Five-Head Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific Read online

  FISH DRUGGING IN THE PACIFIC

  In an American magazine of a few months ago mention was made of the"discovery" of a method of capturing fish by impregnating the waters ofslowly running rivers or small lakes with a chemical which would producestupefaction, and cause the fish to rise helpless to the surface. TheAmerican discoverer no doubt thought he really had "discovered," thoughI am sure many thousands of people in the civilised world have heardof, and some few hundreds very often seen, fish captured in a somewhatsimilar manner, the which is, I believe, practised not only in India,Africa and South America, but in the islands of the North and SouthPacific, and I have no doubt but that it was known thousands of yearsago--perhaps even "when the world was young."

  Nearly all the Malayo-Polynesian people inhabiting the high, mountainousislands of the South Pacific and North Pacific Oceans can, and do,catch fish in the "novel" manner before mentioned, _i.e._, by producingstupefaction, though no chemicals are used, while even the Australianaborigines--almost as low a type of savage as the Fuegians--use astill simpler method, which I will at once briefly describe as I saw itpractised by a mob of myall (wild) blacks camped on the Kirk River, atributary of the great Burdekin River in North Queensland.

  At a spot where the stream was about a hundred feet wide, and the watervery shallow--not over six inches in depth--a rude but efficient dam wasexpeditiously constructed by thrusting branches of she-oak and _ti_-treeinto the sandy bottom, and then making it partially waterproof byquickly filling the interstices with earthen sods, _ti_-tree bark,reeds, leaves, and the other _debris_ found on the banks. In the centrea small opening was left, so as to relieve the pressure when thewater began to rise. Some few hundred yards further up were a chain ofwater-holes, some of which were deep, and in all of which, as I knewby experience, were plenty of fish--bream, perch, and a species ofgrayling. As soon as the dam was complete, the whole mob, except some"gins" and children, who were stationed to watch the opening beforementioned, sprang into the water, carrying with them great quantities ofa greasy greyish blue kind of clay, which rapidly dissolved and chargedthe clear water with its impurities. Then, too, at the same time thirtyor forty of their number (over a hundred) began loosening and tearingaway portions of the overhanging bank, and toppling them over intothe stream; this they accomplished very dexterously by means of heavy,pointed sticks. The work was carried out with an astounding clamour,those natives in the water diving to the bottom and breaking up thefallen earth still further till each pool became of the colour andsomething of the consistency of green pea-soup. Hundreds of fish soonrose gasping to the surface, and these were at once seized and thrownout upon the banks, where a number of young picaninnies darted upon themto save them being devoured by a swarm of mongrel dogs, which lentan added interest to the proceedings by their incessant yelping andsnapping. As the slowly running current carried the suffocating andhelpless fish down-stream the hideous noise increased, for the shallowstretch in front of the dam was soon covered with them--bream, and theso-called "grayling," perch, eels, and some very large cat-fish. Thelatter, which I have mentioned on a previous page, is one of themost peculiar-looking but undoubtedly the best flavoured of all theQueensland fresh-water fishes; it is scaleless, tail-less, blue-greyin colour, and has a long dorsal spike, like the salt-water"leather-jacket." (A scratch from this spike is always dangerous, asit produces intense pain, and often causes blood-poisoning.) Altogetherover a thousand fish must have been taken, and I gazed at thedestruction with a feeling of anger, for these pools had afforded mymining mates and myself excellent sport, and a very welcome change ofdiet from the eternal beef and damper. But, a few days later, after ourblack friends had wandered off to other pastures, I was delighted tofind that there were still plenty of fish in the pools.

  * * * * *

  Early in the "seventies" I was shipwrecked with the once notoriousCaptain "Bully" Hayes, on Kusaie (Strong's Island), the eastern outlierof the Caroline Islands on the North Pacific, and lived there for twelvehappy months, and here I saw for the first time the method of fishstupefaction employed by the interesting and kindly-natured people ofthis beautiful spot.

  I had previously seen, in Eastern Polynesia, the natives drugging fishby using the pounded nuts of the _futu_ tree (_Barringtonia speciosa_),and one day as I was walking with a native friend along the beach nearthe village in which I lived, I picked up a _futu_ nut lying on thesand, and remarked that in the islands to the far south the people usedit to drug fish.

