April 2009

The title of this blog is a little throwaway line from the Florida Museum of Natural History regarding silky sharks, so named, according to the museum, “because of its smooth hide.”

Well, yes, the hide is kind of smooth if you stroke it one way but then again, if you go against the grain it’s like sandpaper. Which I learned when Elvis grabbed a six-foot-long silky shark in about 30 feet of water and brought him up to the surface just so, you know, I could have a look at him. Since I wasn’t diving like the rest of the boys, my job was to cut up a large red snapper that Elvis was going to feed to this school of circling sharks. Presumably after everyone got out of the water.

Elvis brings up a silky shark. Photos by David Lansing.

“Silky sharks are not generally dangerous to divers, but in the presence of speared fish or if approached directly, they can become aggressive, and therefore should be considered a potentially dangerous shark.”

As I rubbed my hand along the belly of the shark which floated upside down on top of the water as Elvis held its tail and head—sort of like you’d support a toddler just learning to swim—I asked him if these things were dangerous.

“Usually, no,” he said.

I love that. Usually, no. But maybe sometimes, yes?

I was tempted at that moment to toss in just a little taste of the snapper I’d cut up with Elvis’ dive knife—maybe the head—just to see if, in fact, it might become less docile “in the presence of speared fish.”

A silky shark waiting for me to give him a snack.

Which is when Pedro popped to the surface, also holding a five- or six-foot long silky shark by the tail. Greg was right beside him. “He tapped me on my back and I turned around and he was holding this shark in his hand,” Greg said. “Scared the crap out of me.”

“This species is considered potentially dangerous to people primarily because of its size. It’s oceanic habits make contact with humans a relative rarity,however, it has been implicated in a few attacks.”

So Pedro has his shark up on the surface and is petting its stomach and Elvis has an even bigger monster next to the boat so I can reach over and feel it and in the crystal clear waters of the Jardines I can see Hardy and Fletcher at a depth of maybe 20 feet with four or five other silky sharks circling around them.

In the foreground, two silky sharks just beneath the surface.

Gosh, I’m so disappointed I’m not diving.

Eventually the boys get tired of playing with sharks and hop back in the dive boat. While they’re taking off their masks and regulators, Elvis casually grabs a big chunk of raw fish and tosses it in the water a few feet from the boat. Something that looks like Jaws comes out of the water like a torpedo and ravishes the fish, swinging it back and forth in its mouth like a dog with a large steak.

“Shit,” I say involuntarily.

“Did you see that?” Pedro says, laughing.

We all saw it.

Then Elvis takes an even larger chunk of the red snapper, ties it to the end of a long wooden pole, like a broom stick, and holds it about six inches above the water. The water explodes. Not with just one shark but three or four. They almost rip the pole out of Elvis’ arms.

“Are those the same sharks we were just diving with?” Hardy asks.

“Yes, of course,” says Elvis.

He takes the remaining scraps and tosses them out on the water. The surface is thrashed and looks like someone just dropped a couple of M-80s into the water.

The boys are silent.

Elvis says, “Are we done diving for the day?”

Uhmmm, yeah. I think so.  

Woke up this morning to stiff northwest winds and brooding cloud cover. Not good weather for fishing. We skimmed the bruised chop in the Halcón’s Dolphin skiff, Hardy and me silently watching the agitated seabirds in the mangroves and palm trees as we approached the flats.

Herons, balancing on one leg, stared at us; cormorants, perched on low branches, dried their wings in the breeze; frigates floated high above us, riding the thermals. There’s wasn’t another boat of any kind anywhere. No sign, on any of the hundreds of wild islets around us, of human existence. There was, however, wildlife everywhere we looked: turtles, iguanas, stingrays, plus a Noah’s ark of birds—ospreys, spoonbills, terns, pelicans, even a rare flock of pink flamingoes that rose up quite suddenly over the red mangroves as we passed.

Photo by David Lansing

Our guide, the suspected spy, Miguel, silenced the skiff over shallow flats. Turtle grass waved at us beneath two feet of glassy water. “Fuera,” Miguel said. “Aqui. Pronto.”

What are we going for, I asked him, “Macabi? Sabalo?”

“Ambos,” he said—bonefish and tarpon both.

