itself.
Since corals like light but can’t survive long exposure to the air, they
tend to grow as high as the water level at low tide and then spread out
laterally. This produces an expanse of reef that’s more or less flat, like a
series of tables, which can be crossed the way a kid, after school, might
jump from desk to desk. The surface of One Tree’s reef flat was brittle and
brownish and was known around the research station as the “pie crust.”
It crackled ominously underfoot. Caldeira warned me that if I fell through,
it would be bad for the reef and even worse for my shins. I recalled
another message I had seen penned on the wall of the research station:
DON’T TRUST THE PIE CRUST.
The night was balmy and, beyond the beams of our flashlights, pitch-
black. Even in the dark, the extraordinary vitality of the reef was evident.
We passed several loggerhead turtles waiting out low tide with what
looked like bored expressions. We encountered bright blue starfish, and
leopard sharks stranded in shallow pools, and ruddy octopuses doing
their best to blend into the reef. Every few feet, we had to step over a giant
clam, which appeared to be leering with garishly painted lips. (The
mantles of giant clams are packed with colorful symbiotic algae.) The
sandy strips between the blocks of coral were littered with sea
cucumbers, which, despite the name, are animals whose closest relations
are sea urchins. On the Great Barrier Reef, the sea cucumbers are the size
not of cucumbers but of bolster cushions. Out of curiosity, I decided to
pick one up. It was about two feet long and inky black. It felt like slime-
covered velvet.
After a few wrong turns and several delays while Caldeira tried to
photograph the octopuses with a waterproof camera, we reached DK-13.
The site consisted of nothing more than a yellow buoy and some sensing
equipment anchored to the reef with a rope. I glanced back in what I
thought was the direction of the island, but there was no island, or land of
any sort, to be seen. We rinsed out the sampling bottles, filled them, and
started back. The darkness was, if anything, even more complete. The
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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