The Sea Hunter Predator was a lone Yautja hunter who fought a dive team under the sea in Predator: Hell & Hot Water, the 1997 Dark Horse comic by Mark Schultz and Gene Colan. Xenopedia records that he was also nicknamed Bogey. He crashed into the Humboldt Current off southern Chile and hunted underwater in heated caverns below the sea floor. He killed the diver Couder, took Matteson alive and used Captain Rafe Cromartie's team as bait for a giant tentacled worm.
Biography
Falling Into The Humboldt Current
The hunter reached Earth two days before the main events of the story, when the crew of a Chilean fishing vessel heard a roar like a huge turbine in a storm over the Humboldt Current. Something flickered in the rain and took on material shape before it hit the cold water. The Chilean authorities searched and found nothing, but radar and other reports kept the incident alive. Word reached a secret organization that already knew Predators were real, and it treated the crash as a rare chance to catch one in a known patch of ocean.
The organization sent Captain Rafe Cromartie south with a dive team, heavy underwater gear and a sensor tuned to the frequency of Predator command apparatus. Earlier contact reports said that a Predator's cloak failed in water, so the team expected no invisible ambush below the surface. Seismic readings showed that volcanic tremors were warming the sea floor in the area. Xenopedia states that the hunter came to study dangerous deep-sea creatures as possible prey, and the comic later showed that the heated rift held exactly that kind of life.
Ambushing The Divers
The first dive took the team over a volcanic stretch of sea floor, where the sensors picked up something that was not a clean Predator lock. The hunter had already chosen his ground among the rocks and heated vents, and he struck while the divers were distracted by the strange life of the rift. He killed Couder and took Matteson alive, and the rest of the team surfaced scattered and shaken. One diver said that the Predator could have finished them all but had chosen a single kill and a single captive on purpose.
When the team recovered Couder's body, his head and most of his spine were gone, the classic cut of a Predator trophy kill. Cromartie read the trophy and the missing diver as a message. In his view the hunter had kept one human alive as bait and dared the rest to come and get him. The sensor still showed a stationary contact about a kilometer east, against the base of an island, and Cromartie ordered a second dive to rescue Matteson first and capture the Predator second.
Luring The Team Into The Rift
On the second descent the hunter left a trail that was easy to read on purpose. Cromartie told his divers that they were dropping into a hole the Predator wanted them to enter. The operative Izzy joined the line this time, after she argued that the team needed every diver it had. The Predator waited on the sea floor in his own element with a harpoon ready among the fish. The cloak was not working, but he had other ways to vanish in the rock and silt.
Inside the rock the team found breathable air pockets and chambers that should not have existed under ordinary geology. Volcanic heat and hydrothermal vents supported a sealed ecosystem of strange microfauna, linked by tunnels between heated pools. The hunter led the humans from chamber to chamber, always just ahead of their sensors and always leaving them a path forward. Cromartie and Izzy argued about whether he was guiding them toward Matteson or toward something else.
Hunting In The Flooded Caverns
The team's electromagnetic sensor locked onto a Predator helmet signature behind a rock shelf, and Cromartie planned to converge and drop the hunter within minutes. The signal then shifted, and the divers realized that the Predator had been playing their gear. Once he discarded or masked the beacon, he was invisible to their scanners again and free to choose his next strike. He hit the team while they still trusted the sensors, and the line broke apart in the narrow tunnels.
Radio calls to Tanguy and Grinnell went unanswered as the cavern shook. Grinnell was trapped in a tight squeeze of rock and water and fought not to waste his air. The Predator had turned the tunnels into a maze that favored his reach, his patience and his knowledge of the vents. Cromartie's command net frayed as his groups lost sight and sound of each other. The mission that had started as a capture became a running fight through flooded passages.
Using Humans As Bait
A huge tentacled worm then heaved itself out of a muck pool in the cavern floor. It took divers with shocking speed, and Brahm and others vanished into its coils. Half of Cromartie's command was probably dead within minutes. The sensors tuned for Predator frequencies were useless against it. In the chaos Cromartie understood the hunter's real plan. The humans had never been the prize. They were bait to draw the worm into the open so the Yautja could watch its strengths before he attacked.
The hunter struck when the worm turned on easier meat, but the fight was closer than he expected. The worm's reach and the collapsing cavern put hunter and quarry in the same kill zone of rock and hot water. The divers used flares and explosives to buy seconds while the two creatures tore at each other, a fight that pitted the Predator against a giant beast on its own ground. Cromartie held on to one hope, that the Predator and the worm would finish each other and let his remaining people leave.
Letting The Survivors Go
Cromartie waited for one clean chance while the Predator was distracted and then drove his people toward the surface routes. Both Izzy and Matteson survived the cavern. The hunter had chances to destroy the team's equipment, but he left the humans alone once they were no longer useful bait. After the return, Cromartie wrote that he had gone toe to toe with Lucifer and lost half his command. He called Predator interception as they practiced it a failure and resigned his command.
Weapons And Equipment
The hunter carried a barbed harpoon on the sea floor, and he took Couder's skull and spine as a trophy. His helmet gave off a signal that the organization's sensor could follow, and he used that beacon to lead Cromartie's team where he wanted before he masked or dropped it. The human briefing said that his cloak failed in water, so he relied on rock, silt and darkness to hide underwater. In the last fight in the caverns he also extended his wristblades. He worked alone throughout the story and never appeared with other Yautja.
Conclusion
The Sea Hunter Predator crashed into the Humboldt Current and turned a secret capture mission into a hunt on his own terms. He killed Couder, held Matteson as bait and led Captain Rafe Cromartie's divers into heated caverns under the sea floor. There he used them to draw out a giant tentacled worm, the creature he had come to hunt. The survivors escaped, and Cromartie resigned after losing half his command. The comic did not show what became of the hunter after the fight.
Appearances
- Predator: Hell & Hot Water #1-3 (Dark Horse Comics, 1997)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Comics | Predator Lore
