By Lester Rohrlach
It was the interaction of hunger and sheer desperation born of the blind instinct for survival of the species, and the individual, that had suddenly triggered the complete disintegration of the ocean surface for an acre in extent. The scene was utterly white with froth, splash and spray. This boiling, hissing surge of shattered water was so continuous and extensive it sounded like the rush of rapids in a mighty river. It had been born of the silence of a peaceful seascape, briefly forewarned by the excited cries of sea birds, and had exploded as of an instant.
This spectacle continued unabated for five minutes, gradually moving to the east. Baitfish filled the air like flung silver pencils. The gleam and flash of electric blue, indigo and striped chrome struck the eye as skipjack tuna leapt and plunged in wild abandon. Rolling golden flashes of big yellowfin winked in the sunlit depths close under this age-old tableau. Eat or be Eaten -- Eat and be Eaten, the iron-fisted laws of Mother Nature.
Already a dozen sleek, grey, black-tipped whalers were driving through this biological storm, rolling head and pectorals out here, whipping an agitated caudal out there, and breaking shoulders and dorsal through the foam in fast lunges as they surged about snapping at pilchards and tuna.
Above all was the swirling cacophony of screaming diving terns, plunging gannets, and the rush of the wings of uncountable frigate birds hovering, spiralling and snatching air-borne bait with the greatest of dexterity that completed the sound-track for one of Nature’s most compelling enactments out here on the gently heaving bosom of the Huon Gulf.
All around her in every dimension was the soft ethereal violet-blue and silence of the watery world, here fifty fathoms down under the surface of the Gulf. The rich cobalt hues of her back and the light, counter-shaded underside blended as one with the surrounding watery element. Her easy fluid movement betrayed not a sound of her passing. Beside her a sheer wall at the south end of Benalla Banks rose in dim majesty toward the source of light far overhead.
She had been travelling steadily west by nor’west for the preceding six weeks, passing the Woodlarks, The Trobriands, and then cape Ward Hunt. From there she intermittently followed the 100-fathom contour, more or less, until she had arrived here in this western corner of the Solomon Sea some three days ago. Fourteen hours previously in the dim light of dusk, while huge anvil-shaped storm clouds glowered and pulsated with inner lightening on the horizons far out to sea she had momentarily surprised a small pod of five dog-tooth tuna. They were cruising around a sponge-covered pinnacle resplendent with spreading Gorgonian fan corals and sea whips when she met them. The unusual result of this ‘sharp’ encounter was a speared “Doggie”. She shook the struggling 14 kg fish off her bill, whacked it for good measure, picked it up crossways, turned it around and swallowed it head first.
It had been quite a meal to take in one piece, however as a hunter without cutting teeth she had always taken her meals thus, though not generally as large. By now most of that tuna has disintegrated. She disgorged her stomach and rid herself of the jumble of bones that had begun to make her feel uncomfortable. Her stomach retracted and the shower of white bones sunk into the ink-black darkness far below.
She was a magnificent Blue Marlin in impeccable health and of immense strength, mistress of all she surveyed. Her years of growth and her 318 kgs of streamlined bulk gave her the confidence and grace that a sizeable marlin bears. She had only two adversaries to fear, one below the water, the other above.
That less natural one above she knew little of, despite two distressing encounters in previous years. The first had occurred when she was but a 15 kg ‘pocket rocket’ near Dunk Is. and ate a live slimy mackerel. The second was a year later when she carelessly picked up a dead pilchard drifting under a small canoe close to the shores of Bartle Bay.
The foe in her element she could recognize immediately when it was present. If it was of a mature, large length she gave it a wary eye and respectful space. She did not encounter this species very often when frequenting these tropical waters, but she had been hassled a few times. On one occasion some time ago, as a 90 kg fish, she had been almost caught while engrossed with a school of feeding yellowfin tuna two kilometres out from the rugged northern ramparts of ‘The Volcano’, as men call this fish-rich locality, wide of Karkar Is. on the rim of the Bismark Sea.
The big Mako came up fast from deep under and raised a sparkling shower of scales, skin and outer flesh from along her flank as she fortunately reflexed aside at the moment of truth, and out-sprinted him in a short fast chase. Her pectorals, first anal and ventral fins had instantly folded neatly flush into her form, and her great tail and body drove her as only one of the swiftest swimmers in the ocean can go.
Had this shark struck her forward of her tail, as it had instinctively intended to, that member would have been taken off with the subtlety of a chainsaw dividing a pound of butter, leaving her to sink in a helpless bloody spiral while the shark took his savage leisure, piece by quivering piece. A 234 kg mako is not to be trifled with.
Other species did not unsettle her at all. Various other sharks, dolphins, large tunas, other marlin, she accompanied them all at times, or they her, though generally she was a loner. She liked the wide-open spaces, not coming close to land very often as a generality, except where there are deep drop-offs where the landmass falls away for hundreds of fathoms.