I grabbed my #8 rod for bone; Hardy took the #10. The soft, muddy bottom sucked at our wading shoes, making it difficult to walk, but I was glad to have them. Sting rays—a family of three or four—rose up and muddied the water in front of me just before I was about to step on one; I hadn’t seen them. A recalcitrant cat shark, four-feet-long, ignored our approach, lazing in the warm water. Only a jab from the end of Hardy’s rod got him on his way and out of our path.

Photo by Greg Geiser

These flats seem to be a nursery for all kids of marine life. There were baby stingrays everywhere and conch shells so thick that you must pay attention to every step or you’ll end up with one of the sharp spikes going through your rubber bottoms. There were also baby jellyfish floating an inch or two off the bottom, thousands of them, the size of eggs. Our movements stirred them up; they floated to the surface, like hot air balloons rising into the sky, and swirled in the cloud of dark water marking our path through the shallows.

At one point, Hardy cast at several baby tarpon in front of an islet of red mangroves when I noticed some movement in the branches. A jutía was perched on the roots just above the water, cautiously watching us. These dog-sized mammals, endemic and rare, look like a cross between a giant rat and an obese squirrel. We’ve never seen them before but this year they are everywhere. Perhaps because of last year’s hurricanes which really upended the ecosystem in Cuba.

Photo of jutia in mangroves by Greg Geiser

Before the Revolution, there were so many different species of jutía on the island that some people kept them as pets. Then, when things got tough, they started eating them, roasting the flesh with green peppers, onions, and garlic. Now sightings of jutía on the mainland are as rare as appearances by Fidel. If the species is to survive, it will only be because of sanctuaries like the Jardines.

As I slowly waded through the flats, the jutía watched me the way a nervous dog might keep an eye on an approaching toddler. Eventually he scrambled over the mangrove roots and disappeared into the thick foliage, displacing an egret roosting in the branches.

Fishing in the Jardines isn’t just about fishing; sometimes it about everything but the fishing. 

I once started out a story about Lanai with “I hate traveling with photographers.” And it’s true. They’re a pain in the butt. Usually. A few years back I was working on a book about the deserts of the Southwest with a very accomplished photographer from the Bay Area. I loved her but I couldn’t stand to work with her. In the middle of a chile festival in New Mexico’s Hatch Valley, I left her there and after that we worked separately.

So you won’t be surprised to hear that when a major publication assigned a photographer to join me and the boys on Halcón last year for a story I wrote, I was less than enthusiastic. I even warned Hardy, who puts these trips together, that it might be a bad idea. It’s difficult getting the chemistry together for six men to live and play on a boat for a week. Particularly when there’s no shore access, as there’s not in the Jardines de la Reina. If someone is an asshole, you’re stuck with them in close quarters the whole time.

But Pedro—Pete McBride—fit right in from day one. Although he’d never done any saltwater flyfishing, he picked it up quickly. And while he was there primarily to work, he didn’t drive the rest of us crazy with demands to get up at 5 am to catch the light or to only wear bright, clean clothing so his photos would look great. He worked with whatever he was given. Plus, he could tell a damn good story at night, a requisite for being on a trip like this.

Photo by Peter McBride.

If you look at the story we put together for Outside’s Go magazine, you’ll see the remarkable results of Pedro’s photography. And you’ll wonder how he got some of those photos.

First of all, Pedro spent a lot of time in the water. He carried underwater camera housing with him wherever he went and if you happened to hook into a bonefish or tarpon or even a jack crevalle, Pedro would toss off his shirt and hop into the water to shoot the fish while still hooked.

Pedro getting into the water to shoot a jack.

Of course, this didn’t always work out. One time Hardy hooked into a good-sized tarpon and Pedro wanted to shoot the struggle with his underwater gear. The thing is, tarpon have really hard mouths and easily throw off hooks (it’s not unusual to hook ten tarpon and only get one to the boat). Plus there’s some sort of inverse rule of fighting a fish, according to Jimmi, that says if you don’t get your catch into the boat in the first five minutes, the odds increase dramatically that you will lose them.

Which is exactly what happened with Hardy’s tarpon as Pedro fiddled around in the water trying to get off a shot of the fish and Hardy in the same frame.

Bonefish captured underwater by Peter McBride.

