Denizens of the Deep

by Philip Wylie

  Cautiously, I bent over, and near lost my balance, and bent farther and made a swipe. I had him. I heaved again, bringing him along, threshing wildly now. I grabbed his bill with both hands and pressed him against the gunwale. I was sensible of something wrong in my hands, but I hung on while Larry raised the milk bottle and put the fish out of business. Then I looked at my hands. There was no skin left on the palm of either one, just a sort of combination bruise and tear which was bleeding profusely. I have never since boated a sailfish without gloves.

  But it was sailfishing, even more than tuna fishing, which turned ocean angling into the great sport, and big business, it is today. With the discovery that this fish could be hooked by dropping back, rather than striking immediately after it hit, the rush began. What had been an almost uncatchable nuisance—a fish that spoiled baits and seemed impossible to hook, a fish that broke up the tackle used by sportsmen a generation ago—turned into a spectacular fighter that a husky ten-year-old could manage to boat.

  The sailfish was, and is, abundant—even though many men have spent their two-week vacation, year after year, trying vainly to get one. A spectacular battler, he also makes a spectacular mount to put above a den fireplace. His meat is good to eat, when smoked, although it is illegal to take him for this purpose in Florida waters.

  Old sailfish hands usually return him alive to the sea after a tussle with him, just as old-timers return tarpon. The excitement, the relish, of his quest depends not so much on his strength and his leaping proclivities as on his variety. For, in the case of a sailfish—even more, I think, than in the case of his bigger cousin, the marlin—once he is sighted, anything probably will happen.

  Some days sailfish will seem to be so ravenous that they strike like trout, not bothering to stun their quarry first. On other days they will follow baits for miles, hitting at them, but not devouring them, yet picking up the trail again when the disappointed angler reels in and starts to troll again. Sometimes they lie on the surface with their big dorsal fins standing up like real sails, paper-dry in the sunshine. On these occasions they may come rushing for your bait along the surface, even jumping as they do so, like dolphin. On other days they may not appear at all and their strike will be made from the depths.

  Some sails fight like ’cudas—shaking their heads, ragging the bait, rattling the angler’s shoulders. Some, like wahoo, simply streak about just below the surface, sizzling the line and keeping the reel in a high song until they are spent. And still others sound immediately, like grouper, to the sea bottom, where they remain, plunging doggedly about. A few neither race nor sound, bulldog nor sulk, but expend their whole enormous store of energy within a few dozen yards of the boat in one immense, pinwheeling leap after another.

  Naturally, the first tackle used on sailfish was heavy and cumbersome, but, as the lore of the species grew, anglers tried constantly lighter tackle. The lighter the gear used, the more sporting the catch. I myself spent some seasons taking sailfish and white marlin with a 6/0 reel filled with six-thread, or eighteen-pound-test, line, on a rod tip of just under four ounces. Excepting for the fact that I had more line—several hundred yards—I have seen many men fishing for smallmouth black bass with tackle as heavy, and even heavier.

  On such tackle, the sailfish presents several stimulating problems. It is difficult, to begin with, to drive in the hook when any yank of more than eighteen pounds will snap the line. The drag cannot be set very high, for the same reason, and a sailfish can pull against a twelve-pound drag, say, indefinitely. Indeed, it would probably be impossible to take sailfish on such gear if they had the sense to select a straight course and simply stay on it until they had taken out all the line—at which point, by one more tail stroke and muscle spasm, they could break same. Fortunately for the angler, however, sailfish usually aren’t that bright.

  Occasionally, however, I have stood by, helpless, while a hooked sail simply took off every inch of my six-thread and went on afterward, trailing some long fragment of it in the sea. But, with a five-ounce rod tip and nine-thread line—still very light tackle—any angler, even the novice, is equipped to do business with a sail. Light tackle, in my opinion, is best for the novice, owing to the fact that heavy gear gives him the false impression that he can exert any amount of pressure at any time on the sea-smashing fish. The result of that impression is, frequently, a sudden heave which pops the heaviest line and leaves the angler sans fish, and perhaps flat on the deck besides.

