Manta Rays
My first trip to Hawaii was for a bioastronomy conference on the Big Island. Several colleagues and I rented a big house on the Kona side with magical reefs right in our backyard. Jenya came along and of course there was more snorkeling and exploring than anything else.
Just north of our house was a hotel where, at night, they would shine a light on the water which would attract plankton which in turn would attract manta rays. How glorious! However this gave a few of my workmates the bright idea to attempt this ourselves.
The vague plan: put a flashlight in a water-tight jar and then swim out on the same beach and see if we could draw enough plankton to ourselves and then party with some manta rays. I don't think any of us really thought this would work, but it was fun to try.
Given the late hour, the tide was pretty rough. I'm a horrible swimmer, so once on the beach I felt a bit wary about this endeavor. Nevertheless my workmates splashed right into the ocean, then Jenya, and then finally myself.
About 100 yards out I already lost sight of the group with the flashlight and the waves were battling me pretty hard. Jenya lagged behind the pack only to make sure I was okay. But I wasn't. The dark cloudy skies made it impossible to differentiate what was ocean or sky, and this, for me, was too close to a very common nightmare theme: suddenly finding myself submerged in an endless lake because everything was so similarly gray or dark that I couldn't tell where the road ends and the water begins.
Okay fuck this bullshit. The flight response kicked into high gear. In primal survivor mode I used all my remaining energy to force myself back to shore. I honestly had no idea what direction I was heading. I could have been going further out to sea for all I knew.
I splashed and flailed like a madman for some small eternity when suddenly I felt this scratching at my chest. Oh - I'm dragging myself across sand. I was so out of my head having a panic attack that I had no idea I was already back at the beach and could've been standing in the shallow water for the past minute.
With my last remaining shred of energy I crawled as far away from the evil ocean as possible and collapsed, all my limb muscles seized with cramps. Basically I wasn't far from drowning in two feet of water.
Poor Jenya, desperately worried about me, emerged from the waves shortly thereafter and layed beside me as I regained my humanity. The others didn't linger too long out there. It was an expected bust. So nobody got to hang out with manta rays tonight.