  Kusis laughed. "_Futu_ is good, but we of Kusaie do not use it--we have_oap_ which is stronger and better. Come, I will show you some _oap_growing, and to-morrow you shall see how good it is."

  Turning off to our right, we passed through a grove of screw-pines, andthen came to the foot ot the high mountain range traversing the island,where vine and creeper and dense jungle undergrowth struggled for lightand sunshine under the dark shade of giant trees, whose thick leafybranches, a hundred feet above, were rustling to the wind. Here,growing in the rich, red soil, was a cluster of _oap_--a thin-stemmed,dark-green-leaved plant about three feet in height. Kusis pulled one bythe roots, and twisted it round and round his left hand; a thick, whiteand sticky juice exuded from the bark.

  "It 'sickens' the fish very quickly," he said, "quicker than the _futu_nut. If much of it be bruised and thrown into the water, it kills thelargest fish very soon, and even turtles will 'sicken.' It is verystrong."

  I asked him how the people of Kusaie first became acquainted with theproperties of the plant. He shook his head.

  "I do not know. God made it to grow here in Kusaie in the days that weredark" (heathenism) "and when we were a young people. A wise man fromGermany was here ten years ago, and he told us that the people ofPonape, far to the west, use the _oap_ even as we use it, but that inPonape the plant grows larger and is more juicy than it is here."*

  * The "wise man from Germany," I ascertained a year or two afterwards, was the well-known J. S. Kubary, a gentleman who, although engaged in trading pursuits, yet enriched science by his writings on his discoveries in Micronesia.

  Early on the following morning, when the tide was falling, and thejagged pinnacles of coral rock began to show on the barrier reefopposite the village, the entire population--about sixty all told--wereawaiting Kusis and myself outside his house. The men carried small,unbarbed fish-spears, the women and children baskets and bundles of_oap_.

  From the village to the reef was a distance of two miles, which we sooncovered by smart paddling in a dozen or more canoes; for had we delayedwe should, through the falling tide, have been obliged to leave ourstranded crafts on the sand, half-way, and walk the remainder.

  I need not here attempt to describe the wondrous beauties of a South Seacoral reef at low tide--they have been fully and ably written about bymany distinguished travellers--but the barrier reef of Strong's Islandis so different in its formation from those of most other islands in thePacific, that I must, as relative illustration to this account of thefishing by _oap_ mention its peculiarity.

  Instead of the small clefts, chasms, and pools which so frequentlyoccur on the barrier reefs of the mountainous islands of Polynesia andMelanesia, and which at low tide are untenanted except by the smallestvarieties of rock-fish, here were a series of deep, almost circular,miniature lakes, set in a solid wall of coral rock with an overlappingedge, which made the depth appear greater than it was, especially whenone stood on the edge and looked down to the bottom, four to six fathomsbelow.

  In all of these deep pools were great numbers or fish of many varieties,size, and colour; some swimming to and fro or resting upon the sandybottom, others moving upwards and then downwards in the clear water withlazy sweep of tail and fin. One variety of the leather-jacket tribewas very plentiful, and their great size was excelled only by theirremarkable ugliness; their ground colour was a sombre black, traversedby three broad bands of dull yellow. Some of the largest of these fishweighed quite up to 20 lbs., and were valued by the natives for t
heirdelicacy of flavour. They would always take a hook, but the Strong'sIslanders seldom attempted to capture them in this manner, for theirenormous, hard, sharp, and human-like teeth played havoc with anordinary fish-hook, which, if smaller than a salmon-hook, they wouldsnap in pieces, and as their mouths are very small (in fact theleather-jacket's mouth is ridiculous when compared to its bulk), largerand stronger hooks could not be used.

  Another and smaller variety were of a brilliant light blue, with vividscarlet-tipped fins and tail, a perfectly defined circle of the samecolour round the eyes, and protruding teeth of a dull red. These weespecially detested for their villainous habit of calmly swimming up toa pendant line, and nipping it in twain, apparently out of sheer humour.Well have the Samoans named the leather-jacket _Isu'umu Moana_--thesea-rat.

  In one or two of