Memoirs

Spirorbids are tiny spiral tube worms living in almost every coastal marine habitat on our planet. Engaged in a worldwide study of their biology and zoogeography, Peter Vine found that they gave him an unparalleled opportunity for travel and adventure.

Having spent a year teaching as a VSO volunteer on Tarawa in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (now Kiribati), Peter continued his studies in France, Greece, Barbados, Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Tahiti, Tuamotus, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, USA, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, China, Kenya, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Oman, Seychelles, and the United Arab Emirates.

He taught at Khartoum University and directed a remote research laboratory on the coast of the Red Sea, where he dived to forbidden depths. He helped to investigate the Lough Ness Monster in Scotland, was caught in a hurricane in the North Sea, almost sank a British naval vessel, and helped to produce an Oscar-nominated film around his home in Connemara. Having established experimental and commercial fish farms in Saudi Arabia and Ireland, he assisted on a number of other award-winning films, was the author of and engaged in publishing, numerous books and directed major elements of a nation's participation in four World Expos. Retiring from his media-related activities at the end of 2015, Peter returned to his academic work, publishing more on his Red Sea research, and eventually compiling this eclectic collection of stories from his varied and intriguing life.

SPIRORBIS in text callouts

Spirorbis takes the reader on a journey of exploration and adventure to the islands and remote coastlines of Greece, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, East Africa, the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf region.

The quickest way to get a sense of this unusual book is to grab at some text, randomly selected. Here is what we read:

...We...felt the full force of Hurricane Faith – a storm that meteorologists had expected to have blown itself out by the time it reached so far north.

...I signalled Gerry to get in but he was already immobilised by the cold. Jumping onto the fish cage walkway, I grabbed him and pushed him, quite roughly, to the dinghy.

..."Are you sure this is safe?" Paula asked me. "No problem, I can see it on the..." My sentence was cut short by a violent crash into solid rock at lower keel level, beneath the yacht.

...‘Darling, I bati n tangiriko [I love you very much], I wish you could be with me all nights and all days and forever,’ she wrote to me...

...My pulse raced. Just a few moments earlier I had been elated by the sheer beauty of the reef below. Now it felt dark, dangerous and menacing.

...Spray came in solid cascades and Tony, clutching desperately at the steering oar, was lost from vision for minutes at a time.

..."Bite it." he instructed as I took a determined mouthful of the greasy squirming flesh, and then another, and another until finally the grip of the suckers relaxed and I was able to survey my victim – now beheaded.

...I ventured through the long grass with snakes on my mind and suddenly fell down a deep hidden well without time or breath to let out a single sound.

..."We’ll have to make room for him," I told Paul, and we both returned to the dinghy to rearrange space for a corpse.

..."Starved fruit flies live longer, Pete, why should that not also apply to humans?"

...It was a land on which white man had only just set foot – a land so old in geological terms that all the mountains that once climbed proudly into southern skies had been replaced by arid worn-down hills and parched deserts.

...Just as the wave broke we emerged into calmer water on the sheltered side of the peninsula. We had made it. Pegasus had earned her wings.

...Normally, this would have been ample surprise to scare away a shark but this was a more determined individual. Instead of disappearing into the murky haze, it doubled back and came even closer than before.

...We had just lived through (and been unaware of) a direct tornado hit – blissfully unaware of the world above water.

..."Hello, I think I know you," she said.

...The intensifying narcosis accentuated my anxiety. ‘I must be careful,’ I thought’. My lips were numb and I could not feel the mouthpiece that was delivering my air.

...A solitary gazelle must have been resting at the water’s edge for it too leapt into the air, half running, half gliding, towards the Red Sea hills.

...Plagues of the spiny sea stars were consuming vast swathes of the Indo-Pacific’s coral reefs, leaving their parched white skeletons exposed to decay...

...Looking back on those heady days I clearly recall the stimulating atmosphere of enquiry, discovery and excitement that ruled our lives.

...I suddenly turned the facts on their head. What if the rocks were loose because of the fish’s behaviour, rather than the fish selecting loose rubble as a suitable habitat?

...I fell in love with the city and was just beginning to reach out to the surrounding islands and villages when I fell head-over-heels in love with a Galway girl.

Reviews

In a lifetime of reading, I have never read a book like this – an eclectic collage of experiences and episodes from an extraordinary career. This Renaissance man, who has travelled the world, had me absorbed from the first page. A scientist, a diver, historian, author, adventurer, publisher, film maker, he weaves all of these aspects of his life into a riveting narrative. Wonderful! Tom Kenny, Kenny's Bookshop & Art Gallery, Galway, Ireland.

Peter Vine is a remarkable man – curious, energetic and with a persistence bordering on stubbornness to live life to the full. Our meetings are dotted with wonderfully ridiculous conversations about how to manage Parkinson's disease while diving with humpback whales in Tonga or coral reef diving in Wakatobi Indonesia. Spirorbis is a riveting inspirational read. Prof. Tim Lynch, Consultant Neurologist and Clinical Director of the Dublin Neurological Institute at the Mater Hospital.