CATCHING IN KIRIBATI:

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"Is she going to vomit?" asked the youngest of the three fishermen in Kiribati language (pronounced Kiri-bahss) to Teuta as we motored away from Swell in the 14ft tinny. It was obvious Teaboka wasn't thrilled about adding my company to their weekly Saturday fishing expedition. Truthfully, I wasn't sure I was either. Teuta translated his question with a smile.

"Does he know I sailed here from California?"

We laughed together as the boat bounced toward the rocky shore in the drizzling rain. Heaving it up the beach, Tababa and Teuta began to search for the roundest among the coral stones lining the water's edge. I took note of the desired specs and hunted, too. When Teaboka returned with a pile of large round leaves, the empty rice bag was nearly filled with coral 'softballs'. We piled back in the tinny and headed out the pass for open sea.

Rain had pummeled Swell's closed hatches throughout the prior night. I'd lain awake, regretting having opened my mouth about wanting to go fishing. But it was too late to get a message to Teuta through the coconut telegraph before dawn. The storm persisted. Kiribati fishermen are regularly lost at sea. It's just an accepted part of life here. "What if the engine dies? What if I'm bad luck and we don't catch anything?" I'd worried.

As we trolled hopelessly for an hour to catch flying fish for bait, I tried not to let on that my presence was surely the reason. I smiled optimistically and delighted in observing the details of their techniques. Each man had three distinct sets of handlines wound around the buoys that wash ashore on the windward side of the island: one for catching bait, another for trolling, and one for tuna. I watched the meticulous way Tababa gutted and lashed the hermit crab onto the hook using a piece of dried grass. It was clear he was our foreman.

With three flying fish aboard, the men let out their trolling rigs and we sped out to sea with three lures in tow. After an hour the atoll was just a smudge on the gray horizon. There were no fish aboard and the weather was merciless. "Of all days I could have chosen to go fishing." I thought to myself. With my back to the wind, the rain was a cold, steady pelting interrupted sporadically by warmer dousings of seawater.

Tababa looked at me and smiled, "We outside, but you still in the house!" I looked around guiltily at their useless ripped and rotten raincoats; I was practically dry in my head to ankle Patagonia slickers. After another hour we had two five foot wahoo aboard and a few skipjacks but the squalls and seas had worsened. (I returned later that day to find out that the 40-knot gusts had broken the chain of another sailboat in the bay where Swell was anchored.) No one here carries radios or flares or auxiliary engines. There are no Coast Guard regulations, let alone any rescue boat to call at all. A failed engine would send us drifting towards the Gilbert or Marshall Island groups, about 2,500 miles from were we were. I sent 'happy thoughts' to the 15hp Yamaha on the back of the tinny and praised myself for stashing a handheld GPS and VHF radio at the bottom of my drybag the night before.

As we fought our way back toward the island, we spotted a man in a lone outrigger. His paddle was useless against the vicious wind. Using the thick monofilament of a tuna handline, we tied the outrigger to the back of the tinny and proceeded into the headwinds. The man in the teeny hand-made boat seemed rather jolly and relaxed despite his perilous situation--typical Kiribati. Shortly after, we spotted another man in need of help. Soon we plowed landward like the three body segments of a water-walking insect.

"I was blown offshore once. I drifted for three days." Teuta recalled. My eyes widened in hopes of summoning details. He grinned and non-chalantly told the tale of a similar windy day, being blown offshore and then randomly spotted by a passing Coast Guard plane who dropped him a liferaft and subsequently sent his coordinates to a rescue boat. He'd been unbelievably lucky; I'd heard of others drifting for months. I gently pat my drybag. Turning to check our progress, I was relieved to see the atoll was now at a swimmable distance. We dropped off the two rescued outriggers and they each handed over a large tuna filet in show of their gratitude.

Back to business, our next pursuit would be the tuna. This technique would include the rock and the leaf and I was terribly curious how it would all come together. We dropped an old car rotor over the side as an anchor and then let out 200 feet of line, allowing us to dangle out off the reef shelf above the abyssal deep to which the seafloor immediately plunged. Thankfully, the sun peeked through the clouds to dry and warm our soaked skin. Teuta opened coconuts for drinks and snacks and I pulled out a bag of peanuts and offered them around. Neither Tababa nor Teaboka had ever eaten a peanut. For a few minutes they were absolutely taken by the salty little delicacy. After puffing a pandanus-leaf cigarette and munching on peanuts, raw tuna, and coconut meat everyone revived a bit and thoughts turned back to fishing.

To perform this tuna magic trick, they first went about gathering a handful of bait. If one man was using the knife, the other would simply bite chunks of fish flesh off of whichever was closest--a flying fish or a skipjack, and then spit them into a pile on one of the round green leaves we'd gathered earlier. (The Kiribati have a wholly different relationship with fish in general.) Then they'd bait a fairly large hook and fold it, plus the remaining loose pieces of bait inside the leaf. After selecting a stone, they'd wrap the thick monofilament of the handline around both the leaf and the stone turning them into a compact package. With a lucky hoot it was dropped over the rail. A loop in the last wrap of the line with a piece of leaf wedged inside temporarily held the bundle together until it sunk to 300-feet below the sea. There a swift jerk from above opened it, sending the stone to the seafloor and scattering the extra bits of bait to 'chum' the 'big momas', as they referred to them.

Teaboka caught one first. They worked together in smooth unison, gaffing and killing the fish with three swift 'waps' of a hand-carved club. I would have been thrilled at the size of the golden striped beauty myself, but it seemed only a trifle above disappointing aboard this vessel. While the knife was free (I wasn't quite ready to gnaw on the half-chewed flying fish that had been sitting in the sun), I sliced up some bait and tried my hand at crafting one of these rock and leaf tuna attracting devices. Tababa let me use his handline to drop it over the side with my version of a fish yelp. I concentrated in angst (fearing the loss of a digit if I wrapped it around my big toe like they did). Suddenly, it felt like I'd snagged a sinking freight car. The monofilament wheeled off the handline in hot stings of friction across my bare hands but I managed to keep the spool in the boat. Once the beast had tired a bit, I began its slow haul up from the deep. After ten minutes my triceps burned and I passed off to Tababa. By the time the fish breached the surface, all four of us had taken a turn heaving on the line. When my 'big moma' came over the rail I was shocked to see that she was only slightly shorter than me. Everyone seemed much more pleased with this fish, but soon all three lines were back at 300 feet.

An hour passed with little action. Teuta hooked something but it got off. I curled into a blissful catnap on the bow...until.

"Lhiss, Lhiss," Tababa called. "You lucky. You try again." I lugged myself vertical and took hold of his line. Before I'd regained alertness, there was a tug, dead weight and then another wild belaying of the handline.shortly after, another 'big moma' of a similar size came over the rail. I studied its glowing golden stripe and perfectly-honed features--a marvel of nature to behold. I was in love with this creature for many reasons, including that sashimi would not be a scarcity.

As we motored back through the pass, Teuta lopped off the head of one of the great fish and pulled out its round red heart. Tababa and Teaboka grabbed at the lungs and other organal delicacies, but Teuta passed the heart straight to me. Although not exactly clear on Kiribati's version, I'd heard other fishermen's whispers of the legendary importance of eating the tuna heart. After a day of such bonding, how could I let them down? I reached out and took hold of the warm lump and sunk my teeth into a worthy bite, then passed the remainder around the boat. The mildly nauseating moment was well worth the grand smiles of my proud new fishing buddies.