Octopus Hide-and-Seek

Six of us- Monaynee, Makol, Hadji, Stephen, Mosquito and I- met on the beach just as color began to enter the day. What was just moments earlier a scene in grayscale beach now included a slight pink-orange, and a few minutes later the shallow waters offshore give the first hint of their screaming blue identity. The tide was still pulling away, but the pace was slowing and low slack wasn’t far off. Today, the boys were showing me how to hunt for octopus, Zanzibar-style . We took a long walk through ankle deep water, eventually reaching deeper water, and finally reaching the Gambaguru. Today there was plenty of wind to carry us out to the reef.

In theory, octopus hunting is straightforward. Bring decent footwear for pacing around on the exposed coral reef. Keep an eye out for all the damn sea urchins, because stepping on one doesn't tickle. Carry a couple pieces of bent coathanger and a spear. As an old Maine friend would say, make sure to bring Percy along (Percy Verance) for company during the search. Be ready for a battle if you find an octopus.

Octopus make their lairs in the nooks of the coral reef. They are cunning masters of camouflage disguise, shape-shifters, and I’ll make the case that they’re the strongest living thing, pound-for-pound, in the world.

Stephen told me that octopus tuck into tiny caves and holes that have a certain look, and that the first major challenge is in finding one. Cleverly placed loose rocks, empty shells (middens- the leftover remains of urchin or mollusk meals), or a tip of one arm is about all you can hope to see. Surprising even himself, Stephen happened to spot an octopus within minutes.

The second major challenge is getting the octopus out of its cave. After watching Stephen’s battle, and having some experience with an occasional octopus brought up on the longline in Alaska, there is no way I can describe just how superhuman the strength of an octopus is. We are outmatched 100:1 or more. Even with the unfair advantage weapons- wire and spears and knives- the suction-cupped beasts are formidable.

After five minutes of work, squatting in six inches of water, Stephen had only managed to get a grip on a single foot of the octopus. This was after poking and jabbing it in its body scores of times. After ten minutes, he managed to remove a second leg. After a short eternity, he asked to me to hold a third leg that he’d pulled loose of the coral. Stephen is a strong guy. From just one leg I could feel myself getting pulled toward the octopus hole. Luckily it wasn’t even a fist-sized hole. The fight continued. After a half an hour, hundreds of stabs to the body and legs, unsuccessful attempts to break into the from above coral and from the even smaller rear entrance, all but one of the legs were free of the lair. Still, it took another few minutes to pry the thing free. Refusing to quit passively, the octopus came out guns blazing, dousing black ink on Stephen from his neck to his ankles. It just missed getting him in the eyes.

I looked at the octopus in awe. This was a big one for this reef I was told, but still it was only about a kilogram and two feet long from top of mantle to tip of it’s legs. This one would have overpowered and outlasted me, so imagining what a really big octopus could do stretches into the land of myth and monsters.

Today, this was the only octopus that Stephen located before the tide rose and covered the reef with water and waves. Mosquito had forgotten his shoes (or had wanted a little more rest and had conveniently left his shoes ashore), and was tending to the boat. The other three men had managed to win wrestling matches with five octopus between them. Mosquito tells me that on the best days it’s possible to collect 20 octopus. Better eat your Wheaties, but no need to go to the gym if you have an octopus as a personal trainer.

Fried octopus is delicious and very popular both in Stonetown and on the east side of the island, selling for around 5,000 shillings per kilogram on the market in Stonetown, and more if it’s fresh. You often see men biking down the roads leaving to the Stonetown Market with a sand-covered octopus draped over the handlebars. Incidentally, octopus is also the best bait around, because it’s tough even after death and stay on the hook. They’re great hunters in their own right, the octopus, grow quickly, and are devilishly intelligent. I’m a fan of the animal in all forms.

Stephen's catch this particular morning will be traded for enough food staples to serve up the bulk of 30 or so meals, and a small piece of the octopus will also be bait to entice swimming protein aboard the Gambaguru in coming days. A noble cause for one stubborn sucker.