One last thing about the photography Pedro did on that story for Outside’s Go. Usually the magazine puts a celebrity on the cover (the current issue has Andy Garcia). This was the only issue, as far as I know, that didn’t have a movie star on it. Just a great shot, taken from the water line, of Fletcher casting for bonefish.

Pedro has also made some amazing videos. Check out this short on Cuban music called “Rumba Sunday” at his web site. Just go to Menu>Photo Essays>Rumba Sunday.  

Usually what we eat on the Halcón is whatever we catch—jack crevalle, red snapper, grouper, yellow jack, amberjack, Cubera snapper. Not this year.

One day Fletcher brought a good-sized mangrove (or mud) snapper back to the boat. He asked our cook, Peachy, if it was the fried fish we had for lunch the next day. Nope, Peachy said. It was malo. “Eats on the bottom,” he told us. 

So almost all of the fish we’ve eaten has been procured by Elvis, our dive master, who goes out spear fishing in deeper water while we’re flyfishing off the flats.

Yesterday Elvis speared a massive cubera snapper, at least 40 pounds, and Pedro brought it back to the boat. Peachy looked at it with disgust.

Pedro with the snapper Elvis speared. Photo by Peter McBride.

“Es bueno,” Pedro said. “Can you cook this up for dinner tonight?”

Peachy took the fish from Pedro without saying anything else, but I knew he wasn’t happy about it. 

Here’s what I think is going on: Peachy is worried the mud snapper and the Cubera have ciguatera. This is an odd disease. You get it from eating fish poisoned from eating smaller fish that have the cigua toxin, which is neurological. Sardines and other bait fish eat algae that forms on dead coral and then the bigger fish eat the sardines and it keeps moving up the food chain, the toxin concentrating as it goes until it reaches its pinnacle in something like the 40-lb. cubera snapper Pedro brought back to the boat.

The thing about ciguatera is that it is tasteless and heat stable so cooking the fish doesn’t make it safe to eat. And if you eat fish poisoned with ciguatera, it’s like severe food poisoning—only worse. Besides the nausea and diarrhea, your hands and feet tingle and prick and you feel the need to constantly scratch them. They say you also feel like your teeth are falling out. But one of the weirdest symptoms is hot and cold inversion; you touch an icy glass of beer and it feels like it’s burning your hand or you think scalding water is cold.

I think the reason Peachy is worried about ciguatera is because of the hurricanes that ripped through Cuba last year. Groves of mangroves on some of the keys have been completely stripped of leaves. And the guides have said that the reef got torn up pretty good. Which can make for good fishing because there’s more plankton and stuff floating in the water. But it’s this same plankton that produces the dinoflagellate toxin that is eaten by the sardines and passed on to the larger reef fish—barracuda, grouper, jacks, snappers.

Last night for dinner Peachy cooked up several types of fish, as he usually does. We started with a dark sashimi, probably jack crevalle, doused in wasabi and soy sauce, followed by a whole grilled snapper and a dish of chunked white fish stewed with tomatoes and onions and olives. When Peachy came out at the beginning of dinner, as he always does, Pedro asked him if the fish stew was cubera. Peachy pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders. “I think maybe,” he said.

Perfectly edible grilled snapper. Photo by David Lansing.

The sashimi was fabulous as was the grilled snapper. I stayed away from the stew. But Pedro had several helpings.

This morning he was quiet at breakfast and excused himself after having little more than some orange juice and a little bread. We were supposed to fish together but he begged off. Said his back was bothering him and he thought he’d just rest in his cabin. I suggested he might want to take a hot shower.

“I thought of that,” he said, scratching at his hands. “But there’s no hot water this morning. I had it turned to scalding and it was still freezing. In fact, it was so cold that my hands and feet are still tingling.”

I’m sure he’ll be fine. They say ciguatera usually goes away in two or three days and seldom kills people.

Afterwards, I went down into the galley and talked to Peachy. “Qué sucedió a los pescados de Pedro?” I asked him.

Peachy smiled. “I feed it to barracuda and sharks,” he said.

 “Bueno.”

Then Peachy went back to rolling out some dough. I think we’re having pizza for lunch. With fresh sardines. I’m guessing Pedro will miss it. I might too.