  People sometimes ask me if, in my opinion, fishing isn’t inhumane. They think of a fish as a sensitive and affectionate creature like themselves and the sight of a hook reminds them of how it hurt when they ran the sewing machine over their thumb. They do not realize that what a hooked fish feels is probably rage and possibly fear but certainly not pain in our sense. Any angler has too often watched an injured fish, torn, slashed, gutted, tailless—calmly go back to its school and begin feeding, unaware of more than inconvenience—to make the mistake of thinking that fish suffer cruelly.

  Fish live on fish, which may be a scary business for fishes, but it is not painful. And fish fight each other, especially sails. I have often caught one that has been repeatedly reamed clear through by the bill of another sailfish. The round holes had healed and scarred over. I have caught them with fresh holes in their flanks. And once I saw a sailfish caught in which the broken bill of an antagonist was still buried.

  I am also often asked how it is that I find fun in going out, year after year, to catch the same fishes in the same fashion and then—to turn them loose again. Part of the answer, as I’ve implied, is that fishing is never twice the same. The sea itself has no two identical days. But the angler, if he has the time to spend and the interest, generally becomes, in the end, less angler and more naturalist.

  And I have known dozens who gradually became sea students. For, though we think of the world as well explored, most of the sea is terra incognita. The habits of sea creatures are poorly known. The sail—familiar as he is—is enigmatical. Where does he spawn? Nobody can tell you exactly. How? Who knows?

  Nowadays, when Mrs. Wylie and I go fishing, we are apt to go in a glass-bottomed boat and, sometimes, without one hook or line or rod on board. We go to look. Over the coral reefs, along the inside ranges of the sailfish, we drift and stare and study.

  Maybe we’ll learn something new about fishes this way. Maybe we’ll even spot a new fish.

  The admirable barracuda

  “Hey!” called a friend of mine to a casting companion, “look behind you!”

  The gentleman so addressed stopped wading in the gin-clear water of Florida Bay. Shore was a good two hundred yards distant. His salmon fly lay unattended on the placid surface. He looked back—and turned pale.

  Behind him, between him and the narrow beach, three dark, torpedo-shaped bodies lay motionless. Under a few inches of water, they looked dark; not black, but greenish-brown and each was at least four feet long. Perspiration burst upon the face of the fly-casting gentleman but his inward sensation was one of chill, for the three fish were specimens of Sphyraena, the Great Barracuda of Florida and the West Indies.

  By and by the gentleman, who had been wading and casting for smaller breeds of fishes, spoke shakily to my friend “What’ll I do?”

  “Walk along a bit and see how they react.”

  “Don’t they hit things that move?”

  “Well—you can’t just stand there, the rest of your life.”

  The gentleman walked forward, nervously. The ’cudas, without much show of effort, swam along, keeping their distance. The fact that they kept their distance encouraged the fly caster. Gradually he altered the direction of his steps, curving them in toward shore. The ’cudas, like a trio of private eyes in a mystery story, tailed him right up to the place where the sea margin became so shallow that their dorsal fins showed. The gentleman made the beach. He sat down and tremulously lighted a cigarette.

  He had had a narrow escape from a hideous fate, he felt.
The “tiger of the sea,” the “terror of the sea,” the “most dangerous” of the true fishes, the “fish that is worse than any shark,” had stalked him. And not just one, but three of them! If they’d been a little hungrier, he thought, or if he’d made too much splash as he walked carefully on the marly bottom, curtains for him! A bullet-like acceleration and the fearsome teeth would have clamped on his leg muscles, tearing out chunks as their lunges carried them beyond his legs. Maybe he’d have made shore after that and maybe not but, in any case, he’d have been a cripple for life. So he believed.

  But my friend, an old-timer in Florida, came ashore, too. He was laughing. “Scare you?”

  “Scare me!” The voice squeaked.

  “They won’t hurt you! Barracuda have a bad reputation they don’t deserve. I’ve walked the flats, casting, a hundred times, with one, or two, or a whole school of ’cudas tagging after me.”

  “Yeah?” Doubt in the tone.

  “Yeah. Fish are full of curiosity. Make a funny noise and they’re as likely to investigate as to scram. Wade the flats, and they tool along behind you just for fun. Come on. Let’s go fishing.”

  My friend waded back into the sea and the ’cudas lined up behind him. He ignored them. Nothing happened. . . .

  What’s the truth about the great barracuda? Is he dangerous to man, as some say? As even the dictionary says?

