“Jack had a wonderful sense of humour and was a good sport when he was on the receiving end of practical jokes. There are so many great stories from my travels with Jack and here are just a few examples. My good friend Roger Steene and I joined Jack for a lengthy sojourn across the Indian Ocean that was funded by the National Geographic Society in 1979. Knowing Jack’s passion to log more dives than anyone on the planet Roger and I set up a little practical joke while we were at Villingili Resort in the Maldives.
The previous night we fetched a couple of scuba tanks from the dive shop and rigged them up with our gear before retiring. Then we set the alarm for 5 AM. The next morning, while it was still dark we hopped out of bed, donned the scuba tanks and took turns spraying each other with a garden hose. It looked like we had just emerged from a dive. Time to put the plan into action! We tip-toed over to Jack’s bungalow, deliberately clanked the tanks together several times and started loudly exclaiming what a great dive we had. Predictably, Jack rose to the bait. He bolted out of bed, grabbed his gear and virtually ran over to the dive shop to grab a tank. No way was he going to be out-dived, even if it meant diving at 5 in the morning. I think he finished the day with 6 or 7 dives, which was a typical effort.
Absolutely nothing distracted Jack once he locked onto a potential fish specimen or photographic subject. With this knowledge Roger and I set a little trap for Jack while on the same visit to the Maldives. Female Titan Triggerfish (Balistoides viridescens) are notoriously aggressive when guarding a nest of eggs. We had both been molested by a particularly savage individual while taking underwater photographs the previous day. At one point I fended an attack by thrusting my camera towards the trigger. The fish actually seized the strobe-mounting bar with its teeth and swam off with the entire camera rig. This was one ferocious fish! It seems fiendish in retrospect, but somehow seemed entirely appropriate at the time…
We hatched a plan whereby we would return to the same spot and line the triggerfish up between Jack and ourselves. Having set this up with ease we then frantically waved and shouted, indicating we had discovered something extra-exciting to photograph. Jack took the bait and swam in a bee-line towards us. Unaware of the trigger, he swam directly above its territory. Boom – the fish erupted like a heat-seeking missile. I’ve never seen anyone swim as fast as Jack with the trigger in hot pursuit. Afterwards, when we confessed it was setup from the beginning, he laughed as hard as we did!
Another humorous incident occurred in the Solomon Islands. I was doing some underwater photography while Jack was collecting specimens with a Hawaiian-sling spear. These pursuits do not always mix as I learned from the hilarious scene that unfolded. Jack was moving at top speed in mad pursuit of a small rudderfish (Kyphosus). At last he lined up a shot and drew back the firing rubber. His concentration was so intense that he did not see me, in spite of the fact I was positioned just a few meters away, directly behind the target. He launched the spear, missed the veering fish, and shot me squarely in the butt!
Fortunately I was wearing a thick wet suit and was far enough away that the shot had lost most of its impetus. These “scientific” moments are sacred to me. Funny you never hear or read about them at international symposia or in scholarly journals.”
