all to do the next day.
Back at Temple Pool, we decided to start at the tail of the pool and work upstream. To minimise disturbance, Rick went in with the camera while I watched from the other side. Every few minutes
he disappeared from sight and then surfaced several feet along, puffing water from his snorkel and then breathing quietly to get oxygen back into his bloodstream. At one point a gully cut into the
rock, and when he surfaced from here, after a longer than normal delay, it was with an explosion of water and profanity.
‘Holy shit!’ he gurgled. ‘There’s one down there the size of a horse!’ He kicked across and explained to me that this was our chance for a two-shot: me and the
monster goonch in the same picture in an underwater cave where four or five others surrounded it. He would dive first and take up position on the bottom and I would follow after a few moments and
come in over the top of him. And we needed to go now because the fish had become agitated and might not stay there long – even though it meant I would be diving cold, having had no warm-up
dives to build up my underwater time and check the lie of the land.
As Rick disappeared straight down I tried to still my hammering heart before taking my one lungful and following. I saw his dim shape on the bottom and arched my back to look where the camera
was pointing. Too late I realised that I should have weighted myself a bit heavier for this, as my body, deprived of its downward momentum, started o drift back up. I kicked a couple of times and
managed to get a slippery grip on a boulder, holding myself in a head-down slant. Craning my neck backwards, I saw the water congeal into gloom underneath an angular arch. Something in there was
moving.
Grey against black, I could make out three or four – or maybe five – vertical against the rock wall, with their downward ends swaying like a pod of hideous aliens. I reached forward
and saw my fingers barely span the tail root of the biggest fish. They were getting disturbed, possibly feeling cornered, and my air was getting short. But those few moments burned into my memory
with an uncommon intensity – not so much a detailed picture but instead a feeling, like a fragment of a dream, whose residue remains after you’ve burst back into the light.
We had the footage we came for, the first shots of goonch in the wild. But in order to pass judgement on its capability as a maneater, we really needed a close look at one out of the water. From
previous experience, I knew this was not a fish one can catch to order. So when the ROV found a goonch tail poking out of a dark cleft, Rick suggested I go and ‘noodle’ it. But unlike
the flathead catfish pulled from their holes in Oklahoma, goonch have serious teeth, so there was no way I was going to grab it by the mouth. Also, on the screen, there was no telling its size.
With Rick watching the screen and the tape deck rolling, I followed the ROV’s yellow umbilical until I spotted its headlights eight feet down. A deep breath, a tuck, and a kick, and I was
seeing the fish myself. With no time to waste, I reached forward and grabbed the root of its tail.
The next thing I knew, my arm was possessed, shaking my entire body. I hung on and kicked for the surface as the fish’s body came clear and the thrashing became wilder. Then there were too
many things in my head: the fish, the water, my twisting-back fingers, and the aching air in my lungs. I couldn’t hold them all, and the fish was gone. Back on the shore, I cursed. Rick was
right: I should have grabbed with two hands. Fear had made me keep one free, for hanging on – to what? With both hands immobilising its tail, I could have finned its thrashing body to the
surface then across to the shallows. But a plan is no good after the event, and I wouldn’t get a chance like that again.
Later, as I fully expected, I would curse my mistake with even more fury as I watched my motionless