  Well . . . yes and no. The answer’s complicated, and fascinating.

  The Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce won’t like the next pieces of that answer. But they happen to be illustrative.

  A good many years ago another friend of mine was on his way to Miami from New York by steamer when he made the acquaintance of a very sad-seeming, middle-aged man. My friend eventually learned the cause of the stranger’s sorrow. He was on his way to Florida to bury his son. His son had been swimming somewhere off the beach, near shore, when a barracuda had hit him, taking his arm off at the shoulder. Shock, and the loss of blood before he could get the hemorrhage staunched, had cost his life. One bite, one arm, and death.

  There used to be an elevator operator in one of the Miami Beach hotels who wore a pinned sleeve. A good swimmer, he had tried one day to swim across then-pretty, now-polluted Biscayne Bay, a stretch of water which lies between Miami and Miami Beach. About halfway out, he’d been hit by what he is sure was a barracuda. It came faster than any shallow-water shark, he reported. He had a glimpse of “silver sides and black splotches” as it struck him. He lost so much of the muscle tissue of his arm that amputation was necessary. However, a boat was accompanying him, so he was pulled out of the water immediately. The bite was low enough to leave room for a tourniquet. He lost an arm but not his life.

  Was the old-timer, who advised that it is harmless to have a bevy of barracudas following you as you wade around, dead-wrong? Or was he right?

  Is the presence of the big ’cuda near a bathing beach so rare as to make the risk of meeting one negligible? Is it, as they say, a thousand times safer to swim off south Florida than to cross any street at a busy intersection in the rush hour? Obviously, it is safe. Such frightful accidents as the two reported above are almost as scarce as damage done by meteors and far scarcer than injury by, say, lightning. But that is not owing to the rarity of ’cudas inshore.

  Several years ago, at a cabana club where we spent part of nearly every day, some of us took to wearing goggles in order to observe the small, bright tropical fish which inhabited the groines. “Groines” are long walls extending into the sea to hold the sand and to encourage the deposit of additional sand. They are made of piles driven deep and bolted to beams, or of corrugated iron. Barnacles encrust them and gaudy fishes, an inch or two in length, swarm in their waterlogged recesses. By wearing goggles and swimming under water three or four feet down alongside the groines, one is able to study that beautiful, miniature world.

  Also, barracudas. The first one I saw was about four feet from the round glass face of my goggles—and about four feet long. I had finished an underwater stroke and taken hold of a rough piling to anchor myself for a look at lesser fauna. I was, in other words, merely floating there, a few feet down. So was the barracuda. His gills worked. His mouth was slightly open. I could see, with an extreme clarity, the ivory-colored teeth which give him his reputation. Each tooth, in a fish of that size, is about like one of your own canine teeth. I could also see the ’cuda’s eyes which were fixed on me with an unreadable expression. He just stayed there, doing nothing.

  I pushed myself back a ways. He came toward me exactly the same distance. So I reversed and went toward him. He retreated—the same distance. That encouraged me—a little. I let go and swam, still under water, toward the fish. He gave me what I think of as a dirty look, turned calmly, and was gone like an arrow. I then came up for air, which I needed.

  Subsequently, I ran into numerous ’cudas along the groines. Occasionally, I have seen their dark shapes streaking amongst a horde of swimmers. It is known generally to lifeguards and to anglers that barracudas hang around groines, probably to feed on the small fish there. Yet millions of people swim with those ’cudas and years go by without anybody getting bitten. Sunburn causes a hundred times as much pain, suffering and even real trouble. And if any one does get bitten, the ’cuda is almost invariably blamed although, perhaps, it wasn’t a barracuda at all. A shark, perhaps.

  Even a little shark, a sand shark, a nurse shark, one of the small black-tips that frequent shallow water. They are called “harmless” and time was when I treated them with contempt. Last year, however, a friend of mine, a former parachute trooper who relaxes these days by goggle-fishing on the larger and more formidable reefs, harpooned one of those “little” sharks and tried to grab it. The shark cut around, grabbed him—and he got a nasty bite. Last year, too, a scientist at work in the “pens” of the Lerner Marine Laboratory in Bimini tangled with a “baby” shark and received a bite that meant a tourniquet, plasma, a fast trip by air to a mainland hospital and many days in mending. So I have grown cautious about harmless,” “baby” sharks of fifty or a hundred pounds! Baby lion cubs are often docile. But sharks. . . . ?

