Nocturnal for a Night: Shine-eyes and rock pillows

All decked out in my lobstering get-up!

No one put more wood on the fire, which I interpreted as a sign that we’d be going soon…Not home, not yet. Tonight I’d be following my local friends out to the reef to look for lobsters.

Makae made no grand announcement. Just stood and gathered his gloves, then donned his homemade jerry jug backpack. It must have been near midnight. The moon was much brighter than my headlamp so I turned it off and let my eyes fully adjust to the night as the brisk walking awakened me. I was excited! I’d never walked the reef at night and as much as I knew I was going to feel sorry for the lobsters, I knew that Makae and Steven respected them–never taking lobsters below the size limit, and never taking females with eggs. This was their stretch of reef from which to live and to nurture, and they’d already witnessed what happened to their neighbors’ reef–those who had taken too much. Their was little left, few lobsters and no coconut crabs…In fact, the coconut crab, native only to this region and known for its delicious meat, is extinct on nearly every heavily populated ‘motu’ or atoll island in this region…:(

They moved quickly over the reef ahead of me like nocturnal reef creatures themselves, but I imagined that they’d followed their father and uncles down this same stretch of reef for probably twenty years…

The night air was cool and still; the trades were taking a break. The sea rose and fell gently out to the horizon–smooth, silvery, undulating—a glorious night to be at sea. Once my eyes had adjusted, I could see almost like daytime. Without the piercing sun, I felt free as if I could walk for miles…and that we did. As we got out on the reef where the waves washed over our feet, I felt the rhythm of the sea and dropped a ways behind…there were crabs of every color and shape and size, big pinchers or small, fat and squatty, or lanky and quick. All fit for battle and equipped with grippy little hairs on their legs to hold to the reef as wave after wave pounded over them. I’d bend my knees and brace myself for the hit, while they just carried on with their munching, popping their eyes up at me from the same spot when the wave had washed back to sea. There were spotty eels and lithe-legged brittle stars and urchins waving at me with their spines. There were cowries as big as soap bars, hermit crabs just as girthy, and a myriad of fishes swirling about…each species, each individual going about their own business, and at the same time ‘turning their cog’ in the greater reef ecosystems’ fine-tuned balance. I marveled thinking that all these visible creatures were only the very tip of a vast pyramid of reef biomass starting as micro-miniscule bacteria, archaeans, protozoans, algaes, corals, and such…

I looked back. My mast light was long out of sight and I had to halt my observations if I was going to catch up to my guides…Running was no option. Only careful placement of foot would keep me from taking a spill or re-injuring my knee on the sharp, slippery reef…

When I finally caught them, I could see they were well on the way to a decent catch.

“How do you see them?” I asked once I finally caught up.

“Come here,” Makae said. “Look where my light is, you see the little reflectors? Those are their eyes…”

“You’re going to reach in that hole?” I questioned. “What about eels?”

“The eels and lobsters don’t like each other. If you see the lobsters are there, it’s safe to reach in…but no eyes, no put your hand in! I already learned that!” He said showing me a scar on his right pointer finger, which I assumed was an eel bite…

“Oh…” I said. That seemed reasonable enough.

“What’s that?” I called, as his bright light passed over something marvelously colorful in a hole in the reef.

He moved the light back…“Parrokee, sleeping.”

I peered in the hole, and there on its side, was a foot-long parrot fish! I couldn’t understand how he’d gotten in there, or more importantly how he would ever get out, but he didn’t seem the least bit bothered. This was one tired fish…The light didn’t phase him. Steven even reached in and stroked his side, and the little guy just kept on sleeping like he had the plushest rock pillow in all of Polynesia. It made perfect sense, the parrotfish did his coral grazing in broad daylight and he was certainly safe from predators in the coral crevices…

Shhhhhh…parrotfish sleeping!

“Look, they’re all over…” Steven said, shining his light on a few smaller parrotfish cousins, all snuggled into their own nearby holes. Amazing!

“There, Liz, grab that lobster! Take the antennae!”

Just 6 feet to my right, his eyes twinkled in Makae’s light…

I didn’t really want to…but I knew I had to…I moved slowly over, reached in, felt the brush of his antennae, and pulled him out…

He flapped and flapped his mighty tail, making a terrible sucking sound. I winced but held on tight and tossed him into Makae’s bin before I knew what had happened…

They cheered and we carried on…

The first light of dawn was just tinting the horizon as we returned. For the last mile, I was draggin my boots…kinda wanting to crawl in a reef hole and rest my head on a coral pillow like a parrotfish!

Custom lobster backback…Lobsters so big we could eat the legs!