In search of moby dick, p.7
In Search of Moby Dick, page 7
Hour after hour we patrolled. Our track took us along what must have been a fringing reef where the whale sharks might come to feed. We were not alone. Two more boats, ones with wealthy owners, were also on the prowl. They moved up and down in the same pattern as ourselves, and I saw our mirror image – a fast-moving lightweight predatory shape, silhouetted against the sea, the same outlines of ‘jumper’, engineer, and spotters. We barely acknowledged one another, it was all so routine. Only at noon – no one but me wore a watch, yet the crew knew the time almost to the minute – would we take a break. Pando cut the engine, and mercifully the noise stopped. Tonio flopped down on the outrigger, and stretched out, grateful to ease his legs. The sooty black pot was produced, and the crew gathered round. They ate with their fingers, scooping out their tiny ration of rice. A glass of water, and then there were twenty minutes of relaxation with a cigarette before ‘Uno, dos, tres’ and the motor clattered back to life.
In four days of patrolling we never saw a whale shark. If we had, Tonio assured me, we would have caught it. The problem was not in the catching of the animal. A good jumper could do that with no trouble. The difficulty was the growing scarcity of whale sharks, and actually spotting them when they were present.
On the fourth day we turned for home. The men wanted to get back to their families, and we had burned up our allowance of diesel fuel. RJ2 was one of the few boats based at Chapel Side so they dropped me off in the evening, on the beach beside the Spanish Tower. There was a particularly beautiful sunset so I walked back up the hill to where old Amadeo and Francolino had their houses. I stood on the cliff top and looked west, towards Bohol. The sun had sunk to the horizon, and below me another hunting boat was making for home across the low swells. It was going to Little Tondo, and travelling slowly. As its silhouette came across the sun, the boat stood black against a red-bronze sea. A waft of wind brought the sound of its engine up to me. I could hear the variation in the engine’s rhythm as first it laboured, then ran easy, then laboured again with the rise and fall of the following swells. It was the sound, Walen had told me, that the community would be waiting for. It was the sound of a successful hunting boat towing something heavy. The boat was now directly opposite me, a mile offshore, and very small. Behind it, perhaps thirty yards away in its wake, I could just make out a thin black crescent emerging from the water. It was the waving sickle of a huge tail, a black shadow. A whale shark was being towed home.
*
The maw of a whale shark of quite ordinary size can be more than four feet wide. When open for feeding, the mouth assumes a slightly flattened O-shape, and reveals a huge pale tunnel of a throat. Then the mouth looks like the entrance to a road drain. The animal is, of course, a filter feeder. It takes its nourishment by sucking vast quantities of sea water into its mouth, and extracting myriad tiny creatures, mainly the larvae of fish and coral, krill, and other plankton. Occasionally the whale shark also swallows small fish such as anchovies, sardines and squid. But its six thousand vestigial teeth are so tiny that it cannot bite, and the whale shark is considered harmless to man. Yet, underwater, when you see the huge head looming an arm’s length away, imagine the gaping road drain, and recall that the animal feeds by suction, you hope fervently that the whale shark keeps its mouth shut.
I was diving with face mask and flippers underneath the hunting boat I had seen towing the captured whale shark the previous evening. The boat was now anchored close off the reef at Little Tondo and the living whale shark was tethered in the shadow of the keel. One rope led from its upper jaw down to an anchor on the sea floor. A second, shorter, rope was attached to a buoy on the surface, and a third rope looped around its tail and was fastened back up to the boat. At thirty-four feet in length, the animal was nearly as long as the boat, and there was no chance that the Pamilacan fishermen could have hauled their giant catch aboard. The crew would not have had the strength to lift the whale shark, and had they been strong enough, its ten-ton weight would have sunk their boat. Even the deadweight of the animal in the water was too great to be towed twenty miles to their harbour. So when the ‘jumper’ had hooked the shark underwater, he scrambled back on the boat and helped the crew who were doing battle with their monstrous catch. Every time the whale shark dived, the crew slowly paid out the line. When it rose again to the surface, they quickly regained the slack. The struggle might go on for two or three hours before the animal began to tire of attempting to swim free. By then the crews’ hands were torn and bleeding. Then the ‘jumper’ had gone back into the water. This time he carried a knife, and swimming on to the back of the animal he cut a small nick across the fish’s spine close to the head. The effect of this cut was to disable much of the fish’s nervous system, and numb it. By this technique the hunters arranged for the animal to travel with them. A neat, round hole was cut through the shark’s upper lip, a heavy tow line passed through, and the whale shark was led to Pamilacan, swimming behind its captor like a bull being led with a ring through its nose.