Moondance

Eight of us met on the Jambiani beach in the afternoon and worked on shifting a heavy, half-buried seine net form above the high tide mark into the boat. This dhow of the day was bigger than the Gambaguru, heavier, and most appropriately named Doza’, as in “bulldoza’”, because it was capable of handling so many people and lots of gear. Filling up the ranks for Captain Mahamoodi were Pandu, Hadji, Ahmed, Ali (a different Ali than we’ve met before), Ari, Mosquito, and one pale-skinned accessory. After the gear, we all climbed aboard and poled out to sea, as there wasn’t enough wind to push the beast along.

The fishing council discussed options for the day's set as we alternated poling duties. The spot finally settled upon was about four feet deep, with a bottom of dark coral and seaweed. A big rock anchor and a large buoy, attached to one end of a long net, was tossed overboard. The boat carved out a broad U with the net, with the opening facing up-current and southward. The net hung about three feet deep in the water and stretched several hundred meters. Immediately, across the opening, a thick line with palm frond “brooms” tied in every three meters or so was laid in the water. These brooms serve to sweep fish down into the belly of the net, closing the mouth of the U-shaped set. To my mind, when seen from underwater, each frond bundle looked like an octopus in attack mode. Whatever it looks like through fish eyes, it was effective at turning the catch around and back within the cup of the net.

By now the water had dropped to around three feet. Between us, there were five masks and snorkels. All but one man jumped out of the boat and took up a position along the perimeter of the net or on the line between the octopus dummies. We gradually sealed the mouth of the net and continued so that the ring described by the dark blue net slowly telescoped smaller. Those of us with masks kept tabs on the underwater activities and gave updates on where the concentration of fish was. (I tried to help with pointed fingers, waving hands, and grunts of “Poa!”). When the net had been drawn to a ring around 30 meters in diameter, Ahmed and Ari carried over a separate piece of net- this one much shorter- and a black rectangle of fine mesh. The black rectangle is the final trap into which the fish are herded, with the aid of the short stretch of net. As the mass of fish converged on the black mesh box, its mouth is closed, and the bundle of fish is carried over to, and dumped into, the Doza’. Snorkelers do a sweep for straggling fish, and the herding process can be repeated if need be. Kelp and seaweed are sorted from the finned quarry. The coordination required for this sort of fishing is impressive. The fish will feed eight Jambiani families as well as their friends and neighbors.

The process was incredible to watch from underwater. Even when knowing well that fish caught were going to good use, I couldn't help but sympathize for individual fish as they watched their boundless reef paradise hatch walls, and for the walls to rapidly encroach on their freedom. There was a brief period of panic as they tried to escape their new foreign environment, but the black mesh box seemed to attract them like a magnet as a place of safety. A false refuge. Life for a fish is hard, with or without humans.

We made a total of three sets, and each set took around two hours from start to finish. There were lots of laughs all around- this was a feat of teamwork and cooperation, without oil and machinery to share any of the load. The second set was laid out in the rain just after dusk, and the third set was done by moonlight. I’d guess that each set yielded about 20 kilograms of fish. Sometimes Mosquito tells me that a single set will fill the boat to the gunwales (which I’d guess is several thousand kilograms of fish), and that the fishermen are then forced to swim home (smiling no doubt), and then there are feasts, spontaneous beach parties, and lots of fish for the market. The tale of a boatload of fish is the equivalent of the rare giant bluefin sunning himself just in front of the boat in the Gulf of Maine, the big piraracu biting on the Solimones in Brazil, the winning numbers on the lottery, guessing the day right for Alaska's Nenana Ice Classic. A rare event, almost a miracle, but the exciting thing is that it might happen any old day.

Attempting to prove my usefulness, during the second set I noticed a spot where the bottom of the net was hung-up above the sea floor. I rushed over to close the leak as a few small fish zipped out and away. Just as I blocked the gap, a large pufferfish was huffing his way to the exit. We had a showdown: my arm-flailing bravado versus his patient beady gaze. I thought about trying to push him back in with my hand as he seemed frozen in the water column. Just then he triggered his quirky defense tactic and inflated into a spiny football in front of my face. He and I both popped to the surface in surprise. I let the prickly danger blimp float away free.

