Mopelia Spearfishing Adventures (by Tim)

July 12, 2014

Alex and I went with a local guy here outside the pass to snorkel on a WWII Navy shipwreck. Most of the ship is gone but you can still see some cannons, the anchor, and many big gun shells (brass shells last longer under water than the rest of the steel hull) embedded in the coral. Pretty cool. Heo, the local guy, said we shouldn’t spearfish near the pass since there are so many sharks there. I said, well, we can just take our spears along anyway, even if we don’t use them. (yea, sure…) We were only in the water 3-4 seconds before Heo says, “Give me my gun!” I look over and see a huge school of yellowtail-like fish. Heo shoots into the school, but misses. Within seconds, several sharks appear out of nowhere and start looking around… Good thing he missed. Later, he shot a small Jack and carried it back to the dinghy holding it above water so the sharks could not “hear” it struggling (vibrations, more than anything, of a struggling fish attract the sharks in a hurry). One fish in the dinghy, Heo saw a huge school of parrot fish, swam over and after looking around and seeing no sharks nearby, shot one. Hit in the belly, the parrot fish went nuts, swimming in circles on the spear. Within 2 seconds, three sharks appeared from behind the ridge of the reef and attacked the parrotfish. The first shark took half the fish, the second took the rest – no prize for third place. Within five seconds, 10 more sharks appeared in a frenzy. Heo had already let go of his spear gun and was swimming backwards but with no fish left to eat, the new sharks looked eagerly at anything moving in the water. I forced myself to relax and slowly removed my dive knife (I had just put my gun back in the dinghy, thinking we were done). As he kicked at a couple of small, curious sharks, I couldn’t help but smile in my snorkel, thinking that he should have listened to his own advice. Once back in the dinghy, his big smile made me laugh and he suggested that we go inside the reef to fish some more.