Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
trated brain. It was spellbinding. I glided along as in a dream, spitting out a little water that
would collect in my snorkel. I soon spied a huge, black coral head with caves at its base
and decided to check it out. I took a deep breath and dived steeply down and leveled off
just off the floor, so as not to alert any fish that may be hiding inside the caves. Slowly but
surely, I edged over, trying to be as fluid as possible. I was at the mouth of a large cave
and was just poking my face into the entrance when a huge jewfish came streaking past
me. I heard it rattle as it sped past in terror. I didn't even have time to get off a shot but
hovered where I was. I was about to surface for air when I saw a big green parrot fish un-
suspectingly making its way to the entrance. I instinctively shot at where I thought its belly
was and was rewarded with the sight of this lovely fish wriggling fiercely with the shining
shaft pinning it to the sand. I tightened my grip on the gun and shot to the surface breaking
through above with a gasp of air. I looked about and saw Gavin out of the channel entrance
splashing about on his quest for fish. Making my way to the float, I carefully freed the par-
rot fish off my spear and immediately pushed it through the mouth of the net bag, securing
it.
Just then I heard Gavin whistle and looked over to see him brandishing a huge trumpet
shell. He swam over and showed me. It was a lovely, clean specimen with clear red and
brown markings on its flawless spiral. I was very envious. “Ganders!” I said, “Look, I got
a nice parrot fish to eat tonight.”
“Oh please, you can have your tired old fish; I am going to go shelling; it's much more
fun,” he retorted.
“Just leave the living ones!” I reminded him.
“Yeah yeah yeah, what about the living fish you are hauling out?” he said trailing off.
So it went for about two hours, and in the end, when we called it a day, we were rather
sunburnt and tired with a few more smaller fish and a handful of shells all rattling in the
treasure bag.
Gavin mentioned that he had seen the flukes of the anchor we had lost the day before. “It
is pretty deep, but I think if we took a lasso we might be able to salvage it.”
“It's certainly worth a try; that anchor was expensive. If we could get that piece back, we
could get old Don Coleman to weld it together for us.”
Later that day we made our way back to the entrance armed with masks, snorkels, and a
good length of strong rope with a slipknot at one end. We had informed Craig of our plan,
and he was delighted at the prospect of helping out. He offered to run us back to the site
with the rubber duck. When we arrived, Craig threw out the little anchor, and Gavin and I
donned our dive gear again, this time without weight belts or wetsuits. We took the lasso
