There are those rare moments in one’s life where time seems to stand still as your brain goes into overdrive processing everything happening around you, as if some higher power wants you to notice the minutia normally overlooked. I’ve experienced that reaction before, part of the body’s fight-or-flight response caused by adrenaline when faced with impending disaster, to avoid pain through quickened reflexes. By speeding you up, everything else seems to slow down. But this time was different.
We were anchored out far from civilization over Memorial Day weekend in 2014, running the generator and A/C while watching movies below deck until nearly midnight. Probably six to eight hours since his last shore excursion, the family dog let me know he had no intention of going to sleep without emptying his bladder, despite being far from shore. Though almost completely moonless, jumping into a kayak was relatively easy, thanks to our very bright masthead. I paddled toward shore with the mutt positioned between my knees.
Like a scene from the movie “Apollo 13,” where Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) describes how his airplane almost didn’t make it back, low on fuel with broken electronics at night, no idea where the carrier was until his dash lights failed, allowing him to see a carpet of luminescent algae leading back to the ship, once I paddled away from the glare of our anchor light, the entire universe opened up before my eyes.
Swirls of color emanated around every splash of my paddle; wake from my kayak looked like white caps, apparent reflections from my anchor light. Trillions of flashes of light on the surface of the dead-flat Chester River appeared to be reflections of the stars I could see overhead… that was until the dog jumped from the kayak near shore.
His splashes were like strobe lights at the best dance club, each paw strike into the water like a photographer’s flash. He was physically illuminated as I watched him run in the darkness, still believing all were reflections from my distant anchor light; that was until I returned to our boat.
Perhaps known to old salts around the Chesapeake and anglers worldwide, I had never experienced phytoplankton in my four decades of boating, and certainly not on this scale. Dragging my wife from bed, I forced her topside (as if looking for a witness to prove I wasn’t crazy) then killed the anchor light and watched the night explode into an unbelievable spectacle. The wet dog was glowing. My water shoes were glowing. I could see every step I took on the carpet with my bare wet feet. The most dazzling Christmas light display ever seen surrounded us, excited by any movement in the water, propagating like intelligent communication between planets. Water flowing from our generator’s thru-hull was brightly lit as if there were a light bulb inside our muffler, but nothing like the brilliance from the underwater waterfall where our exhaust mixed back in with the surrounding Chester River.
From our perch on the swim platform, we watched huge fish swimming; half a dozen trophies headed in different directions within 30 feet of the boat, all outlined perfectly in green-blue light as from a Halloween glowstick. My wife freaked as we recognized outlines of snake-looking creatures slithering underwater. We actually developed vertigo as we stood there watching; the water seemed to move beneath us in ways our body and boat weren’t.
Most of the light intensity had subsided by 2 a.m. and we headed to bed, unable to sleep because of what we just witnessed. We never lifted anchor, hoping to catch the light show once again the following evening. Prepared to go topside by 11:30 p.m., we observed a two-hour repeat lightshow performance. Though difficult to capture on film what our eyes easily observed, the photo above is a pole fishing net, simply held in the water as tidal current flowed underneath us.
I still remember my younger days, laughing at how my father-in-law, who was a great man, would spend hours just watching fish or birds; sometimes just the grass. I was always in too much of a hurry to relax and notice those little things alongside him. Now, trying to relive lost moments, my wife and I have tried to catch the phytoplankton every single anchored night since that awe-inspiring weekend, without success. Scientifically, just a combination of weather plus season and stars aligning to create, it took a bunch of coincidences to force us to slow down and observe them, just like Dad, on that Memorial Day.
by Mike Edick