Thoughts On Fishing

This afternoon I noticed a thread on the Discussion section of BlogCatalog about fishing. The blogger who started the thread posed the question: Is fishing boring to you?

When I read that question, my first thought was not about my own fishing experiences. Instead I had an instant flashback to a memorable encounter with an old fisherman.

Years ago, when my husband and I still lived in Honolulu, we used to visit a certain area of the coast near Makapu'u on a regular basis. An ancient lava flow runs down to the ocean at this spot. As everyone familiar with the coasts of the Hawaiian islands knows, the irregular lava shoreline makes for many tide pools.

We'd go there on weekends, or sometimes after work, just to get a good whiff of the salty air and relax. We'd meander from one tide pool to the next, hoping to spot some little critter -- periwinkles, tiny brine shrimp, or juvenile fish. Sometimes we'd just sit on a rock listening to the waves breaking at Makapu'u Beach, and watching the abundant black crabs as they skittered about.

Very often when we'd go to this place, we would see a certain old man sitting on a folding camp stool near the seaward edge of the lava. He was always holding a fishing pole, line cast out into the ocean. He always had the same white plastic pail beside him -- presumably to hold his catch -- but we never noticed anything in the pail. Perhaps he was just unlucky at fishing, we thought.

We got used to seeing the old man -- even expected to see him -- whenever we visited those tide pools. After awhile, we must have become familiar to him, too. He'd look our direction as we approached, nod and smile at us, then turn his face back toward the sea. He never spoke.

One day my husband spotted a "pan sized" fish in one of the tide pools. This was unusual, and I remember discussing how that fish could have ended up in such a small, shallow tide pool. We concluded that it must have been washed up by a bigger-than-usual wave, and become trapped in the tide pool when the water receded.

It seemed sluggish -- not that there was much room in that tide pool for a fish that size to move around. We were squatting beside the tide pool, watching the poor trapped fish when, on impulse, my husband lunged at it and caught it with his bare hands. Oh, now the fish wiggled plenty! I can still see my husband, with a look of astonishment on his face, holding onto that fish. His expression said that he had never expected to actually catch the thing!

I must have cried out, because the old man turned around and looked at us. My husband's next impulse was to walk toward the old man and offer the fish to him. The man declined the offer, saying he didn't much care for fish like that. He quickly suggested to my husband that he throw the fish "back into the ocean where it belongs." That sounded right, so that is what he did.

Now that the ice was broken between the old man and us, we asked him what kind of fish he was hoping to catch. He looked a little embarrassed at first, but then he said, "I guess I can tell you this, because I know you like to spend time by the ocean, like I do."

Grinning, he lifted the tip of his fishing pole and swung it toward us. He pointed at the line and chuckled, "See? No hook!"

"What happened to the hook?" one of us asked.

"Nothing," said the old man. "I never have a hook. I only hold the fishing pole because if people see an old man sitting by the ocean every day for hours, just looking, they think he's nuts!"

It was one of those rare moments of intimacy shared with a stranger, and it has been my favorite fishing tale ever since.

About the Photo: The fishies in the photo on this page are Bluestripe Snappers (Lutjanus kasmira). They were introduced into Hawaiian waters about 50 years ago from the Marquesas. They are a food fish -- sold in some local markets in Hawaii, labeled as ta'ape, their Tahitian name. [Click on the photo to enlarge it.]

I took the photo during a night dive at Puako, Hawaii. My underwater photography usually is found on my other blog, The Right Blue, but I needed an illustration for the above story, and this photo seemed to match the color scheme of this blog. (Smile.)

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UPDATE May 5, 2008: I am very pleased to announce that this article is included in the 9th Carnival of Aloha, a blog carnival about life in Hawaii. The Carnival is hosted by Evelyn on her blog, Homespun Honolulu. Go and have a look, and please visit the other very enjoyable submissions to this edition of the Carnival of Aloha.

Don't Feed the Trolls

A few days ago, I published a cartoon on this blog that spoofed the compulsive need of some internet forum participants to correct their fellows' every misapprehension. We can chuckle at those who always need to have the last word, because they exist on virtually every internet forum.

At the same time, most of us have engaged in this behavior on occasion. The urge to correct misinformation or call out a fallacious argument can be especially strong when the subject of a forum thread is something we feel very strongly about, or feel we understand in depth -- either because of personal experience, or because we have formally studied the topic in depth.

I mentioned the cartoon to fellow bloggers who participate regularly in the Discussions section at Blog Catalog, a forum that has been the scene of a number of contentious discussions in recent months. Their response was as you might think: They expressed instant appreciation of both the humor and the irony embodied in that cartoon.

One member of the Blog Catalog community took the kernel message of that cartoon and developed it further. Ender, whose Red Monkey blog is among my favorites, produced a clever derivative of the cartoon, tailoring it to the Blog Catalog group by incorporating several members' avatars into her drawings. She embedded it in a thread titled Don't Feed the Trolls - which is also the title of Ender's cartoon. I asked her if I could snag her cartoon and publish it here. That's it at right. [Click on the cartoon strip to make it enlarge.]

