Five-Head Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific

by Louis Becke

the deeper pools were red, bream-shaped fish that I hadin vain tried to catch with a hook, using every possible kind of bait;but the natives assured me that I was only wasting my time, as they fedonly upon a long thread-like worm, which lived in the coral, and thata spear or the _oap_ was the only way of capturing them. So far I hadnever actually handled one, but on this occasion we secured some dozens.Here and there we caught sight of a young hawk-bill turtle darting outof sight under the ledge of the overhanging walls of coral, putting toflight thousands of small fish of a score of shapes and colours.

  We waited until the tide had fallen still lower and until the wholesurface of the great sweeping curve of reef stood out, bare andsteaming, under the bright tropic sun. Westward lay the ocean, blueand smooth as a mill pond, with only a gentle, heaving swell lavingthe outer wall of the coral barrier. Here and there upon its surfacecommunities of snowy white terns hovered and fluttered, feeding uponsmall fish, or examining floating weed for tiny red and black crabs nobigger than a pea. Eastward and across the now shallowed water of thelagoon was our village of Leasse, the russet-hued, saddle-backed housesof thatch peeping out from the coco-palms and breadfruit-trees; beyond,the broken, rugged outline of the towering mountain range, garmentedfrom base to summit with God's mantle of living green; overhead a sky otwondrous, un-specked blue.

  We were all sitting on the rocks, on the margin of the best and largestpool, smoking and chatting, when at a sign from Kusis, who was the headman (or local chief) of the village, the women took their bundles of_oap_ and laying the plants upon smooth portions of the reef began topound them with round, heavy stones, brought from the village for thepurpose. As each bundle was crushed and the sticky white juice exuded,it was rolled into a ball, used like a sponge to wipe up and absorb allthe liquid that had escaped, and then handed to the men and boys, wholeapt into the pool, and dived to the bottom, thrusting the balls of_oap_ underneath every lower ledge and crevice, and then rising quicklyto the surface and clambering out again. In less than five minutes theonce crystal water had changed to a pale milky white, thousands uponthousands of tiny fish, about half an inch in length, and of many hues,began to rise to the surface; then others of a larger size, which thewomen at once scooped up with small nets; then presently, with muchsplashing and floundering, two or three of the handsome red fish I havedescribed, with a great leather-jacket, came up, and, lying on theirsides, flapped helplessly on the surface. Other kinds, of the mulletspecies, came with them, trying to swim upright, but always fallingover on their sides, and yet endeavouring to lift their heads above thewater, as if gasping for air. Then more big leather-jackets, some ofwhich shot up from below as if they had been fired from a mortar, and,running head-on to the rocky wall of the pool, allowed themselves tobe lifted out without a struggle. It was most exciting and intenselyinteresting to witness.

  Presently up came a half-grown hawkbill turtle, his poor head erectand swaying from side to side; a boy leapt in and, seizing it by itsflippers, pushed it up to some women, who quickly carried the creatureto a small pool near by, where it was placed to recover from the effectsof the _oap_ and then be taken ashore to the village turtle-dock togrow and fatten for killing. (The "turtle-dock," I must explain, was awalled-in enclosure--partly natural, partly artificial--situated in ashallow part of the lagoon, wherein the Leasse people confined thoseturtle that they could not at once eat; sometimes as many as thirty werethus imprisoned and fed daily.)

  Out of this one pool--which I think was not more than fifteen yardsacross--we obtained many hundredweights of fish and three turtle. Allfish which were too small to be eaten were thrown into other pools torecover from the effects of the _oap_. The very smallest, however, didnot recover, and were left to float on the surface and become the preyof large fish when the incoming tide again covered the reef.

  I must here relate an incident that now occurred, and which will serveto illustrate the resourcefulness and surgical knowledge of a race ofpeople who, had they met them, Darwin, Huxley and Frank Buckland wouldhave delighted in and made known to the world. I shall describe it asbriefly and as clearly as possible.