Heading in by the light of a waxing moon, surrounded by happy shouts in Swahili, and now with wind to carry us effortlessly, I couldn’t help but smile like the rest of the gang. The passing rain had already cleared for the stars to poke out, and unknown southern constellations dancing out in the blackness. Once on the beach, Mahamoodi generously sorted the fish into eight even piles, after taking a few choice fish as owner of the boat, as is the custom. The group had automatically given me a share of fish, and this action meant a lot to me. Mosquito was quick to quietly dissuade me from returning my share back to the group, as he was eager to acquire an extra portion, under the vague promise of a grand barbecue for the mzungo. I never did see the the barbecue, but it was a fine trip and I'm sure the fish all went to good use in and around Mosquito's home.

Passing to Level 5

When the wind is too weak to push a dhow by sail, using a long pole to poke along the bottom is the alternative. Poling is also the method Mosquito opts for when passing over the shoal water that makes up the barrier reef. Mosquito, Stephen, Ali, and I were going fishing “Inside” today (by inside, Mosquito means "outside"). Passing through the breakers can pose a big challenge for a sleek dugout canoe, and although I couldn’t understand the Kiswahili, I could sense by the tone of the conversation that the location where we passed through the reef was important. The day was quite nice and I myself was looking forward to a little splash of warm water in the face.

This timing of the pass through the shoal waters reminded me of the only video game I’ve ever played: Donkey Kong. To be specific, Donkey Kong Level 4, where the world is an urgent reddish hue, and you have to learn the timing and location of the deadly bouncing spring in order to time your passage and once again touch the princess (before the barrel-rolling gorilla snatches her from your arms and jails her on the top platform in Level 5). It seemed really hard back in the day. Needless to say, we watched the wave action and poled on through, to the vast fishing grounds outside of the reef. Real-life Level 5 is big. (Real-life video gamers are probably making fun of me right now.)

I’ve heard mention in town that the offshore waters of Zanzibar are especially prized fishing waters, coveted by many other nations, especially China. (These were Zanzabarians saying this, so of course they’re proud of their waters.) Apparently there is some alliance between Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa to protect their collective waters from foreign fleets and from Somali pirates. This is just intercepted talk, hearsay, and I haven’t been able to find out any details of this or any of the agreed-upon rules. Regardless, I doubted that pirates or fisheries enforcement would be interested in the Gambaguru. Today we’d taken a bigger sail for the boat, initially made out of sailcloth but well patched with assorted other materials. “GAMBAGURU” was painted on the sail, although it was upside down and backwards. Still, a badass boat name.

After spending the other day receiving harsh criticism on my fishing abilities from Mosquito, today was my day to celebrate a lucky revenge. Depending on a whole range of things, not the least being blind luck, two fishermen right next to eat other can and often do have very different catch rates. Of course the experienced fisherman is guaranteed to ignore and discredit all the physical variables that could justify this and will claim that the difference comes down to skill, even if he fronts with modesty. This is a global phenomenon of fishing psychology. For whatever reason (skill), totally unexplainable (skill), almost certainly because I was using a bigger sinker than the others (nope, skill), I ended up catching fish almost continuously (skill), while Mosquito and his brother struggled to catch fish, and Ali couldn’t catch a thing, gave up, and took a nap in the bow. I kept quiet but was secretly smug.

One benefit of this sort of fishing is that it was be very selective, and you can release unharmed any unwanted fish. However, here in Jambiani every fish is edible, and there are no rewards for beauty, so little was released, but none is wasted. Like the fishing inside, we eventually gathered a spread of fluorescents and pastels in the bottom of the boat. Octopus and sandworms presented in the right way (skill) yielded some tasty fish. Even with decent fishing adding up to several dozen fish, I’d guess that for every ten minutes of backbreaking digging that Ali had spent gathering sandworms at low tide with nothing but a stick and bare hands, we only returned about one-tenth of one small fish. Maybe we should all shift to eating the marine spinach.