Now the fishermen were waiting for Max Valeroso, the middleman, to come out in his canoe to check the size and condition of the animal and offer them a price. As Walen paddled me out for my dive, the mouth of the submerged whale shark appeared on the surface from time to time as it reared its head, attempting to see what was holding it in place. The animal swam in slow, puzzled circles trying to escape its tether, and the mouth made a slow vortex in the water, rimmed by thick speckled lips.
I had never swum close to a whale shark before. To a novice like myself, the shape of the animal evoked as much caution as did the enormous mouth. The animal is, after all, a true shark, and it looks like one. It has the same tall muscular tail, the long torpedo-shaped body with pectoral fins set low down like balancing vanes, the pointed snout (though this one was much flattened), and the same sinuous movements as it flexes from side to side. It recalls the images seen on television programmes about the predatory sharks such as the great white, mako, and whitetip. The skin of the whale shark also sends an intimidating message. Grey tinged with green, it is marked with a chequerboard of white spangles and pale bands. They bring to mind the tiger’s camouflage or the cheetah’s spots. I told myself firmly that this animal was utterly harmless, but my involuntary reaction was that this creature was a shark, and that sharks can be lethal.
The animal in front of me was vast. It was a fully grown specimen of the largest cold-blooded species of animal on earth. I had a sense of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the beast. Behind the enormous flat head, the body of the whale shark extended so far back through the water that its tail was almost lost from sight in the shadowy underwater world. And the animal was very much alive. A round eye looked directly at me. I could see the five gill slits behind the head, opening and closing as the shark pumped water in through its mouth. Occasionally the tremendous tail swayed from side to side. This was a behemoth, and in its own element. Underwater I was the intruder, slow, clumsy, and a fraction of its size. Even with the whale shark tethered in place, I felt as vulnerable as if I had stepped into a narrow stable stall containing a Clydesdale or Percheron. With no intention to harm, a really big animal can simply move sideways and crush you. The whale shark was ten times larger than any heavy horse, and before diving down to look at the whale shark I had seen a single whiplash smack from its massive tail send shock waves through the bows of the huntboat, and tip three men into the water.
I swam closer, peering into the viewfinder of the small video camera I was carrying. I was trying to place the huge head square in the frame. Shafts of morning sunlight striking down through the sea water lit up small blades of brown seagrass free-floating in the current. The seagrass distracted the eye, and still concentrating on the viewfinder, I tried to evade the seaweed and find the whale shark in the frame. The animal seemed to have vanished in the general blue-green background. Suddenly there was a gentle bump. I looked up, and realised that, carried by the current, I had run into the huge mouth, head-on. The watertight lens had tapped the animal on the snout. The whale shark took not the slightest notice. What I had thought was the general sea-coloured background in the viewfinder was actually the huge expanse of head. I realised I had a technical problem: if I tried to film from a few yards back, the lack of visibility made the shark indistinct. If I came closer, the animal was far, far too big to fit in the frame.
The solution was for me to swim along the length of the shark, and back down the other side, pointing the camera from no more than five feet away. I began the circuit, and the animal was so substantial that at intervals I had to bob to the surface, take a gulp of air, and duck back down. The shark continued to ignore me.
