The Most "Fishfull" Passage

The Humboldt Current runs from the tip of Chile along the coast picking up nutrients and depositing them at the end, the Galapagos Islands.  The Panama Current brings warm tropical waters and the Equatorial Current, a very deep one, hits the Galapagos and surges up, bringing nutrients, plankton, and deep fish. A dozen more minor currents hit them too. There are also many different winds all year round that point to the Galapagos, carrying birds with them. Fish, headed toward the Galapagos to have an easier life with more food, are followed by their predators which include birds, bigger fish, dolphin, whales, and seals.

During our passage from Panama City to San Cristobal island in the Galapagos, we saw hundreds of flying fish, watched dolphins multiple times, saw a few whale spouts, caught two tuna, two mahi-mahi, and watched dozens of birds hunt, fly by, and rest on the water. As we arrived I said, "That was by far the most 'fishfull' passage yet."

(If parts of the next paragraph make no sense at all, it means you simply have not read a specific section of Harry Potter.)

I was sitting in the cockpit listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Mama and Jack while Daddy took an afternoon nap to help him through his night watch. Neville was about to battle the Bogart when I saw the fishing line twitch. "It could not be a fish," I thought as Snape the Bogart emerged from the wardrobe. Suddenly, I realized that both lines were twitching too much. I shouted "Fish!" and ran for one of the lines, forgetting Harry Potter (which almost never happens). The fish was small and another of the same size on the other line told me a school had passed by. Daddy, who had woken up to the commotion, came up and helped Jack land the other one. He hurried over and we landed mine. One glance proved them to be small yellowfin tuna. They were very determined to go down fighting. We put gin in the gills and cut toward their brains with a knife, but initially only succeeded in sending blood throughout the cockpit. Once they drowned in air, Daddy filleted the two unlucky tuna. Jack and I were sure that the carcasses would not last fifteen minutes, as they were tossed overboard. Ten minutes, a lot of cockpit scrubbing, and multiple buckets of water later, the fish was cut up and splashed with soy sauce and lemon. The fish was sashimi fifteen minutes out of the water.

All day, Mama slowly had been making one pizza topping after another so she would not get seasick. Daddy had come up from his nap for a few minutes. I was on watch and Jack was sitting quietly in the cockpit. Another school of ten flying fish leapt away from our hull, except this time one was snatched out of the air before it hit the water. I leapt to my feet and instantly saw splashes of fish darting to the surface, flashes off their scales as they darted below the surface, and both fishing lines much tighter than they had been with the tuna. Daddy started fighting in the larger one while I started on the other. It was too late to have fish for dinner because the pizza was ready to go in the oven, so we released the biggest one and kept the smaller mahi mahi. I held the fish out of the water while Daddy took a pole with a hook on the end, called a gaff, and stuck it in its gills. Mama hoisted the fish into the cockpit. I killed it with gin in its gills while Daddy put away the line. The two large fillets were turned into a tasty appetizer of pan-fried fish in butter and lemon. Catching the tuna and the mahi-mahi boosted morale for everyone and inspired me to keep sailing.

In addition to the fish we caught, we saw two sharks, many lookdowns, dolphins on several occasions, and whale spouts in the distance. The two sharks showed up on the second and fourth days. On both occasions, a shark circled and bit the line. Fortunately, we did not hook either of them. One thing that struck me was that when a shark would show up, we would catch two fish at the same time the next day. The lookdowns are small fish that were too small to take the lines. On the way out of Panama, the water was boiling in lots of small circles. This is an indicator that the lookdowns predators were chasing them up to the surface where they hoped to catch them. We also saw about thirty or forty dead lookdowns in the time period of an hour. A school of dolphins showed up early on several mornings during Mama's dawn watch. She came and woke me up. I loved that they would leap up from behind an upcoming wave and then dive down on our side. They also rode our bow wake. Whale spouts decorated the horizon during a few sunsets but no whales got closer than a mile away.

This passage is the type that makes me want to keep sailing around the world. We had plenty of wind for most of the passage, an intriguing destination, plenty of fish on the lines, and Harry Potter to drive away boredom. I am enjoying the Galapagos now but I am excited about the upcoming long passages to Easter Island and then to Puerto Montt, Chile. – Porter