Fishless in the Pacific..

Noeluna en route pour Singapour
Matthieu Vermersch
Sun 14 Mar 2010 03:01

Well, 4 days ago, we left the magnificent Galapagos islands which leave scenery to be desired in the highlands, (Scotland but with rocks…) and in the flat islands (Sahara but with volcanos) but have amazing animals, like the blue-footed booby, the Frigate bird, eleven types of giant tortoises (land turtles), green sea turtles, land and marine iguanas and of course, sealions. This is the place where Darwin developed his theory of evolution, basically, it shows that different animals who came to the Galapagos by sea or by air, after a few million years started to change slightly to survive in this place. Almost all the humans who came in Galapagos died which shows clearly that in the Galapagos, only the toughest survive.

On the boat right now, the fishing situation is not the best, The Galapagos islands are home to black marlins (fish that can weigh up to 1000 kilos and which are considered small if they weigh less than 500 kg.) and wahoos, fish which are pretty good and make up most of the Galapagos’ inhabitants meals. Wahoos have razor sharp teeth which give absolutely no chance to lures or fishing line and marlins are obviously not the fish we would like to catch as they are considered  game fish and they have these giant “beaks” which can stab anything that gets in their way. Apparently, both have crossed our way as we lost two lures because something bit through the steel line we put to hold the lure. And the next day, something else was so big, in less than 40 seconds, our fishing line had disappeared and we were left with just a rod, about five lures and 2 half empty spools of weak fishing line… not the best you can hope for… On the bright side, we have so much flying fish and squids that commit suicide by jumping onto our boat that we might be able to eat them if we have  no more food…

We’re still waiting for whales to show up but we’ve already seen a few dolphins and a turtle… Well that’s all for today!

Ferdinand