CHAPTER X 



TIGERS OF THE DEEP 



WORKING twenty-five feet under water, on a 

 coral reef midway between the Tuamota and 

 Phoenix Islands, during the 1936 American 

 Museum-Crocker Expedition to Tongareva (the name of 

 the reef) Dr. Roy Waldo Miner was suddenly con- 

 fronted with four sharks. 



Wearing his underwater apparatus. Dr. Miner was 

 otherwise naked and vulnerable, but he remembered 

 some advice that had been given him by a native. 

 Instead of retreating, he took several plunging steps 

 towards the sharks, making violent swimming motions 

 as he walked across the sea-bed. The sharks remained 

 motionless for a few seconds and then turned and swam 

 leisurely away, perhaps frightened a little by his menac- 

 ing attitude. Dr. Miner returned to his work of photo- 

 graphing various creatures in the undersea gardens of the 

 lagoon. 



The crevices of the coral around him concealed many 

 other perils. Dangerous moray eels, six or eight feet in 

 length, lurked in the encrusted passages of the coral 

 jungle. Sea-stars, immense creatures whose leathery 

 bodies were covered with scarlet spines which were ball- 

 socketed so that they could penetrate from many direc- 

 tions, crawled over the sea floor, sucking up animals 

 through their powerful central mouths, as they crawled 

 along, each using the countless tube feet on its sixteen 

 arms to make progress. Swimming around Dr. Miner's 

 head as he worked with his underwater camera, were all 

 kinds of brightly coloured fishes. 



182 



