A tale about spearfishing

“I’m thinking of going spearfishing Thursday night if you’re interested.”

Mr. A’s statement grabbed my attention; this was one of the adventures I had only read about and I couldn’t wait to experience it firsthand! All of us SM’s actually hadn’t gone into the ocean off Kosrae yet, we’ve been super busy with lesson plans and trying to not act like complete tourists… it was interesting to me that my first snorkeling experience in Kosrae would be at night. With a gun.

Thursday was a slow yet relaxing day, we spent most of it half-heartedly touching up our finished lesson plans and eating while watching Cast Away. “Wilson!” It’s a good thing that we watched that movie after flying, or else I would have had a harder time of it than I did. Planes and I have a strained relationship.

But finally it was time to go; we made a long work of grabbing our snorkels, masks, flashlights, fins, and the spear guns and walked the short distance down to the beach. MaKayla and I were the only teachers to go with Mr. A and his son, Xord, this time. Alisha said that she was going to ‘work on her lessons plans’ for a bit longer, which can be translated into: “I’m going to read over the highly detailed notes of what I will be setting out to accomplish with my students on the first day of school for about ten minutes, and then the exhaustion that seems to coincide with the humidity here will come crashing down onto me and you will return to find me asleep on the couch.”

Very exciting.

Anyways, after reattaching my mask to the snorkel in the proper way, I struggled with my fins while Xord easily slipped on his gear and was already looking around. Evidently it may take me a while to master this new art. Soon though, the four of us were heading off through the water, kicking bubbles into each other’s faces and searching for small sea creatures among the sea grass. The salinity levels here are so much lower than what they were in Hawaii, which is such a blessing!  

“Er, er!” Came the muffled exclamation from Mr. Alamo. We went to where he was standing only to find that he had already managed to successfully spear a small fish. You have to get it on the first try! I told myself.

Fish sleep at night, so we searched for them among the shelter of hunks of coral, seaweed-covered rocks, or miniature sand dens. And the sand den that we were by was perfect for hiding and was occupied by a sleepy tropical fish. We all got into a position where we could shine our flashlights down into the hole and see the fish: a reddish guppy with bulging eyes. “Shoot, shoot, shoot!!” Mr. A chimed in. Well, as chime-y as you can get when you’re breathing through a tube. MaKayla aimed, fired! And missed. Undeterred, she pulled the spear back until it clicked into place and readied the gun once again. Then, an underwater breath, aim, and fire! Another miss.

To keep this short… that process went on for a while, and though the fish procured a great deal of side scratches and tail wounds it was unrelenting in its attempts to avoid being speared.

We swam on, and found another rock with what seemed to the fish to be a good hiding place. Then the gun was in my hands, I loaded it, and gave myself a little pep talk. “Don’t worry Carissa, the fish will die quickly, just spear it through the brain.” Now, I’m feeling really hypocritical right now, so to my fellow biologists – please don’t look down on me. But we know that sometimes in the biology field you have to kill smaller animals for research purposes, or feed adorable little mice to snakes, so let’s just say I am preparing myself for that. It’s just a fish, I… yeah. Oh goodness, it had a mom.

But nevertheless I aimed the gun and fired. A miss. Now it may seem to you that if either MaKayla or I were ever in a situation like Cast Away we would quickly perish, but let’s all compare how he tried to catch fish the first time verses how well he was able to catch fish after four years on that island. Ok, bad comparison, we won’t be here that long. I loaded up the gun again and took careful aim, trying to keep my eye at the same level as the gun as much as I could (I’ve never gone shooting or anything like that, so I will admit I’m a total noob), fired, and SPEARED THAT FISH! Insert: muffled squeal of exclamation and excitement. I pulled the fish out from its hiding place and stood up, shining my flashlight to look at my catch, a small guppy.

The metal went through the fish right behind its head, and it flicked its fin desperately. Instantly a wave of sadness washed over me. “I’m so sorry!” I cried; I had just ruined this little guy’s fishy existence. Mr. A and Xord just laughed at me, and I handed the fish over to Xord for him to put it on the string of wire that they had brought. But during the gun to wire transition there was a violent thrashing, a small splash, and my guppy was free. No! I mean, hooray the fish has a second chance! We tried to follow it for a time, but it was quickly gone. I would like to say it’s chilling around a hunk of coral with its fish-buds who are all telling tall fish tales about the ‘time they got away,’ but he actually was probably eaten by a shark. (Sorry for that unfortunate ending).

But the hunt wasn’t over, and we kept moving, our fins propelling us through the ocean from rock to coral, and at one place we saw a couple parrot fish. Then Mr. A hollered, and we went to watch the cutest little octopus crawling along. He was a red-orange with luminescent blue flecks all over, and that was just the coolest! We soon found another good spot, and I was able to spear this next fish on the first try! Water makes everything look bigger, so the fish looked to be around ten or more inches, but when we brought it out of the water it was only seven or so. Ah, oh well…

More swimming and then we stopped at this large hunk of coral that was very promising. MaKayla and I tried a couple unsuccessful times to hit anything, but this was such a teeming niche that I couldn’t have cared less. I saw a couple guppies, some iridescent sea urchins, a young camouflaged False Stonefish (apparently actual Stonefish are very poisonous), and I was thrilled to see a couple legs of my favorite marine creature: the brittle star! When we were standing up there was a flurry of activity around the flashlight, miniscule creatures darted around our hands and torsos. We first thought they were bugs, until we realized they were underwater and I caught a few of them in my hands for a closer inspection. They were crabs! Tiny crabs, the size of the bead on the end of a sewing pin! They varied in hues of red and had six almost transparent legs, two tiny pinchers, and little beady eyes sticking up on their heads. It was just the cutest thing, until they decided to start pinching.

On the way heading back we saw a four-legged blue starfish, and then a five-legged blue starfish. For obvious reasons, we placed them on our heads and watched their legs curl around our heads like a hat. We were teasing MaKayla about how the starfish was eating her hair, and when Mr. A was taking it off he pulled a small bit of her hair, “Oh no! I did not know starfish liked hair so much!” He joked. Poor MaKayla didn’t understand the humor, and was freaking out until I called out Mr. A’s part in her torture.

Then once we were back at our apartment we rinsed off and checked our coral scratches (yes mom, I cleaned the area and applied ointment. Don’t worry; I have a healthy fear of infections). So all-in-all, it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, and it won’t be the last! Next time, I’ll bring a camera.

And yes, Alisha was asleep on the couch.

If this blog seemed to be more about the animals than anything else, I’m not sorry. It’s who I am.

In other news: we have a new housemate, a cute little lizard named Shakira; the internet connection is so slow that I could write a whole letter, mail it, and get a reply in the time it takes to check my Facebook site or send an email with an attachment (if God wanted to teach me patience then He picked a fantastic way to do it); we ran out of gas while doing driving tests; and there is chocolate fudge cake mix on this island that has no dairy in it. 

Blessings to you, and send frosting!