-milled across the surface like a cartoon character. She succeeded in keeping almost every part of her body out of the water while still looking behind her. I guessed that she had seen a shark and that it must have been huge.

Ferrying tourists. Hammerheads sometimes popped by for a look. 

In fact she had met a White-tipped Reef Shark face to face. He was only 1.5 meters long (we argue about the decimal point), but his head was about the same size as hers, and most of his was teeth.

White tips are Requiem sharks:-mostly nocturnal, but they come out of hiding at dusk for a tasty crab. The poor crabs avoid being eaten in two ways; they either stay on land or learn to fly. Ghost Crabs are built like tanks and almost never go in the water except to breed, while the skinny Rock Crabs that clamber on the coral heads at low tide use the “Hanna method”. With tiny, light-weight claws and legs and bodies as thin as paper planes, they can leap out of the water and almost fly to escape a shark, or back again to escape an aerial predator such as a Frigate-bird.

We didn’t see our shark again until one evening when Hanna found a heart-shaped, woven fish trap or “kasye”, in the pool. Our poor shark was curled up inside without room to straighten out. I had read that sharks have to keep swimming to stay alive because their gill flaps are not designed to pump water like more modern fishes. He looked half dead so, feeling very confident, I put my hand into the trap and caught him by the tail, gently easing him backwards through the funnel. His harsh, abrasive shark-skin felt like sandpaper on my arm.

Once free of the trap, I expected to have to revive him in the surf but he threshed about like a ferret. He was quite a lot heavier than I anticipated so I’m not sure whether I let him go or he escaped. Anyway, he was gone in a flash.

We were so proud of our shark welfare work that we told the island manager about our exploits. He was not at all pleased at loosing the main ingredient for “rekin satiny”, Creole shark chutney!  He also told me that I was lucky to keep my fingers because, although most sharks need to swim to breathe, Requiem sharks do not.

Shark chutney is delicious, by the way, but we prefer to remember our particular shark in the turquoise water, not on a plate. 

Blue Hour

This post was short-listed for the BBC Wildlife Magazine's Travel Writer of the Year award. It didn't win because several people wrote better stories! See the June Issue.

They call it “blue hour”. Just when the sun has gone down behind the Absaroka Mountains, the snow in the valley turns blue, the pine trees turn black and the sky, still lit by the hidden sunset, catches fire. The temperature plummets to 20 below.

I was within sight of Old Faithful Geyser Basin when my breath started to freeze on my bandana and the sweat-patches on my jacket started to crackle. It was definitely time to get indoors, close to the stove.

Our cabin was a boy-scout sort of affair in the heart of Yellowstone Park, close by the beautiful, historic Old Faithful Lodge that was then closed for the winter. The whole building was made of crooked, honey-coloured timbers and had a very large, open lobby area with a huge fireplace. I looked in through an icy window to see a magical Christmas scene: The entire interior was glistening with hoar frost, like the inside of a freezer. Two pine martens were chasing each other around the counter area, scattering fine crystals of ice as they went. All this was happening in total silence but my memory can’t help adding the Disney sound of twinkling fairy dust.

Now, as the first stars appeared, I found my way blocked by a herd of bison that had taken up residence in the warm patches around the hot springs where they might find some greenery. Hunched down and strung out in snowplough mode, they were jet black against the deep snow and almost inanimate, looking deceptively like rocks. A bison’s brain only has two modes; “Off” and “On”, so you can get really close to them until they suddenly “light up” and jump around like broncos. They expressed no interest in me, but the ranger-naturalists had told me that they injure quite a few tourists who pose for a snapshot with the “buffalo”.

The highest point on a bison is the huge, muscular hump at the shoulders from which its head and neck are suspended. The humps were all I could see of them as they bulldozed through the snow by swinging their heads from side to side. The power of each sweep was apparent from the amount of snow shifted, so it was not hard to imagine the damage that those horns might cause to anyone who got too close. Bison-powered flight came to mind.

With my way home blocked, I decided that a detour was in order. The edge of the woods would offer cover so that I could pass close enough to the bison for a few pictures before I totally lost the light. What I didn’t realise was that the run-off from the geysers created small gullies, now hidden by deep snow. Nearing the warm water, the melted snow would stick to my skis then freeze again in seconds. It took several minutes to scrape the rough ice off so that I could get any glide into my stride. I had to do this quite a few times so by now it was getting seriously dark and I was starting to shiver. The photo opportunity had passed but I could hear bovine grunts and breathing close by and a familiar tinkling sound like Christmas bells. Had the rangers been fitting the bison with reindeer collars?

Safely back indoors; I sat up into the early hours talking with my wife’s family about our varied adventures and experiences during the day. We had all seen coyotes, elk, bighorn sheep, squirrels, ravens, bald eagles, Clarke’s nutcrackers and grey jays. Along the Firehole River we had watched otters, dippers, barrows goldeneyes and trumpeter swans, all able to survive at the top of the National Divide because of the warm water from the geysers.

Before dawn, the sound of scuffling and chattering in the loft and on the roof woke us. We had pine martins in residence and they were feeling frisky. I brewed coffee and stayed awake because I couldn’t wait to find out about the bells.

The bison had moved on a few yards into shallow snow where I could see their necks and most of their legs. There were no collars, but I could still hear a faint tinkling. The sleeping animals must have melted the snow around them, which then refroze as they stood up because, attached to the long hair of their underbellies were balls of ice that rattled together. I found several icicles with hair attached, so the mystery of the bells was explained.