Living Rainbows

The outer coast of Zanzibar, as mentioned before, is buffered by a coral reef running more or less parallel to the shore, a couple miles out. This reef knocks out any swell coming in from India, so inside it’s smooth sailing. The Gambaguru sits anchored in two or three feet of water when not out fishing. In fact, at low tide, much of this inside corridor isn’t much deeper than a meter or two anywhere. The water is absolutely clear, deceptively clear, making the jet-black sea urchins two meters down look like they’re within an easy arms reach. Most of the inside seafloor is bare white sand, mostly void of bigger forms of life, but where odd-shaped patches of coral and seaweed lay on top of the blank slate, life is suddenly abundant and flamboyant.

It was towards the darker patches just inside of the reef that Mosquito, his younger brother “Captain” Stephen, and I headed today. Traveling to the fishing grounds, albeit a short journey, was especially quiet and pleasant in the Jambiani-style dhow/outrigger. We turned into the wind over a dark patch that Mosquito selected, out went the anchor, down came the sail, and we were ready to fish. The secret recipe for success today: careful presentation of a #14 Royal Wulff pattern, two pound tippet, laid out by a weight-forward QRST5 sinking line using a graphite 5/6 weight rod. Just kidding. A couple plain old hooks tied onto hefty monofilament and baited with small chunks of octopus, with a small piece of lead clamped on a foot above, worked just fine. With a flick of his wrist, Mosquito tossed his line 10 meters away from the boat and let the bait sink to the bottom. Nibbling commenced. He set the hook, and in most cases a bright little reef fish came up on one of his two hooks. Sometimes he caught a pair with one haul. Many times the octopus had crawled away from its station, and Mosquito needed to rebait. Sometimes Davy Jones decided to keep the hooks. So it goes. You’d think Davy Jones would be sick of collecting fishing gear by now.

Here the three of us sat, slowly collecting a kaleidoscope of fish in the bottom of the boat. Mosquito tells me that some days catches can be as high as 2,000 fish, with a good crowd of good fishermen aboard, and when the bite is on. Today we caught about 40. Sometimes barracuda, tuna, and turtles, even the occasional shark, wander into the tranquil swimming pool on the land side of the barrier reef, but this day we only encountered fish like chang choray, mcheche, gowgow, cunday, chengua. Big scales, bright colors, and mouths equipped with predatory fangs or coral-crushing chompers.

We eventually called it quits, raised the patchwork quilt of a sail- a faded banner of advertisement for Zanzibar grain, Arabic meal, Camel-brand flour- and slid back toward the palm trees, which welcomed us with ecstatic waving. The darker patches on the bottom faded into white sand, and then closer to shore more dark patches appeared but instead these had straight edges and the patches formed definite rectangles. I hadn’t noticed the geometry on the way out. Mosquito tells me that here they cultivate a certain seaweed species (a marine look-alike to Old Man’s Beard) to dry and sell to the Japanese. “They eating like a-spinach,” he told me, and I could tell he was more of a fish-and-rice kind of guy. This side of Zanzibar must be damn close to paradise: the sun continues to smile, the trees are friendly, and there are thousands of rainbows swimming just offshore.

Jambiani Jambo

Jambiani is a small village on Zanzibar’s southeast coast. From here, you can look out upon a sea that stretches east all the way to India, although you'd have to dodge the Somali pirates to get there. The coral reef a couple miles offshore makes a nice breakwater and sort of protects Jambiani’s beach, making a giant tranquil buffer that is fishable even when outside waters are stormy. House walls are made of coral and cement and then whitewashed; roofs are of woven coconut fronds. In Jambiani the paths are dirt, goats are common, stars are bright, smiles are big, soccer is huge, the unending beach is pure white, and the ocean is, amazingly enough, the exact color of the margin of a Microsoft Word application. Check it out if you don’t believe me. How convenient, leave it to Microsoft to save me from floundering around in my shallow mental database for a novel way of saying “really, REALLY bright blue”...