  And yet, the ’cuda isn’t exonerated.

  We’d been bottom-fishing all day with Leo Johnson, one of the most sea-sophisticated guides in all the Florida Keys. Twilight descended over the tranquil Bay, the thousands of square miles of knee-deep, neck-deep, fish-teeming water. The last ruddy-gold of the sunset dyed the surface and turned near-by islands a theatrical green. My hands, as is common with anglers’ hands, were a bit fishy. Idly, I reached one overboard to wash in the warm salt water.

  “For God’s sake,” Leo cried, “don’t do that, Phil!”

  “Why?” My hand came out, fast.

  Leo grinned a little. “Twice, just about this time of day, after sitting still as we’ve been doing, when I dipped my oars, big ’cudas charged from nowhere, hit the blades, and broke the oars. It’s the sudden splash that brings ’em, I guess—like the one you just made. They’re lying around—see the riffle—and hit before they stop to figure whether it’s an oar blade or some damned writer’s good left hand.”

  It takes a lot of power to bite a chunk out of an oar blade.

  Barracudas have that power. If the reader can bear with more personal testimony, it will be shown how much steam they have.

  Let us go back twenty years, to the time when an old fresh-water angler, a brook-trout man, a black-bass, pike and muskie fisherman, was getting his first taste of what happens when you drop a line in the ocean. We’re on board the charterboat Fish Hawk, out of Miami, en route to Key Largo. Sailfish baits are skittering. Tom Frazure, the skipper, puts out a center line—a heavy line, a line like sash cord, with a wire leader and a big spoon. It is made fast to a cleat on the gunwale and, for a while, Tom jigs it—yanking in a yard of line and letting it drop back to give the spoon a darting, fishlike motion. By and by Tom turns to some other task and our novice ocean angler decides to continue jigging the center line.<
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  As an old fresh-water man, he has done this before. He is unalarmed by any possibility. So, to give himself a more comfortable hold on the line, he takes a half-dozen turns around his hand. There he stands, at the low stern, jigging away and inextricably attached to the heavy line—a moron and imbecile, if there ever was one—named Wylie. Philip Wylie.

  Comes a strike. None of your rainbow trout, pickerel or even muskie-type strikes. Our halfwit hero’s arm is nearly yanked out of its socket. He is spun about and hurled against the stern. He exerts all his strength but he loses his balance nevertheless and is hauled toward the sea where the propeller is furiously churning. A mighty force is acting upon him. But, as he shoots overboard, he grabs a stern-post which, luckily, happens to be in his path. His free hand takes a death grip. His torso, hips, feet fly out and down. His ankles hit the water and he bends up his knees, to keep the “wheel” from chewing up his tootsies. His right arm still points seaward, straight and tense, as the big ’cuda that dragged him across the stern now tries to drag him the rest of the way. A quick mate and a horrified wife grab the inboard residue of the fisherman. After a tug-of-war, they get him back into the cockpit. Line is unwound from the bruised hand; the strained arm is freed; a glove-wearing mate brings in the fish. Forty-six pounds of barracuda that nearly caused the undoing of a hundred and sixty pounds of nitwit.

  Since that day, I have never wound line around my hand, finger, or any other part of my anatomy. Not when there was a hook on it and the hook was in salt water!

  So much for the power of the ’cuda, his reputation and the various menacing or deadly experiences that are had with him. How do they add up? Is it true that ’cudas hit only moving objects? Is it true, as the Bahama natives assert, that they hit white men but never black? Is a good suntan a protection for a white swimmer? Are ’cudas “man-eaters”?

  After twenty years of personal experience and close observation, after discussions with hundreds of guides and scores of Bahama natives, after much technical reading and careful inquiry among scientists, I still have very few positive ideas about the behavior of the great barracuda in respect to man. It isn’t news that ’cudas sometimes bite men—and women, and children. They do. But it may have been news to most readers that ’cudas are often plentiful in regions patronized by bathers and that bites in such regions are rare, almost nil. Here, then, are some reasonable generalities, to which, I fear, exceptions may be possible: