Net Fishing in Cook Strait.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 10, 9 March 1910, Page 36

Net Fishing in Cook Strait.

(By

WILL LAWSON.)

At half-past four on a cold, clear summer’s morning, the fishing launch swings away- from her moorings, the engine begins to beat, the exhaust choking and coughing from the pipe that is just aw ash, and sometimes dips under water as the little vessel rolls gentlv. She turns obediently, and heads for the narrow passage between the island and the mainland reef. The sky to the eastward is bright with the lights that live betw-een tae dawn and the sunrise—soft, beautiful tints and clear colours that no brush can every wholly catch—but as we breast the long swe’ls there is no sign of the sun over the bluffs of Penearrow. The destination is Terawhiti, where a number of fishermen are encamped, two of this boat’s crew having gone out there last night, with boats and nets. Sinclair Head is outlined clearly against the sky, the surf fretting over the outlying rocks shows white in the morning light. The launch lurches and lifts along at her best speed. A pink glow touches the hills; lower and lower it creeps; the sun is rising clear of the ranges, and presently the beams of sunlight sweep dow-n upon sea and boat, turning the ehilly dampness of dew-wet decks to a warm moisture that befits this scene of living sea. There is no wind and no sound save the beat of the two-cylinder engine and the far-off mutter of the surf. Sinclair Head is given a wide berth; here the sea is more confused, but after the Head is passed, we run into a different condition of things—the sea merely heaves in slow pulsations, as though the ocean’s heart, broken in the battle with the immovable rocks, beat in sullen surrender.

The vessel’s head is pointed well out to clear the dreaded Karori reef. Off Terawhiti homestead, nestling among trees in a depression in a long flat which abuts high hills, the full force of the tide is met

with. It races along the coast like a river, and clashing with the southerly swell, there are tumbling, confused sea« and strange swirling patches of water, like the wake of a steamer. The engine is driven at its fullest power to breast this current. A mile out seaward there

is a quiet glassy surface on the waters, and we would miss the worst of the current by going out there, but we are making in now towards the fisherman’s camp. A small hut can be seen, indistinct in the shadow of the hills and a boat is

seen working in the bay. Presently, half a mile offshore, the engine is stopped. The boat is rowing out to us. When it sweeps alongside the fish that it carries are transformed to the launch. An animated conversation in Italian goes on. It appears that a huge blackfish, a mammal of the whale variety, has been breaking the nets and feeding upon the captured

fish. There is despair in the hearts of the fishermen, for they cannot shoot or net the marauder. With a shrug of the shoulders, the head fisherman sets his engine going, and the launch moves away to try for eod and other fish with lines The boat returns to the nets, which were set and cleared and re-set in the dark of the morning, and must now be taken up again. The men are rowing with long sweeps, standing up, and their rowing differs from the rowing of the oarsmen or the watermen or the sailor. The stroke is only half a stroke in length, all the power being imparted in a hard jerk at the end of the stroke. The oars an rudders, too; in a strong side-wind, when the wind, blowing the stern of the boat, makes a bow turn into the wind’s eye. the man on the windward side gives only a quick, heart-breaking jerk, with the

handle of the oar well forward, as the old-time Phoenicians steered. His work is to hold the boat on her course, his comrade propels her.

The first net to be taken ia is a wharehou net, 200 ft. long. Two buoys of cork mark its seaward extremity. The corks of the net are thirty feet beneath the surface and its lower side is anchored with heavy stones, for the wharehou swims deep and some of them run up to twenty pounds in weight. Each man takes a line, one connected with the corks and one with the weights of the net. The resistance of the net suggests that it is immovable; presently, however, it begins to come in. First a huge stone, twice the size of a man’s head, then the meshes of the net, all slime with weed. The net is piled in a heap in the boat as it comes in- The first captive is a six-foot shark, half-drowned by long detention in the racing tide. It is flung into the boat by request, the fishermen would have tossed it overboard again. Next come some clean-picked skeletons, showing the depredations of the shark, and then some small wharehou. At about every ten feet a huge boulder-anchor has to be taken a boa rd. The haul is not a good one. There are too many thieves about, wide rents in the meshes show where the blaekfish has been. “ Blaekfish no good.” The fisherman’s remark finds answer in a long-drawn “IVhe-e-e-w,” like wind in an attic. "THERE HE IS.” A pale cloud of vapour floats above a big black fin that is like a spoke on the rim of an enormous black wheel revolving porpoise-like in the sea. There is a gleam of white, a ribbon circling the girth of the beast behind the fin, as it dives again, close to some nets. ‘‘Every’ time go down, take-a de fish. Eat a hundred easy’.” “Worse than sharks?” we ask. Yes, he is worse than sharks, for the shark often gets netted, while the blaekfish goes right through. All the net is in the boat, and the fish are flapping on the bottom of the boat. It is time to set the net again.

A stone anchor goes over, then some net, then a stone anchor, one man paddling slowly. The eorks float bravely awhile, but one by one they succumb like drowning men. Tney dip and bob and disappear, to quiver and strain at their tethers, thirty feet below. In shallower water, where seaweed flourishes and roeks adjoin, the moki and butterfish nets are set. Skirting along the line of eorks through the clear water, the imprisoned fish may be seen, while many more captives are hidden in the seaweed. When by slow and arduous work all have been cleared and re set, the boat is beached, and an adjournment is made to the whare for tea and bread and cheese. The whare is made of a medley’ of material. “We make,” a fisherman says. And it is a creditable performance. Galvanised iron, old boxes and driftwood all find a sphere of usefulness here. Inside, there is a wide fireplace, and at the opposite end wide double bunks, four in number, fill nearly half the space. Here they live, these toilers of the sea, rent free and comfortable enough, but for the chilliness that bites through galvanised iron in the hours before the dawn, and the isolation. From elderberry’ wood a man is skil fully shaping a netting-needle, and with a similar needle another is mending a net. With the net the fish are caught, and the price of the fish pays for all the labour — adequately or otherwise, as the gods decide—but the skill is there all the time, and the endless toil. In the afternoon, the launch returns. The boat rows out to her, and another lot of fish goes into the cool hold. The coast here is too rocky 'or the drag-net to be used. “To-night, at Island Bay, we haul the nets,” says the fisherman. The engine’s beat breaks the stillness of this glorious sunlit sea.

“Good-bye, good-bye,” from boat and launch. A dark mass looms out of the sea, turns over and goes down. A faint “hoosh” sounds across the water. The blackfish is still plaving with the nets.

At dusk, at Island Bay, a fishing “dinghy” leaves the beach with a pile of net on board, rows out in a wide circle, and returns to the strand at a point about 200 yards distant from the starting-point. Then the fishermen begin to haul at each end of the stubborn thing. From the water’s edge to the rocky road they walk and pull and flipflop back in their rubber boots to take another hold. As the corks of the net draw nearer shore, the men at the ropes begin to converge until they have the ends of the net together, and out of the sea the netted fish are coming. Sightseers are beginning to gather, and they retard the workers in their eagerness to see the haul. In the shallow of the beach’s fringe of foam the ceaseless beating of fins sounds like steady rain fall ing on the water. The crowd has drawn so close that the men have to ask them to stand back, and avoid trampling the nets. But the civil requests are unheeded. Now one, now another, dives in and seizes a fish; the small ones they may take, but the large ones mean silver to the fisherman. So they fold the net over the fish and hurry to bring bags. In the hand of one in the crowd a knife is held. It flashes swiftly’, some fine fish drop into a bag, and someone laughs.

Out at Terawhiti, the blaekfish, ona of the stupidest of God’s creatures, bites at the fish in the nets and tears the nets to ribbons.