While staying with some new found friends in Takaroa I got the opportunity to try spear fishing. Under the watchful eye of Jeanlou and his patient instruction I slowly bumbled my way around the many coral heads of the inner atoll. I always thought that fish were sort of stupid pea-brained sized animals. After all, I thought, what kind of animal would try to eat some of the ridiculous lures I've seen or even a bare hook as Alan has been able to catch them.
When snorkeling around the atoll the fish surround you. Gliding along lazily it almost seems as if I could reach out, grab them, and swim them over to the boat. It turns out that they only play dumb. As soon as you have a spear gun in your hand they start to keep their distance. When a fish or two break from the bubble of fish that is eerily exactly outside your spear gun range and heads slowly towards you they will glide at their usual pace until you train your gun on them. Then, BOOSH, they dart away right when you were about to pull the trigger.
We were hunting parrot fish, these are supposed to be some of the easiest fish to spear because of their slower movement and larger bodies. They also look really dumb which made me want to kill them even more every time I missed.
Lucky for everyone involved, the evening meal was not relying totally on my efforts. Ruo was a master of spear fishing. Diving down under the fish to shoot, he would emerge from the water with a fish on his spear almost every time. Holding the spear over his head he would let out a loud "Yipee!" signaling Alan to row the boat over so Rou could dump the fish and go down for another one. In a couple hours he caught 19 fish, enough to feed everyone for two nights.
After quite a few misses Jean Lou decided that I had scared all the fish away from that side of the coral and we should proceed to the other side before we started to scare Rou's fish as well. Walking over the top of the coral head in my giant flippers holding a spear gun trying to be very quiet so as not to spook the fish I felt like Elmer Fudd. I don't think he ever shot anything either.
Getting to the other side of the reef. I received new instruction from Jean Lou. I should use the coral to hide behind, dive down to the bottom and stay still if possible and not look the fish in the eyes or they will run away. At least I thought those were the instructions since we were communicating in a mixture of broken french and charades.
After swimming around a bit, I spotted a school of 5 parrot fish. It was the most I had seen together all day and they were swimming by a man sized piece of coral growing out of the sandy bottom. I took a deep breath and swam down to the bottom crouching behind the coral. My heart was beating quickly and I was running out of oxygen. Slowly I crept around the corner of the coral to see a parrot fish right in front of me. I took aim and ZZAC! fired. I felt a tug and pumped my fist to the surface. I hit something! But when the sand cleared all that was left was my spear lying on the bottom.
I kept trying till the sun got low in the sky but never managed to get anything. The only other highlight I think I should mention is creeping around a corner of coral to come face to face with a giant brown round puffer-fish about the size of a basketball. He looked like something out of a cartoon and when he saw me his eyes got large and his mouth fell open. I can imagine that we were thinking the same thing "Dang, that's a big fish." He was surprisingly fast for his size and quickly turned around and darted over the reef before I could even think about lifting my spear gun.
Later eating dinner over a delicious plate of steamed parrot fish. Ruo and Jeanlou told us that it was possible to shoot fish from a boat with a flare gun. It sounds like deer hunting with a bazooka and totally illegal but its probably more my speed.