Tom finished his own check. “For once you’ve taken me to a pristine place to have a recreational dive. Are you ready?”
Sam slipped his arms through the BCD and locked the Velcro straps. “Pick us up here in around an hour, Matthew.”
“Got it. We’ll keep an eye out on the surface for you. I’ll also get that survey of the water in the area you wanted.”
“Thanks.”
Elise handed him a sealed dive bag. “Make certain you place one on the top of each stone at both ends of the Bimini Road if you want an accurate reading of the water speed and weight. The weight is more useful to us than speed. As you know, rogue waves are rarely any faster than normal waves. ” But large waves mean greater mass. If you have a hundred-foot wave forming here, these depth gauges are going to suddenly read a massive increase.”
Sam nodded his head. Opening the bag, he examined the small cylindrical patches she had given him. “Sure.” He then squeezed his feet into fins and looked up at Tom. “You ready to find some answers?”
Tom smiled. “I’m just happy to go for a nice dive on a day like today. But if we find what you’re looking for that will be good too.”
Sam fitted his dive mask and then placed the air regulator into his mouth. He then leaned backwards, falling off the side of the moon pool and into the azure sea below.
Chapter Twenty Six
Sam marked his position using GPS and confirmed they were at the most southwestern stone in the Bimini Road. He then checked his watch. The time was 0920. They would be done before 1030. Catching Tom’s attention, he pointed his thumb down — signaling he was going to commence the dive.
It was a shallow dive in warm water. Sam simply wore board shorts and his diving equipment. He was happy. It made for a very free dive. More like skin diving. As soon as he looked downward he imagined the large rectangular limestone blocks as being the start of the yellow brick road in Oz. He wondered if this road would lead to an even stranger place once its hidden answers were revealed. A minute later, he was kneeling on top of the most southwestern rectangular block.
He placed the first of the data dots in the middle of the stone. A single red light flashed intermittently, showing that the information being gathered was transmitting. Veyron was already in the process of laying a new relay buoy to receive and transmit the collective information via satellites.
There were seven similar stones that formed the southwestern end of the Bimini Road. It didn’t take long to place all the data dots and confirm they had been set correctly. Sam then ascended to a depth of five feet and met up with Tom.
In front of his friend rested a neutrally buoyant machine shaped round like a ball on one side, with a computer monitor on the other. Tom casually held onto a side handle with his left hand studying the screen.
The device was called a Kongsberg EM3003D Multibeam Echosounder. It was a portable shallow water, multibeam system with 508 beams providing very high resolution surveying. Multibeam echo sounders emit a fan of sound beams to the seafloor to scan a wide swath of the seabed in great detail. Compared with conventional echo sounders — which direct a single beam of sound to the seabed directly below a ship, multibeams show more detail and greatly reduce survey time.
By surveying the area at a depth of five feet Sam hoped to develop an accurate 3D analysis of the Bimini Road without the surface swell interrupting the process. Once the area was surveyed, his computer whiz, Elise, was going to run it through an ocean hydrology computer program and determine what sort of water movement over the structures of the Bimini Road, could cause a rogue wave.
Tom pressed his thumb to his finger to form the signal for “okay.”
Sam nodded his head in reply and then gestured that he was ready to start the survey process. Tom flicked a switch and silent waves swept over the monitor screen. The two of them began their half mile journey along the unique stone formation in a northeastern direction. The Bimini Road was approximately 300 feet wide and 1600 feet long.
The pristine waters allowed the area to be easily surveyed during the first swim through. At the northeastern side of the strange stone formations Sam dived to fifteen feet and laid out another series of data dots on each of the limestone rocks. After confirming that he had covered each block on the northeastern side, he returned to the surface where Tom was already waiting.
Tom took the regulator out of his mouth and breathed the warm air from the surface. “I don’t know if you found any of the answers you were looking for Sam, but I must thank you for finding a reason for us to come diving here again on the company’s dime.”
“You’re welcome.”
In the distance the Maria Helena turned to move towards them. Tom grinned. “Here comes our ride.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
A couple minutes later their ship came to a stop right next to them. Sam handed his fins to Matthew and began climbing the aft boarding ladder. “Did you find anything of interest for me in your survey of the outer harbor?”
Matthew handed the fins back as Sam reached the deck. “No. There wasn’t one single shipwreck or any other evidence of destroyed vessels from previous rogue waves.”
“Of course not. Why would there be?”
“I thought you told me this morning to search the area. Didn’t you want to find other shipwrecks so that you could prove your theory?”
Sam dumped his dive gear and began drying himself with a towel. “No, I already know where the rogue wave reaches its zenith. It’s at that point we will find a graveyard of shipwrecks.”
Matthew looked surprised. “Where?”
“Here,” Sam said pulling out the Admiralty charts. “Where all four vessels have recently been struck. I thought that was obvious.”
“So then what were you looking for here?”
Sam looked along the several simple images from the sonar report and then pointed to what he was after. “One upturned rowboat and a weather buoy.”
Matthew looked as though his boss might have truly gone mad this time. “You were after the upturned rowboat?”
“Well. No, technically, I was more interested in the weather buoy. It’s not one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s. And that means it’s one of theirs.”
“One of who’s exactly?” Matthew persisted.
“I’m not sure, but if we’re accepting at face value that someone’s been artificially creating these monster waves, then it makes sense that they would need a means of communicating exactly when a rogue wave passed through this section.”
Tom hung his towel over the railing after resurfacing after making two dives. “Okay, I didn’t see anything to suggest that was man made.”
“I never said I thought it was man made,” Sam replied. “No, the Bimini Road has been extensively studied by archeologists and recreational divers alike. There’s no doubt in my mind it was a natural, albeit strange rock formation.”
“But you still think it was used to create rogue waves?”
“I believe the ancient people who used this area to steal from shipswrecks noticed long ago the naturally unusual occurrence of waves as they passed through it.”
“But we’ve been here for several hours now. I haven’t seen any rogue waves forming.”
“No, but have a think about the kind of conditions might just do so.”
“It would need larger swell. And coming from the north.”
“And if that were the case, very few divers, either recreational or professional, would want to be anywhere near that wall. Even if it wasn’t creating rogue waves.”