For a first glance, I’d like you to see my death. I died on February 13, 1957. It was a year of an extended El Niño so we were making our way from the southern warm current up past the equator in search of cooler and more abundant waters.
On that particular day the ocean rumbled. And when it does, one or more of us is usually taken. I have seen others fight, squeeze, attack, stab, gnaw, clinch, and I have heard their bodies splash and crank and wheeze as they are lifted up into oblivion in a pool of ink and flashing colors. The day I was taken, I began wondering why.