True, in this instance to the rulebook that she does not read, she was slowly cruising the upper levels of the Banks, with 240 fathoms of water under her. Just eight miles to the nor’east there lies over 1000 fathoms of Gulf water where the Markham canyon trends easterly to eventually connect with the 6+ kilometres deep New Britain Trench.
As she turned and rose to cross a deep saddle in the Banks she became aware of faint low-frequency vibrations detected by the inner ear in the bones of her skull. The Marlin passed over the formation and quickened her pace, rising towards the east. She had not traveled more than a few hundred meters before the faint network of sensory organs that make up her ill-defined embedded lateral line confirmed for her that she was approaching a massed aggregation of excited fish. Sea birds and skipjack were feeding on baitfish, sharks were cutting through the melee and large yellowfin were picking skippies off the bottom of this turmoil.
Another super-predator, a co-inhabiter of the apex of the oceanic food chain had arrived. The Marlin moved in under one edge of the pack, expertly struck a fish with her bill as it plunged down through the froth and bubble, picked it up, turned it around and swallowed it in a gulp. Nice size this, these tuna, about 4 kilos a piece on the average. Her bodily colours intensified, a coppery sheen lit up along her sides as though by electric command and the lighter bars contrasted more sharply over her broad back and sides.
She stunned another with her bill and slid it in. Gannets plunged down close past her. A couple of ravenous remora slipped off her lower flanks and darted up among the fizzing mix of pilchards and tuna. The noise and commotion, vibrant life and sudden death all around were at a crescendo. Two more skippies were treated with dispatch before others in proximity became aware of her. Her presence instilled a Fear that even the sharks did not, and the Fear telegraphed through those hundreds of tuna with the speed and efficiency that Nature lends to her threatened members. Within less than 15 seconds every tuna had sounded and they fishtailed away some distance before forming up into a loosely knit school. Once again the seascape was almost totally silent. The birds had followed the fish as do iron filings follow a magnet.
The Marlin rose and finned slowly back and forth with dorsal and caudal fins cutting through the now slick oily surface of the foam-flecked water. She enjoyed the warm kiss of the mid-morning sun on her broad back and flanks, and soon dozed off in a light, open-eyed sleep for some time. A couple of whalers passed her by on their way to rejoin the skippies where they were even now beginning to round up another meal.
For the next four days she kept loose company with this school of skipjack and their attendants, the whalers and three old-man barracuda, taking her dues as she needed. They moved through a wide ellipse extending 30 miles out into the middle Gulf before arcing back and striking a massive tide-line where the tuna spent a couple of seemingly aimless hours before running hard and fast due south towards Nassau Bay, obeying some purpose unfathomable to men.
Having stayed with the tide-line she tracked under that taking some notice of pods of dolphin fish but little of the intermittent two-way traffic of sizable whalers that cruised languidly along in both directions a few fathoms under the logs and debris. She winkled a tripletail out of the fork of a big limb, and collected a rainbow runner while the rest of the school escaped. By mid-afternoon the Marlin found herself patrolling the deep crevassed walls of the Banks once more.
She was leisurely cruising the blue-green world of 50 fathoms, sucking in the odd tube-squid, and watchful of greater opportunity when a faint regular pattern of thrashing vibrations alerted her to upper level activity again. It seemed to be something almost lost in the mists of her poor memory, yet somehow vaguely familiar and enticing. As time passed it became a steady beat, a throaty synchronized hum coupled with a heavy beat. Information poured into her system and her curiosity was aroused, the more so as the thing above passed over and turned. The thrashing of energy-charged waters and heavy wash of a breaking wake seemed to spell the uninhibited surface action of feeding fish, even if not quite the same as usual.
She turned aside from it’s path and rose near to the surface some 100 metres to the rear, and determined that some quite large creature was swimming noisily across the water creating all this noise and motion. Or perhaps was it trying to escape all the commotion coming along hot on its’ tail? She really did not think like this, however she was quite aware of it. The agitated water moving along behind the thing excited her and drew her forward to investigate.
‘Well now, there are fish in among the wash of churning bubbles, eddies and surf; or was that a squid of some sort just ahead travelling at a good clip?’ It was a brilliant eye-catching fellow splashing through the surface now and again, only to dive and swerve and trail a long diminishing string of bubbles before popping suddenly up again. It was interesting, but small. Better to locate the fish that was making it run so.
‘There’s another a few metres to the left and down, some sort of a minnow on the run.’ It was shaking its’ head back and forth in frenzy, obviously wounded, its’ tail a silver blur, and giving out with a most peculiar rattling vibration.’ How is a marlin to comprehend the audio mechanics of wood, plastic and steel moving fast against each other? ‘Nah – that’s food for sprats, hardly worth the easy pickin’s it is.’