I've made some lopsided alliances with locals in Dar Es Salaam and in Stonetown that turned out to be more interested in playing the role of Robin Hood than offering any services for the money I’d foolishly advanced them to help with petro or fishing line expenses. So it was with reluctantance and caution that I've come to team up with Issa, a.k.a. “Mosquito”, here in Jambiani.

Incidentally, I’ve had more than a few internal laughs about the trend in the “profitability curve” of my fishing “work” over the last year. From making good wages deckhanding on somebody else's boat in Alaska, I shifted towards working harder for less in my own skiff. I worked in Newfoundland for a half-share, traded my labor for food and lodging in Chile, worked as a welcome but unpaid volunteer in the Amazon, and was reduced to full-on begging to volunteer in Asia. The Azores were slightly out of this progression, as I was a welcome volunteer and in any return trips to Sao Jorge (in coming years, for tuna!) I might even earn a wage, but here in Africa it seems expected that I should pay for the experience to work alongside local fishermen, covering any boat expenses and ensuring a little secondary income for the fishermen. This is understandable I suppose, and is relative to the local economy. My interest hasn’t been in making money, but more in making it clear that I’m not interested in a charter or in sport fishing- that I’m trying to see exactly how fishing goes on a typical day in the particular area, to not impede in any way by letting outside money foul the bilges. Hats off to the fishermen-entrepreneurs of Zanzibar! Returning to paying work will be a strange feeling after this!

Back to Mosquito and Jambiani. For a small fee, Mosquito agreed to be my fishing liason, to keep tabs on the local fishing fleet and to get me aboard any trips I was interested in. I was then supposed to tell them some complicated fib about how I’d already paid the tourism board officer (a position that probably doesn’t exist) such-and-such an amount for so many hours and so had arranged to go out with Mosquito as my guide. I didn’t pay much attention to the details of the story and none of the other fishermen seemed to care a bit. Mosquito helped explain to them that I was a mzungo interested in fishing, and that was fine to them. Wind provided most of the moving power, I was another hand to push when the boat ran into shoal water, and I wasn’t taking any fish home for myself.

Mosquito is 28 years old, and strong and fit like every other person in Jambiani. He has especially dark skin and especially white teeth. Despite red alerts from his tendency to repeatedly verbalize what a nice guy he is (if I’ve learned anything in the past few months, it’s that there’s an inverse relationship to how many times a person says, "I'm a really good guy" aloud and how nice a guy he is in truth), I’m convinced he really is decent, an outlier to this pattern. He started fishing with his dad, and alone from the beach, at age 10, and has always lived in Jambiani. Now his dad is dead, and his mom takes care of his two young kids he’s had with a former wife. He has a brother, “Captain” Ali, 22, and a sister, age 10, in town also, and a little brother in Stonetown, age 20. Mosquito works as a fisherman, a carpenter, and whenever possible as an officially unofficial tour guide, hustling mzungo to earn food for his web of family and himself.

Mosquito owns the Gambagumu (something like “Swift”), a dhow-outrigger canoe combination craft typical of the kind on this side of the island. Within sight, there are around 70 dhow in the water around Jambiani, with hulls somewhere between 7 and 12 meters. Although these boats aren’t quite the heart-stopping beauties of Stonetown, what they lack in elegance they compensate with utility. And on this side, dhows are fishing boats! With a steady breeze from somewhere on the compass, usually an onshore breeze (this time of year from the southeast), wind lends the moving power at the right price.

The Gambagumu is a little under 10 meters long tip to tail. The boat is basically a deep, heavy dugout canoe, with an outrigger on either side made of planed wood. A squat mast juts vertically, looking ineffectively short in relation to the length of the vessel at hand. With dhows of this style, there is a single sail, and it is huge relative to the length of the boat. The lead edge of the sail, its longest side,is lashed to a long wooden pole (sailors probably have a fancy term for this type of sail, which I don’t know about and neither of us cares about). Roughly the center of this pole, often around its balance point, is pulled to the top of the mast. Thus, this pole, and with it the front edge of the sail, run from a fixed point in the bow sharply upward, past the top of the mast and into the air above. This is different than a “classic” (western-style) sailboat, because there is no boom, there are no spars, and the sail runs high beyond the top of the mast (excusing the squat mast). Aside from being a little slow to “come-about”, this design is brilliant. There are no pulleys, no cables, no levers, no winches, no widgets, bells, or whistles. The sails of the Gambagumu, like nearly all of the dhows in Jambiani, are made of modern burlap sacks (woven plastic grain bags) cut open and stitched together. Nothing but wood, line, empty grain bags, a few handfuls of metals spikes, and a few hand tools can make a perfect boat, to be anchored (a big hunk of coral serves the anchor) just off a perfect beach. Jambo!

