Anawak’s dive to investigate the Barrier Queen

Leon Anawak’s dive beneath the Barrier Queen is a clandestine attempt to recover evidence of the luminous organism he had seen on the ship’s keel. It confirms that the hull’s unusual growth is alive and under active observation, while revealing that the investigation has passed from civilian researchers to the military. Anawak gets his samples, but not back to Nanaimo: his underwater inquiry ends with three gun barrels trained on him and his detention in the dockyard barracks.

The return to the dry dock

A few hours after arriving at Vancouver’s vast harbour, Anawak reaches the dry docks, having first been sent in the wrong direction while trying not to explain exactly what he was looking for. The Barrier Queen rests in a basin about 250 metres long, surrounded by tracked cranes and powerful floodlights. The area appears deserted. He slips through a rolling gate that has been left slightly ajar and crosses the paved yard, past barracks, toward the ship.

The return is uncertain from the start. The Barrier Queen has been out of the water for weeks, and Anawak assumes that investigators may already have removed the growth and anything concealed in it. Any traces in the scratches and cracks might have dried out. He cannot be sure what another inspection will yield; he sees it as a stab in the dark. Still, if he finds anything useful to Nanaimo, he intends to take it. Otherwise, the excursion will have cost him only an evening.

His reason for taking the risk is a memory of the small creature he saw on the keel, no larger than a skate or squid, emitting a flash of light. Many sea creatures produce light, but this flash recalled the phenomenon Leon Anawak and John Ford saw on a recording. The luminous cloud in that footage was vastly larger, yet the resemblance made him suspect a connection. If the same organism had appeared in both places, the situation was worsening. To Anawak, the substance on the keel, material found inside whales’ brains, and the dockside organism seemed identical.

An unauthorized underwater search

Anawak prepares without scuba oxygen equipment. He strips to the waist, removes his jeans, and takes his mask, fins, pen torch, collection bag, and leg-mounted dive knife. He hides his holdall behind a bollard, descends a narrow ladder, and slips into the basin while lights still shine from the barracks. The water is biting cold; without neoprene, he knows he must work quickly.

Under the surface, his torch picks out the ship’s red-painted metal hull. He runs his fingers along it, then swims down. The mussel crust begins after a few metres and remains thick over the keel. Halfway toward the bow, the outcrop seems to have grown. That sight overturns his expectation that the dockyard might have cleared the hull. The growth is still there because the organisms are being examined in place: the dry dock has been turned into a sealed laboratory and flooded with water.

The arrangement also explains the military jeeps. Anawak concludes that the army has taken control of the investigation after squeezing out Nanaimo, a civilian institute, and that the matter is now classified. His discovery changes the purpose of the dive. He has come looking for biological traces, but the ship itself now reveals a hidden transfer of authority and access: the living growth remains available for study, while civilian researchers have been shut out.

Samples, discovery, and detention

Anawak considers abandoning the dive, then decides to continue. He draws his knife and cuts into the outcrop, careful not to damage the shells. Working methodically, he slips the blade beneath each mussel’s muscular foot and jerks it free, placing one after another in his collection bag. The effort is directed toward a practical objective: to carry material back for examination at Nanaimo.

The cold and the exertion eventually force him to surface for air. The ship’s side rises above him like a wall. He plans to dive again and search for a place like the one from which the luminous creature emerged, reasoning that others might be hidden in the outcrop. Before he can do so, he hears footsteps. As he climbs the ladder, shouts and running steps sound above him. He removes his mask and fins, clips the torch to his belt, and pulls himself up until he can look over the edge. Three gun barrels are pointing at him.

Soldiers take him to the barracks and give him a blanket. Anawak tries to explain that he belongs to the scientific arm of the committee, but the soldiers’ task is to prevent him from leaving, and they are not prepared to accept his explanation. Once it is clear he will neither resist nor attempt to escape, they bring him before an officer, who questions him. Anawak tells the officer who he is and what he was doing because he sees no point in lying when he is not free to go. The officer asks him to prove his identity.

Anawak points out that there were no signs warning him away, but the officer counters that there was no sign permitting him to break in. Anawak is in no position to argue. He judges the idea reckless, though not entirely fruitless: he has learned that the military is involved and that the hull’s organisms are alive and under observation. The mussels he collected, however, may never reach Nanaimo if the authorities keep delaying his release. When the officer says someone is on the way to take care of him, Anawak asks why they cannot simply take his details and let him go. The dive therefore ends not with the sample in a laboratory, but with its fate uncertain and its collector in military custody.

Significance of the intrusion

The episode makes the Barrier Queen both specimen and facility. Its hull is not merely the location of a strange growth: the dense mussel crust has been preserved in a deliberately flooded, sealed space for in-place examination. Anawak’s bodily passage through the cold water gives him access to what official secrecy has concealed, but his access is brief and unauthorized. The armed response makes the conflict over the organisms inseparable from the conflict over who is permitted to investigate them.

The dive also advances Anawak’s suspicion by connecting the keel organism with the luminous phenomenon recorded by him and John Ford and with the apparently identical material associated with whales. It does not establish the organism’s identity or explain the full scope of the threat. What it establishes is more immediate: the growth has persisted, the military has assumed control, and Anawak’s attempt to bring physical evidence to Nanaimo may be blocked. His underwater collection becomes a small, concrete act of inquiry inside an investigation that is already being classified.