I passed the staring eye. It was set in a deep socket, close behind the corner of the wide mouth. In size it was a little less than a tennis ball, and had no lid. To close it, the whale shark rotated the orb and could suck it back into its head. Just behind the eye was a deep round hole, which to a layman looked like an ear. It was in fact the archaic remains of a gill, and behind it were the gill slits themselves. There were five of them, like long gashes in the skin cut by a very sharp knife. They flared and shut regularly as the animal took oxygen and plankton from the sea. Back, back along the body I swam, following three prominent ridges which extended nearly all the way to the huge tail. In places the star-patterned skin was blotched with rust-red patches which I presumed to be colonies of algae. About four feet behind the gills I passed a gash in the skin, marked by small ribbons of torn white flesh which wavered in the current. It was the place where the ‘jumper’ had driven in the hook. Later I learned that this spot was critical. The ‘jumper’ had to strike the hook precisely here, in the side of the animal, so that when the whale shark dived, the pull of the heavy rope attached to the boat on the surface turned the whale shark on its side, so it could not swim with maximum efficiency. If the hook was placed too far back in the body, or in the upper curve of the back, the whale shark was not sufficiently impeded and could swim so powerfully that the rope broke, or the thick steel curve of the hook opened out and pulled free, or the boat could be pulled under.
The belly of the whale shark was much lighter in colour. A pair of sucker fish were still sticking there, hitching a ride, unaware that their host was captive. Finally I reached the tall blade of the massive tail. It was waving gently from side to side, and as I swam round it, I again came too close. The tail struck me across the face, and to my pleasant surprise the blow was soft, cushioned by water. Back-peddling out of range, I looked along the length of the creature, and the baleful image of the ferocious shark was replaced by a totally different vision. Tied there in the warm sea, the whale shark looked like a gigantic, placid cow, but a cow awaiting the slaughter.
When I surfaced, Max Valeroso was already on his way from the shore in a small dugout to inspect the animal. He waved cheerfully at me as he passed, and by the time I got to the beach of Little Tondo most of the villagers were assembled on the sand, gazing out at the lucky hunt boat with expressions of happy anticipation on their faces. Soon a second boat appeared, this time piled high with styrofoam chests of ice which had been rushed across from Bohol. The chests were carried ashore and stacked on the sand. The shark was untethered and led towards the beach by its rope. Just before the animal parted from the hunt boat, I saw again how immensely strong it was. The huge tail suddenly reared up from the water, curled to one side, and sprang back, releasing a thunderous blow against the outrigger of the hunt boat. The strike was not deliberate. Probably it was just a reflex from the animal. Above the sudden heavy splash of the water, I heard the outrigger bar, a six-inch-thick bamboo, snap.
Small boys, stark naked, flung themselves joyously into the sea as the great bulk of the whale shark slowly approached the beach. The children were beside themselves with excitement. They swam with much splashing and yells of delight towards the huge tail. When the animal reached the shallows and the glistening back was exposed, the children scrambled up on its bulk. There they danced and cavorted like gleeful pygmies attending the funeral rites of an elephant. An adult head, sinister in tight, home-made goggles, bobbed up beside the whale shark. It was the diver who would kill the animal. He leaned across and, two-handed with a long knife, sawed down through the spine and severed the nervous system. Whale sharks lack bones, their skeletons being made of cartilage, but the diver needed his strength to cut through one of the toughest hides in the animal world. The skin on a whale shark’s back is made of overlapping tooth-like scales which have been compared to a suit of armour. The most frequent injury for the ‘jumpers’ was not being struck by a thrashing shark tail, but being severely rasped by the heavy skin.
