Today we had another calm day in paradise. The first thing I do every morning when I climb the stairs from my stateroom to the galley of the Searcher is to look out. After a soft “good morning” to the few souls sipping their coffee in silence, I step outside. It is bright, and I am obliged to squint. After a few seconds, my sight travels instinctively to the reef crest, hoping for as few breakers as possible. Today is one of those lucky days when the reef crest is difficult to find, and I awake instantly with excitement. We will dive on the fore reef, outside of the coral ring. The fore reef is the section of the atoll with the greatest fish biomass, hence sharks.

We conduct two dives in the morning, at 20 and five meters deep respectively. It takes us about five minutes to travel from the Searcher to La Paloma pass, and about fifteen more minutes to move around the apex of the atoll and reach our sampling site. The crew of the Searcher takes turns taking us diving and tending the boats. Our skipper this morning was Jon Littenberg, the captain of the Searcher.

Jon’s story is, as typical of those people who have dream jobs, serendipitous. He and his family had a smaller boat in Hawaii, and decided to help some local researchers with it. They liked it so much that they decided to purchase a bigger boat and make supporting scientific research a way of life. They purchased the Searcher, which was formerly a private yacht. We are very happy with the former life of the Searcher, because it provides much more comfortable conditions than we scientists are used to.

While we were counting fishes this morning I looked to my side and saw Jon near the bottom, taking photos of large, black pencil sea urchins, whose spines were, not surprisingly, the size of pencils. I was diving with tanks, but Jon was snorkeling. He is a strong free diver, and I have seen him next to us several times before. When I am scuba diving and he is free diving I am jealous, and feel he is closer to the fish than I am.

After the morning dives, Jon told me that “it is good to know that places like Kingman still exist. Most people don’t realize how unique and fragile these places are.”

I could not agree more. In 2005, when I flew back to California after five wonderful days at Kingman, I realized how rare places like Kingman are. My plane was about to land in Los Angeles, and all I could see were lights, millions of lights, embedded in an invisible matrix of concrete. I wondered how much larger than Kingman our cities are. If we dropped Kingman in Los Angeles, we could spend a week driving around and never find it. We have too many big cities, but how many Kingmans do we have?

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