Collecting the fish - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 227

señoritas ( Oxyjulis californica ) and to scout around under ledges and
boulders looking for sleeping horn sharks and swell sharks.
The trick to catching garibaldis and señoritas is to break open a red
sea urchin to attract the ever-hungry señoritas. Before they can even smell
the tasty urchin, they respond to the noise made when it's broken open
with a knife. Resting motionless on the bottom next to the broken urchin,
I waited with my hand net poised just above it. A half-dozen eager, com-
petitive señoritas swam over, and a couple of them—with one eye watch-
ing me—moved onto the urchin. For a split second they looked down,
intending to take a bite of urchin roe, and at that moment I swooped
down with the net and they were caught. Quickly transferring them to
the plastic bag tucked under my wet suit crotch strap, I was ready for
the next ones. Attracted by the commotion, an adult garibaldi came over
to check out the action. Keeping one eye on me, it moved in for a bite,
but then it, too, looked down for one critical moment and into the bag
it went. After ten minutes the plastic collecting bag was at capacity with
eight or ten fish and needed to be taken up to the holding tank. After
dropping the fish o¤, back down we went for more.
While two of us netted the señoritas and garibaldi, two other divers
scouted for resting sharks. The horn sharks were easy to collect: all we
had to do was pick them up and transfer them to our large net goody
bags. Horn sharks are so named for the bony spine they have in front
of each of their two dorsal fins. When the fish is newly emerged from
the egg, these two spines are quite sharp, making for a painful surprise
to any predator that tries to swallow the hatchling. As the shark grows,
the spines become dull from rubbing on overhanging rocks; at that
point, though, the shark's larger size is enough to discourage any would-
be diners.
The defense system of swell sharks is quite di¤erent and can be a
bit of a problem for a collector if one is found lodged under a low,
overhanging rock. Their “swell” name is very appropriate: to defend
themselves, they gulp water like a pu¤er fish and swell up to two or
three times their normal girth. This tactic, along with their rough,
sandpaper-like skin, allows them to e¤ectively wedge themselves in
place, making it very di‹cult to pull them out. I've never figured out
what natural predator would try to pull a swell shark out from its rest-