Now the shark was dead, the villagers sloshed into the water to begin their work. The men carried heavy knives and sharpening stones, and standing chest-deep in the water, they began to carve out cubes of the flesh. The women formed a chain and passed the meat from hand to hand back to the beach or, cradling a block of flesh, waded to land. A quick dip in the water to wash off any sand, and the meat was packed into the boxes until they were full to the brim, and the styrofoam lids pressed on. The flesh was white and rubbery. In the past the meat from whale shark had little value. The flesh was dried and sold for a third the price of manta ray. It was bartered to the poorest villagers in the hinterland of Bohol. Now there were new, much wealthier clients. A dealer from Taiwan had discovered the hunting skills of the Pamilacan jumpers. He had offered to buy the meat of any whale shark they caught, and buy it fresh. The meat would be flown to Taiwan and served in fish restaurants there. The Taiwanese supplied the boxes, ice and cash. The people of Pamilacan provided the meat, the labour, and the poverty which made them willing partners in the commerce. They received 20,000 pesos for each shark, and rumour had it that the Taiwanese dealer sold the meat for 20,000 American dollars. There were thirty-five pesos to one dollar.
Ninety minutes was all the time it took for the gigantic whale shark to disappear into the white styrofoam chests. The fishboxes would be whisked away to the airport on Bohol; the shark skin and fins hung up to dry on Little Tondo’s racks. Later they would be cut in strips and sold as ingredients for Chinese soups and stews. The completely unusable body parts like the huge flat head would be towed out to the reef and allowed to sink. Diving earlier that day, I had looked down and seen a skull on the sea floor, the broad mouth grinning up in a gape of death.
It was a shocking waste of a huge and harmless animal, which normally might have had a lifespan of over a century. But I understood why the people of Pamilacan looked so happy as they butchered the animal. Virtually every member of the community would profit from that whale shark, not just Max the middleman and the successful hunters, but also the men who helped dismember the shark, the women who packed the boxes, even the teenagers of Pamilacan. There was no secondary school on the island, so in term-time the teenage pupils had to live in a dormitory across the straits on Bohol. When the boxes of shark meat were ferried from Pamilacan, the students came down to the pier on Bohol and carried the boxes to a waiting truck. They were paid a few pesos as porters, and they considered it a privilege.
Before the whale shark disappeared in chunks, en route to Taiwan, two young women arrived from KKP, the Filipino branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature. They had a one-room office beside the Spanish Tower in Chapel Side where they offered advice to the fishermen about the advantages of turning to a whale-watching programme. They also monitored the catch of whale sharks. The two women walked into the water, now darkened with a widening stain of blood. They measured the length of the body and fins – the animal was so large that they needed an architect’s field tape for this job – took flesh samples for DNA analysis, and collected external parasites like the sea lice on the skin and the internal parasites clinging to the gills. Their collections would be sent to the local university for a study on the whale sharks of the Philippines. Twenty whale sharks had been taken so far this season, they told me, and all but one were males. By the same month in the previous year, the number of sharks caught had been twice as many. Year on year, the catch was dwindling, and the hunters of Pamilacan were going farther and farther afield to find their prey.
It was a pattern that had repeated itself for one species after another. Traditionally the ‘jumpers’ of Pamilacan had concentrated on catching the huge manta ray, after which their island was named. The blacksmith family who made the steel hooks was now in its third generation, so that harvest must have continued for over fifty years. Then the big manta ray had become scarce. The reason may have been the introduction of engine boats which made the hunt more effective. So the jumpers had turned to catching Bryde’s whales, until they too were difficult to find. Now the prey was whale shark, which do not breed until they are thirty years old, so it seemed all too likely that the stock would be wiped out by the sheer proficiency of their human predators.
*
Three days after the butchery of the whale shark on the beach, I took another ride on RJ2. I asked to be dropped off at the village of Jagna on the Bohol coast where Tonio and his crew stayed overnight on their long-range scouting trips. In Jagna I found a local boat about to head southward, to set nets for devil rays. The skipper agreed to divert from his usual route if I paid his fuel costs, and drop me off on the beach at my destination, Camiguin Island. There I would find a small colony of harpooners. Perhaps they had news of a white whale.
