When You Wish Upon a Reef.......

Morgan’s Bluff is quiet, internet is available, and there are lots of things to see on land and in the sea.  Considering the persistent east winds, we knew that crossing over to the Exumas was not going to be fun (so what’s new).  So we kept delaying our departure, watching the weather, hoping for a good sailing day.  Fortunately the reef about 2 miles north made a bumpy dingy ride worth it.  Some places are overgrown with algae but then, a little ways further, you come upon beautiful dense stands of living elkhorn and staghorn coral.  I also noticed many new colonies of staghorn coral, probably settled in the past year or so, growing on the old dead coral. 

If we were going any further we would just have to suck it up and go.  We knew that after we got to the Exumas, we would be sheltered from the east wind and would be able to leisurely sail south.  So Sunday, the 13^th, we made a relatively short trip to West Bay on Providence Island then a longer trip to Highborne Cay on Monday, the 14th.  Needless to say, the wind was at our nose the whole time, we slammed and rocked in the 2-4 foot seas, but we made it in time to watch the sun set over the most beautiful water in the world.  We were hoping that we would meet up with our friends, Jim and Jane on their boat Adventure, but last we saw from their SPOT they had headed to Rose Island near Nassau. 

The attraction at Highborn Cay is the beautiful reefs.  We anchored near the northern part of the island where we would be near the reefs and Allens Cay where the iguanas live. On the west side of the island are large patch reefs in shallow water with remarkable coral coverage.  On the eastern side is more of the same but on a larger scale.  The east winds made it untenable to go on the outside so we thoroughly explored the inside reefs and Wednesday afternoon found a large patch reef just crawling with lobsters.  I tried several times using the prod out with a stick and then grab method but was not successful—they had pretty good holes and the depth (about 20 feet) made it a somewhat challenging free dive when there is so much work to do.   

Now a little regression here:  before we left, we bought a new point for our pole spear.  Last year we found that the three-pronged point we had was inadequate for spearing anything but soft lionfish.  It didn’t have barbs enough to hold a lobster (spearing lobster is legal in the Bahamas on snorkel) and it bounced off bigger fish.  So Bill bought this big, manly, double-barbed sharp tipped point (not cheap either) that would work for sure.  We had great expectations for this tip but when we got to Morgan’s Bluff Bill found that the new $40 point was not compatible with our pole.  –Bummer. 

Here we were looking at tons of lobsters and fish and we still didn’t have the right equipment!  Just as the sun was getting low and we were heading back toward the dingy, Bill was wishing mightily that he had a proper pole for his point----what was that---he saw a funny looking loop on the bottom—that’s not normal.  I saw him make a deep dive all the way to the bottom (which was about 20+ feet there)--he rarely does that because he does not have the breath-holding capacity.  He came up with something—could it be a pole spear?   YES—AND, can you believe it, it fit the point!!!!

So Thursday morning, the 17^th, we went back to the reef, knowing that King Neptune wanted us to have lobster dinner.  I had the 3-prong that I was hesitant to use but Bill shot 2 right away (this is way too easy).  We noticed a couple of nurse sharks hanging around (certainly they were drawn by the bleeding lobsters but they never approached us).  The third lobster was a big one—about a four pounder—and Bill ran out of breath before he could get it out of the hole.   I have the greater breath-holding ability so he asked me to go down and get it out.  The lobster was firmly hooked on the pole and, while I was preparing to make the dive I saw the pole disappearing into the hole as the lobster backed further into the reef.  OH NO!!  No way can we loose this spear!!  I dove down as the rubber loop began to disappear into the hole, not even stopping to clear my ears, reached out and grabbed the rubber loop.  Now I had the pole but the lobster did not want to come out.  He was big and strong and held on while I yanked the pole.  Even I have to come up to breathe every once in a while and that time was coming soon.  For a moment, I could not figure out why the pole was not moving—oops the other end was hitting a rock.  I moved it and yanked one more time –got him!  Back to the dingy and in the bucket with that one. 

We noticed that once a lobster was speared in a den, the other lobsters in the den (some that we had not even seen) would start crawling out.  Research done while I was working showed that lobsters avoided places where there were injured lobsters.  This is because an injured lobster attracts predators (it was shown that injured lobsters get eaten more often than intact ones) and who wants to be shacking up with someone who is advertising that he is available for dinner.  This made it easy to get our limit including another big one.  This was my first experience spearing lobster. 

Spearing is not sporting but dinner is not a sport.