Moving in closer under the turbulent wash of currents and bubbles she was immediately alerted to a large bright silvery flash, as the reflection of the sun off the side of a turning queen fish. It winked and flashed again and again. Something worth nabbing was having a good time feeding right up there close to that moving, white-bellied structure. She tailed up to within six metres of that swimming top-heavy log, her presence showing to the eye of the excited beholders as a massive dark, bluey-purple shape of ill-defined form moving with wonderful economy of motion and overwhelming efficiency; an electric presence suddenly just down below the prop-wash and surface reflections.
This Marlin was hungry, and quite fearless. She lunged to take that rolling, dipping fish but it suddenly shot away and disappeared completely, only to be replaced by three large red and blue octopi swimming fast in a nose to tail tandem. The two followers never veered from the exact twisting path run by their leader. She charged up behind with her mighty bill high out of the water and mouth wide open to slurp them in. They weren’t there! She moved to strike them, and again they leapt away with uncharacteristic agility, and reappeared almost immediately. She became maddened when all three averted her twice more in like manner just as she struck at them. And she was usually deadly accurate with her bill. Her colours flushed and intensified as she struck futilely once more.
When they did not reappear she dropped back twenty meters to follow and watch. She had hardly done so when another good sized occy limped back towards her then suddenly turned and shot away; ‘Or was it a squid? What the heck, same thing, a delicious entrée.’ She lunged and this time was successful with the strike. Right on the button. The soft body gave and folded, and the tentacles spread like a ragged fan as she quickly took hold of it in her mouth. Her weak sense of taste told her little about this one, but her olfactory senses had already detected something odd about it. It wasn’t right; no sweetness, didn’t feel quite right in fact.
She had hardly begun to drop it when it suddenly stung her sharply to one side of the roof of her mouth. It not only stung, but also swiftly built up a peculiar force right there, which tended to swing her around a little. Perhaps that clumsy ‘log’ she had been following had also been stung because at that same moment it had bellowed and leapt away with a surge of speed. That did not register with her, however she knew something was wrong here.
She lunged hotly towards the side that was affected, then turned and pulled to break away from the force that tugged at her mouth. This was easy to do, yet it remained there, easily resistible, but persistent. A long narrow tickle as of something thin and hard rubbed across her left shoulder. She swung and raised her head above the water and shook it hard with growing exasperation, then turned from the scene and began swimming, powerfully, purposefully, and fast.
Almost three and a half hours had passed and the Marlin was all but fought out, exhausted almost to the point of distress. She had never been able to escape the condition she had found herself in, always tied to a small but now frightening force that seemed to emanate from that ‘log’ creature. It had forever followed her about, or stood over her when she sounded deep to pull away and lose it.
She had done all in her great power to shake it off. She had leapt and crashed, she had leapt and tail-walked and sloshed back, she had run hard and seemed to make good distance from the ‘thing’ but it remained. Its’ persistence forever coaxed and tugged, and in the end turned her up towards it many times. Several times she had almost given up, allowing herself to be lifted and led until right beside this thing with those moving, gesticulating parts of it above water. They seemed to be akin to terns on a bobbing log, independent yet part of it, however they never leapt up and flew away. More and more it seemed to her that the malevolence of the whole situation stemmed from those beings perched upon that spluttering ungainly ‘log’ thing. Fear and determination surged concurrently through her. Her great spirit lent her strength time and again just when she needed it most, allowing her to once more pull away and down.
In the end she could resist no more, pulled powerfully by that thin, now-visible force co-joined to her mouth, until she brushed against the smooth white flank of the alien creature. One final desperate surge, but to no avail. Utter exhaustion and a mortally fearful lethargy began to over-whelm her.
“Valhalla of Mighty Marlin, accept my great spirit. Here I come……….”
So weary was the Mistress, now sunk
to the nadir of her strength, that she hardly felt the light thud and sharp
little stab in her shoulder, two in succession in fact. She was aware of a lot
of movement and extraordinarily weird sounds coming from those strange ‘sea
birds’ perched up above her. One of them seemed to repeatedly make a small sun
flash rudely and brightly in her face.
Nor was she able to exert much resistance when her bill was suddenly gripped and held, accompanied by a metallic ‘Click.” She was being pulled along by that strange soft force that gripped her bill. For several minutes fresh water washed into her gaping mouth and across her starved, blood-rich gill filaments. She began reviving, gentle undulations of energy rippled. She bit down hard and found herself pushed away and released. She sank back fully into the water, feebly stroked her mighty tail and stabilized, regained orientation, and slowly slid from the view of her ‘foeman’ who lives above the water.
All pics by L. Rohrlach, taken from Wahoo at Arkona FAD
First published in an Annual Year Book edition of Modern Fishing
© Copyright 2001-2004 Lae Game Fishing Club and Lester Rohrlach. All Rights Reserved.