  I had brought with me a knife--a heavy, broad-backed, keen-edged weapon,which the Chinese carpenter of our wrecked ship had fashioned out forme from a flat twelve-inch file of Sheffield steel, and Kusis had, lateron, made me a wooden sheath for it. In my excitement at seeing a largefish rise to the surface I used it as a spear, and then, the fishsecured, had thrown the knife carelessly down. It fell edge upwards in acleft of the coral rock, and Kinie, the pretty twelve-year-old daughterof Kusis, treading upon it, cut her left foot to the bone. Herfather and myself sprang to her aid, and whilst I was tying the onehandkerchief I possessed tightly round her leg below the knee so asto stay the terrible flow of blood, he rapidly skinned a large leatherjacket by the simple process of cutting through the skin around the headand shoulders and then dragging it off the body by holding the upperedge between his teeth and then with both hands pulling it downwardsto the tail. In less than five minutes the sheet of tough fish-skinwas deftly and tightly wrapped round the child's foot, the handkerchieftaken off and replaced by a coir fibre fishing-line, wound round andround below and above the knee. The agony this caused the poor childmade her faint, but her father knew what he was about when he orderedtwo of the women to carry her ashore, take off the covering offish-skin, cover the foot with wood-ashes, and bind it up again. Thiswas done, and when we returned to the village an hour or two laterI found the girl seated in her father's house with her injured footbandaged in a way that would have reflected credit on a M.R.C.S.

  After exploiting the large pool we turned our attention to some of thosewhich were wider, but comparatively shallow; and in these, the bottomsof which were sandy, we obtained some hundreds of mullet and gar-fish,which were quickly overpowered by the _oaf_ juice. In all I think thatwe carried back to the village quite five hundredweight of fish, someof which were very large: the weight of three of the large bandedleather-jackets I estimated at fifty pounds.

  In after years, in other islands of the Pacific, when I saw the fearfuland needless havoc created by traders and natives using vile dynamitecartridges and so destroying thousands of young fish by one explosion, Itried hard to get them to use either the _futu_ nut or the _oap_ plant,both of which under many names are known to the various peoples ofEastern Polynesia.

  But the use of dynamite has an attractive element of danger; it is moresudden and destructive in its effect; it makes a noise and churns upand agitates the water; its violent concussion breaks and smashes thesubmarine coral forest into which it is thrown; and its terrific shockkills and mutilates hundreds of fish, which, through their bladdersbursting, sink and are not recovered.

  Only a few years ago an old and valued American friend of mine--anex-ship captain settled in the Gilbert Islands in the NorthPacific--became annoyed at what he deemed to be the excessive prices thenatives charged for fish. The "excessive price," I may mention, meantthat he was asked a half-dollar for a basket of fish weighing, say,fifty or sixty pounds. A half-a-dollar is equal to an English florin;but no coin was handed over--four sticks ot tobacco costing the traderabout ten cents, was the equivalent. So my friend decided to show thenatives that he could do without them as far as his fish supply went.He bought a box of dynamite, with fuse and caps, from a German tradingschooner, and at once set to work, blowing off his right hand withintwenty-four hours, through using too short a fuse.

  That wretched box of dynamite proved a curse to the island. The natives,despite my friend's accident, bought every cartridge from him, singly orin lots, and they then began to enjoy themselves. Every hour of theday for many weeks afterwards the sullen thud of the explosive could beheard from all parts of the lagoon, followed by applauding shouts. Vastnumbers of fish were blown to pieces, for no native would ever think ofdividing a cartridge into half a dozen portions and using only one at atime; the entire 6-oz. cartridge was used, and sometimes so short werethe fuses, that explosions would take place on the surface,
to thedelight of the children, who said, "it was as good to hear as thecannons of a man-of-war." In the short space of eight weeks there werefive serious accidents, two of which ended fatally. I was thankful whenthe last charge had been exploded, and although the natives begged me toimport a fresh supply, I always declined--not on their account only, butbecause of the wanton destruction of fish involved.

  One day I decided to try and ascertain if _oap_ would affect fish bybeing swallowed. I prepared twenty or thirty small balls of the plant,wrapped each one up carefully in thin strips of fish flesh, so as tothoroughly conceal the contents, and took them out to the "turtle dock."The dock, although it was a safe enclosure for turtle, yet had manysmall passages through the coral rock which permitted the ingress andexit of moderately-sized fish, particularly a variety of black andred-spotted rock-cod.

  Throwing in the balls, one by one, I watched. Three of them were at