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Today was supposed to be our day of deep water fishing, trolling for dolphin and such. Things didn’t quite turn out that way, though.
We could tell that it would be a bit wavy this morning, so we all were careful to take sea sickness pills before heading out.
We waded out to the floating docks to meet the boat that would take us today. On the way out, Nathaniel dropped his bag of snorkeling equipment, and we couldn’t find it. It should turn up (the water is shallow and calm, so it’s unlikely go go anywhere), and we figured that it wouldn’t be needed today, so we left it until later. [Another crew found it while we were out, so Nathaniel got it back on our return.]
As we got in the “Dusky”, Capt. “Roughneck” told us that he had eaten some fish last night that didn’t seem to be agreeing with him. He warned us that he might have to take it pretty slow today.
We first had to ride about 10 miles out to our fishing area. The Dusky has one set of unpadded seats around the contour of the bow, and one pair of padded seats in the center, just in front of the control area. Capt. Roughneck announced that the center seat was the “all leader, all the time” seat. I was already sitting near the bow, so I left the center seat to Matt and Eric.
We saw a number of flying fish on the way out, including several schools (flocks?) of at least a dozen fish. We were surprised at how far they could fly.
The trip out was awesome. There were 2-3 ft waves. That’s not big by any standards, but at the speed we were going we were flying over them. Those of us in front would occasionally end up “catching some air.” My posterior ended up a bit sore.
Unfortunately, the seasickness pills weren’t strong enough. Most of the guys started to feel sick, even Capt. Roughneck. (Though in Roughneck’s case, the motion was just aggravating an existing condition.) Adam, Eric, Josh and I were the only ones who didn’t lose their breakfasts over the side. It was a good object lesson in the advantages of being on the leeward side of the boat when you don’t feel well.
We tried fishing for a while, but got not a bite. With so many of the crew not feeling well, and lack of interest on the part of the fish, we decided to skip the fishing and go snorkeling on Loo Key instead.
Loo Key was really awesome. We saw a 7-ft shark swimming around a number of times, and plenty of 4-ft barracuda. There were, of course, lots of other colorful fish, coral and sponges. We had a great time swimming down to see the sights. Even Max, who had said that he just wanted to go back to the island, had fun snorkeling. Capt. Roughneck left us at Loo Key, replaced by a relief captain who came out from the base.
After snorkeling for several hours, we went fishing for barracuda. It was fun,but not very participatory. We would putter past the reef marker that our captain knew that they congregated near. Adam would troll out the line and then set the hook when he got a bite. He’d then hand the rod to one of us to reel in. Some were successful at pulling in a fish, others not. When we did land a ‘cuda, Adam would take it off the hook (very carefully, they have teeth), hold it for display, then throw it back. By chance, Aaron, the vegetarian, pulled in a small yellow jack, which we kept for dinner.
When we ran out of bait for barracuda, we anchored the boat and swam for a while, just jumping and diving in. Adam and the skipper said that the water was 30-40 ft deep. Some of us put on our snorkel gear and swam down. Josh, Adam and I all made it to the bottom.
Adam cooked the yellow jack for us as an appetizer. We each only got a small bit, but it was very tasty. I don’t normally enjoy fish, but this was excellent.
The official meal was hot dogs, with each of us cooking his own dog. Even Josh had one; he was hungry.
We were getting full from our own dinner when the unexpected bounty appeared. It seems that the other crews who went fishing today had much better luck than we, and had much more fish than they could eat. They came by, begging us to take the leftovers. We had a good second feast of mahi-mahi, but also some others. It was all very good.
After dinner, we headed out in the war canoes to Munson Rock for a night swim. We snorkeled over the reef and looked at the animals with waterproof flashlights. After Loo Key, it wasn’t terribly exciting. The water was shallower and less clear, the fish fewer, the coral less spectacular. Since we could only see in the narrow beam of our lights, we couldn’t see a lot.
The coolest sight was when we turned off our lights and waved our hands under water in front of our faces. This stirred up the phosphorescent life and produced sparkles and glowing clouds in the water. It was really beautiful.
While sitting in the war canoe after snorkeling, we watched the night sky for a while. Because we were near the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, we saw a number of good meteors. One was one of the most amazing I have every seen. It crossed most of the sky, leaving a glowing trail behind that lasted for a number of seconds.
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