Stay tuned for the Mosquito chronicles, when we take the Gambaguru in search of unsuspecting tropical fish with a variety of fishing modes, assuming Mosquito doesn't evaporate like some of my other Tanzanian fishing friends...

The Five-Gallon Shuffle

For those westerners who are suspicious that Zanzibar is a real place (just a couple weeks ago I was one), you can take my word for it. Zanzibar is indeed real and alive- and a semi-autonomous island off the coast of Tanzania. Stonetown is Zanzibar’s biggest port- it’s only city- the island’s connection to the mainland and the capital of Dar Es Salaam. The population is a blend of native Africans, Arabs, and Indians; language, religion, architecture, and food all benefit from this. The richness of colors and culture here would elude the best of writers and photographers, so please excuse my amateur attempts. In my limited exposure to various parts of the world, this is without a doubt the most picturesque and visually stimulating of any social environments I’ve ever seen.

Arriving in Stonetown was refreshing, after a tiring push through Dar’s busy public spaces, where everybodseemed to be working hard to get my meager business, by hook or crook. The dock and street crowd still all give me the feet-wallet-eyes once-over before welcoming this free-range mzungo, but somehow once eyes meet the welcoming seems more genuine. Here in Stonetown, more than in the mainland capital, Muslim faith dominates life, business, and developments, and the respect granted to others, even a foreigner with different beliefs, is felt immediately. Most of the city answers the call to prayer, beautiful melodies broadcast over loudspeakers five times per day, and a siren at around 6:30pm signals dusk at the equator and curfew for small children. Handshakes are long and complex here, and are often repeated over and over throughout the course of a conversation. Also of note, shop and home doors in downtown Stonetown are ornately carved and decorated with impressive metal spikes and latches, Arabic in origin and beautifully imposing.

I set up camp just above the Malindi Fish Market, around the city’s highest concentration of stray cats (thanks to the fish guts I suppose). Here in town the two fish hubs are the Malindi and the Darajani, and the spectacle of fish auctioning would dazzle even the fish haters of the world. Let’s start in the market and work backwards to the fisherman.

Fish are sold at the busy market in stands, where an interested buyer can walk up and order a cut of whichever fish he or she desires, as is more or less conventional in many countries. For a better price though, she can walk to the tip of the market building, to the human ring which is a continuous fish auction, with middle men laying individual bigger fish or small piles of small fish, squid or octopus on the well-worn stone floor in the center of the crowd. Auctioneers keep tabs on the highest bidder, and several actions are underway at the same time. For the amount of visual commotion, the scene is mostly quiet, and most of the communication is without words. The smells of ginger, cloves, frying bread, and Arabic dates waft through once in a great while, a miracle considering that these smells are overpowering the pungent fishy odor (or is my mind anticipating an upcoming snack and tricking the nose?). Piles of fish fluctuate in size, deals are cut, and men and women walk in and out with fish in plastic buckets and reed baskets or wrapped in newspaper. On the streets middle men also sell fish, taking care to arrange the catch in neat piles, 500 Tanzanian shillings for these sardines or 1,000 shillings for that string of choles (these days, around 1,300 shillings equals $1 US).

