by Daniel Knop • photos by W. Fiedler
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The silver and black
cylinder rolled up from the deep blue
of the ocean, swallowing me noiselessly. Fish bodies surrounded me on
all sides, rapidly passing by. I found
myself in the midst of a vast shoal
of jacks, no more than 20 inches
( 50 cm) away from me. There were
thousands of them enveloping me.
Swift as arrows, their glinting, reflective bodies blinded me. They flew
past right in front of my eyes, seemingly near enough to reach out and
grasp, but my hand met only empty
water. The fishes maintained a constant distance from me as each oriented its body with unimaginable
precision and rapidity. It was impossible to fix my gaze on any one of
the innumerable silvery gray bodies
for more than a few fractions of a
second; another fish would quickly
replace it in my field of view, then
another. This disoriented me so that
I lost my own sense of direction. I no
longer knew which way was up and
which was down. The jacks played
with me; the shoal controlled me.
I experienced this impressive en-
