Thursday, 17 February 2005
Dundee: 8:35 a.m.
Pictures from the 16th are now online. Please check The Big Trip picture index page to view them.
Dundee: 10:58 a.m.
I have been falling behind in relaying messages from the northlands of New Zealand. Allow me to rectify. The first bit of news is that Elizabeth has not been feeling well. It's either allergies or what New Zealanders call "a cold". This makes for hard work for Mom:
Up to get
the Sudafed, up for the Kleenex, up for the mosquito
medicine, up for the band-aids to cover the mosquito
medicine.
But despite their weariness, Dawn and Emily elected to out on on neighbor Gary's fishing boat:
I am so glad I
did. Emily was wavering too but made the right
decision to go also. The fishing was amazing, the
scenery was amazing, the wildlife was beyond amazing!
There were lots of different kinds of birds...I saw a school of something in the distance
that may have been dolphins, fins going up and then
disappearing. Three flying fish, huge schools of
kahawai (pronounced cow eye) that we were fishing
through...
But then, she writes "But the best was this..."
...we saw a dorsal fin sticking up out of
the water. It was probably 18 inches up out of the
water. We thought it might be a dolphin or a shark.
We motored over to it and it didn't submerge until we
got right next to it. I looked down and thought I was
looking at a whale shark. I couldn't get my mind
around the shape until Dad yelled "It's a sunfish!"
Then it made sense what I was looking at. Look one
up and figure how big one would be if the upper dorsal
fin was about 3 ft tall. Dad says it was several tons
and bigger than the boat. The New Zealander we were
with had never seen one before. It was a once in a
lifetime sight! Wow!
Wow, indeed. The
Mola mola, or ocean sunfish, is a deep ocean fish not to be confused with the small freshwater sunfish. Wikipedia says Mola mola is the
largest bony fish in the world, with recorded specimens topping
two tons. It's a gentle giant, friendly to divers, that consumes zooplankton and other small marine life. Astonishingly, Dawn's amazing report doesn't seem to be an exaggeration at all - it seems completely in line with recorded facts about this remarkable fish. The picture to the left, and many more, can be found at
this excellent site.
Regardless of this extraordinary encounter, fishermen go to sea for the fishing, and fish they did:
We caught 9 kahawai and we had put down a long line
as well and got 3 snapper on that. Oh.. and I almost
forgot. The last fish Dad hooked was a bonita...We
got the bonita in finally and it was just the most
beautiful fish. Really almost irredescent silver blue
fish. Big giant eyes and front fins that were about 6
inches long and an inch wide that looked more like
flippers. When we got back Dad, Gary and Derek said
it was only used for bait. I said wasn't that tuna?
And they said yes that it was a baby tuna. I was
outraged that they were going to cut up this beautiful
fish for bait so I took it and filleted it - with
their predictably dull knife. I got four nice size
fillets, very red meat. I can't wait to try it.
By the way, "kahawai" is pronounced "cow-eye." Sounds like this amazing trip just gets better and better.
Oh, and one last thing - Dawn reminded me in a recent email that she did in fact ask me to come. Yes, of course, my mistake. Sorry!