Fish are transported throughout Stonetown and to the market by an impressive fleet of rusty bicycles, each with a reed basket bulging out behind the seat. Transport begins around 7am and seems to continue all day long, through narrow streets which continue to get me hopelessly lost. Before 7, all the bikes are parked in a mass in front of the Malindi pier, and the “five-gallon shuffle” is in full swing. Bucket after bucket of fish are lugged from fishing boats, through waist-deep water, up the cement pier, through the crowd. The crowd consists of folks already vending fish (middle men to the middle men?), locals looking to buy straight form the fishermen, and others waiting to transport. Work is hard to come by here right now it seems, and I get the sense that there is quiet but significant competition for fish transport privileges. I can’t imagine there is any profit in this line of work, but in a place where hotel workers (a very good job) make 120,000 shilling per month (around $90 US/month), and where many families can only afford to rent a decaying single-room cement cube on the edge of town, every shilling requires sweat and every shilling counts. A substantial meal on the street costs around 2,000 shillings, but most all of the workers around the Malindi market eat a watered down soup, which likely costs a tenth of this.

The mvuivi (fishermen) that base out of Stonetown mostly fish out of heavily built open boats around 10 meters long. An outboard motor, something between 20 and 40 horsepower, is mounted off-center on the stern, and between eight and twenty men hop aboard. Coming in, the appearance of the most crowded boat and her crew isn’t much different than images of overcapacity refugee boats coming towards Florida from Haiti, and I can bet that fishermen enjoy the personal space that a return to dry land affords them. Much of the fishing is done in the night, with fishermen heading out around dusk and returning in time for the morning market. It seems that many of the boats are owned by a fishing cooperative, in which the boat is also owned collectively and profits from fish sales are split. For a few boats, there is a day shift of fisherman and a night shift. The boat itself gets little rest. Fishing with handlines is the main strategy for larger fish, and so the more men aboard, the more hooks in the water. The small daga and tongay are lured in at night by dangling kerosene lantern over the gunwale and scooping the minnows up with nets, just like shishaw in the Azores. Some of the schooling medium-sized fish are also enticed with artificial light and are caught with bigger seine nets. The larger pelagics (tuna, kingfish) are found well offshore and fishermen go out for several days and freeze their catch.

I must confess that I’ve become spellbound by a Zazabarian beauty, a distraction from the straight-and-narrow fishing industry. The heavy oversized skiffs, as practical a fishing boat they are, just aren’t holding my interest. Dhows- the graceful, distinctive sailing vessels of these parts and much of the rest of the Indian Ocean, are my new love. Here, they’re mainly use for water transport- bringing charcoal and wood from the mainland to Zanzibar, moving goods between smaller islands, shuttling fish back to the mainland, and not primarily for catching fish. The generous sails seem to fill with even a gentle breeze, and carry the boat through the baby blue. These dhows are so stunningly beautiful gliding through the water that I lose much ability to speak when one is in sight. To my delight, they’re common here; I’ve drifted away from many conversations with dock rats. matter of fact, here comes a dhow now...

Placing Zanzibar on the Map

Stonetown, Zanzibar, TANZANIA
Targeted fish: kibua (mackerel-like), yodadi (bigeye, yellowfin tuna), daga, tongay (little minnows to dry in the sun), boomla (small fish with a huge gaping mouth), upapa, kibuwa, pono, subadi (assorted reef fish), tas (butterfish), saradine, pweze (octopus), gesee (squid), garingare, mkule (two gar-like fish), sim-sim, choles (perch-like), ta (skate), fatundo (red snapper), changu (small snapper), mzia (barracuda), nguru (kingfish)
Fishing methods: handline, seine net, lantern and dipnet, bent coathanger and spear (octopus)
Footwear: barefoot
Favorite local sayings: Mambo! (How are you?) Karibu! (Welcome!) Mzungo! (white guy!) Hakuna matata. (All is good.)
Local food: fried octopus, fried fish, chapate bread, coconut milk-based stews, potatoes
Drink of choice: tea, water, sugar cane juice, Fanta
Local entertainment: big fans of the English Premier League (soccer), playing football (soccer)
Local music: Zanzibar's unique blend of Indy-Afro-Arab music, more to come about this
Select Local Fishing Boats: Shebedu, Angello, Hikma, Allva Kadir, Swaj ("Jaws" backwards)