I didn't get around to posting this yesterday, due to a particularly demanding workday. Just now, while adding the links to this piece, I noticed that Ender posted her cartoon strip on her own blog very early this morning, along with a particularly interesting thought piece reflecting on the foibles of forum participants, and the machinations of internet trolls. Go and have a look at Ender's latest piece - Don't Feed the Trolls.

Sports Stories: Three Super Bowls and a World Series

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, 2008. I hear that Super Bowl XLII, as it is called, is going to be played in Arizona this year.

I won't be watching -- not because I have anything against the Super Bowl, but because American football just does not interest me. I've never been a fan of the sport, and other members of my immediate family share my disinterest.

When asked who we're rooting for, we don't have an answer to give. As likely as not, we don't even know which teams are playing in a given year. I recognize that most Americans think this is odd, if not downright blasphemous. On occasion this disinterest has led to some funny exchanges.

A number of years ago, when we still lived in a house with a lawn, my husband unwittingly chose Super Bowl Sunday to mow that lawn. There he was out in the yard, going about his mowing, when the neighbor from across the street came dashing over. I happened to be looking out the window just at that moment, and it suddenly struck me that it was Super Bowl Sunday, and that the neighbor was probably annoyed with the sound of the lawn mower during the game.

But no, it wasn't that. Instead I heard the neighbor ask, "What's the matter? Is your TV broken or something? The game's just coming on, so come on over to our place. You can watch it with us."

Apparently it never occurred to the neighbor that my husband was not interested in the game. Instead he figured that our TV must not be working. Surely there could be no other reason that someone would be out working in his yard during the Super Bowl!

My husband declined the neighbor's offer, but he also stopped mowing the lawn and came inside until after the game. He did this partly out of politeness, not wanting to make noise during the game, but also to avoid making a spectacle of himself as the only man in the neighborhood who was not taking part in this annual rite.

On several occasions when we have been away from the United States on Super Bowl Sunday, we have witnessed our fellow Americans go to unusual lengths to learn who won the game. Let me relate a couple of examples.

One Super Bowl Sunday we were in the departure lounge at a large international airport waiting for a flight to New York. We watched as a passenger made the rounds in the gate area asking people he judged to be American if they knew who won The Game. When he got to us, my husband told him we didn't know, but then half-jokingly suggested a phone call to an AT&T operator in the U.S. to find out.

"You can call the operator for free," my husband said. He fished out his AT&T card with the toll-free numbers on it and handed it to the sports fan. The guy's face lit up, and he actually went to a pay phone, dialed the toll-free number for AT&T's USA-Direct service, and asked the Big Question when the operator came on the line.

He got his answer. Not only that, his team had won, so he turned around and loudly announced the winner and the scores to everyone. The whole departure lounge erupted in a mixture of hoots and boos. Total strangers started high-fiving one another. Others glowered at the guy who had made the phone call and announced what to them must have been bad news.

On another occasion, we were on an Egyptian dive boat in the Red Sea in an area known as the Tiran Straits. It was during the first Gulf War, and my husband and I were two of only three Americans in the group of divers on board.

There were warships of several nations patrolling the area, presumably to intercept unauthorized shipments headed to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, which was under blockade. Our boat's captain was monitoring radio traffic between the warships and the commercial vessels. In between dives, the rest of us were listening along with him. It was fascinating.

At length we heard a voice with an obvious American accent come over the radio, and thus we learned that an American warship was in the area. Our compatriot diver jumped up and begged our captain to contact the U.S. Navy ship to find out who had won the Super Bowl, which had been played the day before. The captain hesitated. The diver pleaded. Finally our captain relented and radioed to the American ship. He identified himself and said he had an American passenger on board who wanted to know the score of the Super Bowl. There was only a brief hesitation before the warship's radioman instructed our captain to switch over to a certain frequency. He did so, and a Navy sailor then enthusiastically recited over the radio the name of the winning team, the scores, as well as a few highlights of the game! It bordered on the surreal.

One of my favorite stories of this type involved the World Series rather than the Super Bowl. It happened to a friend of ours.

Our friend was returning home from an overseas trip, and after clearing Customs and Immigration at Los Angeles International Airport, found himself with several hours to kill before boarding his connecting flight. He spotted a bar in the terminal, and went inside for a sandwich and a beer.

Since he was traveling alone, he decided to sit at the bar, thinking maybe he could strike up a conversation with another traveler to pass the time. As he took his seat, he noticed that all eyes in the place were directed toward the TV screen over the bar, watching a baseball game. Our friend is not much of a sports fan himself, but -- just trying to be friendly -- he turned to the man seated next to him and, in the most jovial one-of -the-boys tone he could muster, asked, "So who's playing?"

The way our friend tells it, the man next to him actually recoiled at the question, as in, "Hey Buddy, what planet are YOU from??" The bartender quietly told him it was the last game of the World Series.