sorry kind of a long one....pics are at the bottom though.. :
After almost whole year of living in Tokyo I finally got the chance to visit a top-notch spearing location, Miyake Jima. It's not that other places to spear in Japan are bad, its just that they often have more cranky fisherman than fish. But Miyake Jima is small volcanic island reasonably far from the mainland that sits bang in the tail end of the Kuroshio or Black Current. The Kuroshio brings warm water up from the tropics to the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Izu. As such Japan possesses the northern most coral reefs in the world. It also very recently (in the year 2000) had a massive volcanic eruption that devastated much of the landscape, from both lava and poisonous gas. The islands inhabitants were evacuated and only recently returned last year, with the requirement that they carry gas masks with them at all times. Gas continues to pour from the volcano crater, so loudspeakers placed across the island blast out hourly updates and sometimes warnings in Japanese, creating a strange, ominous atmosphere, akin to the last half hour of a science fiction disaster movie.
The evidence of the most recent eruption is everywhere - huge swathes of dead trees, massive rock hard lava beds, and my favourite, the ruined former junior high school. It's quite a site - filled up with lava to the third floor, a burned out, blackened shell of a building. Its torturously warped metal window frames indicate the immense heat the lava that poured in must have generated. It was kind of like all my adolescent fantasies about high school come true. Well, maybe not all of them.
So there is also lot of environmental damage above ground, but underwater the fish life is very healthy. I'm not sure if this because of fishing pressure dropping during the evacuation, or if it was always this way and the fish just didn't suffer from all the volcanic activity. In anycase a good place for a spear.
I joined my four spearing buddies at Tokyo Takeshiba port to take the overnight ferry to Miyake Jima. Actually the last train to Takeshiba port is worth a mention; its a very high set and narrow train that weaves its way through the skyscrapers of eastern Tokyo city - very Blade Runner-esque and futuristic.
On the ferry we promptly got drunk, despite knowing we would arrive at Miyake Jima at 5 in the morning and go spearing straight away. So after about 3 hours sleep we woke up to the sounds of birds chirping (actually a recording piped through the ferry's PA system) and, hungover, stumbled into the rental van. A short drive and we were gearing up next to a row of tetrapods running north along the shore. Tetrapods are the large concrete structures the Japanese use to protect against Tsunami. They often nurture an abundance of sea life such as crayfish and abalone, but, being no-take species in Miyake Jima, I instead ventured south along the rock wall, discovering the calm and clear blue water the perfect cure for my hangover.
Moving out towards deeper water I saw a large round rock starting at about 5 metres. I curved down over its surface and discovered a fast and silvery snapper type fish near the bottom at 9 metres. I hit it with an ok shot I thought, but the fish took off so fast it was hard to tell. The reel I only recently fixed to my Omer 110cm gun spun like crazy and soon the fish was 15 metres away. Not really familiar with the new real I put the brakes on too quickly and the fish tore off. Dang it! Not sure what it was, maybe an ishiizaki. All I was left with was a empty spear and a length of let out line, that tangled up when I reeled it back in
Swimming on, I saw a big parrot fish 15 minutes later and my heartbeat went crazy. It was enormous, maybe 85cm long, blue, with a huge hump on its head. When I first took a shot I completely underestimated the distance between us because of its size and my spear fell just short. Oddly the parrot fish was curious enough to stick around for me to reload and get my breathing under control, and so I was finally able to drop down and place a shot low in behind the gills at a depth of 10 metres. Man, did that fish go crazy! In the space of a few seconds it wove its way under and out of three different boulders, flapping its whole body with every muscle it had. Before I even had a chance to tighten the reel much, the line got caught on some rocks and promptly snapped. The fish flapped around some more under a rock to work its way off the spear and then it was gone. So I lost the fish, but it was incredible just to feel the kind of power it had.
Yet it wasn't easy finding my spear, it was lost somewhere under a rock at 12 metres. By then I was really unhappy with the reel. I got my spear back, after 4 of 5 dives, rigged it so I could keep diving, and eventually caught a mixed bag of mejina, a kind of bream or blackfish, and sawtail. There were also numerous turtles around too, which make for nice company.
I came back to the beach to find half my buddies asleep in the carpark - the drunken night on the ferry had caught up with them.
Next up went we diving at a spectacular location with 15 to 20 metre drop offs just a few metres away from the rock entry. This was very indicative of the volcanic nature of the island and was really spectacular. Care has to be taken though in choosing spots on Miyake Jima, though. The volcano is still very active and there are poisonous gas vents underwater that will literally kill you if you dive near them. I was lucky to go with guys who had been to Miyake Jima before and all the spots we dived were known to them.
I swam out past the drop-offs and slowly sunk down on some mejina I saw at 10 to 15 metres. On the way down though I glimpsed something larger out of the corner of my eye and changed direction, tacking like a skydiver to position my self closer. It was a big fuefukidai, a type of emperor fish. It had seen me and was turning away, but still a little curious. I kept calm and slowly swum up behind its tail. It was just about to bolt, but before it did it turned to keep me in eyesight, opening itself up for a shot behind the head and out the gills on the other side.
Before I jumped in the water this time I had knocked the reel off my gun, but I didn't attach my float line, so with just the shooting line I had a real fight all the way back to the surface. The fuefukidai wanted to hole up, but I kept a grip on my speargun and swam up, praying the fish wouldn't tear off. Luckily it was a good shot and I made it to the surface before the need to breathe was too urgent, actually my dive watch said the time was 50 seconds which is not that long, so I guess I could've gone on a little longer.
For the rest of the dive I felt very dangerous and was able to plug mejina and other fish with ease, but nothing the same size as the fuefukidai. It was spooking dragging around so much fish on my belt though. Although Japan is pretty well void of dangerous sharks, the fuefukidai would occasionally bump against the bag of my legs and give me a scare. A big moray eel also took an interest in the fish hanging off me, and it was then that I decided to call the dive quits, but not before spotting a beautiful lion fish in the shallows.
The fuefukidai was about 70cm long and probably weighed between 3 and 4 kg. I didn't bother to weigh or measure it though. I was just happy to see it on the dinner table that night. It was more than 4 hungry guys could finish.
We all had another dive the next morning before catching the ferry back, and I caught a nice selection of fish including an ishiidai, a fish prized by sashimi connoisseurs, and a kampachi, a tasty type of small kingfish/amberjack common in Japan and hard to shoot because of its small size and speed. A school of them suddenly school around me and I had one thought, ("don't think") and I got a lucky shot off.
On the whole I had most of the luck during the trip, compared to my buddies. Hideo busted his spear on the first dive, shooting at a in a cave. He subsequently stuck to the camera and got some good photos. Kei was keen to christen his new 3-band woody on a big fish, but found it was too long and big for the conditions. He also lost a big fuefukidai like the one I caught, it tore out and disappeared into a cave. Conversely, Jamie found his gun a little too short for most fish with such good visibility, but he did catch a great ishiigakidai on the last dive, a beautiful spotted fish related to the striped ishiidai I caught, but even more highly prized for sashimi. Jamie was also happy for another reason;he is a biologist researching zoanthids, a type of soft coral, and he collected some new specimens during the trip. One zoanthid he found has never been discovered this far north, and so his subsequent paper will document the extension of its range. And his spearing buddies get acknowledgements, how sweet is that?
Yugyug - doing my bit for science - Tokyo, Japan.
photos: the junior high school destroyed by the eruption, lionfish, me and fuefukidai, one days catch (from bottom, ishiidai, ishiigakidai, kampachi, parrot fish, mejina.), jamie and ishiigakidai.
After almost whole year of living in Tokyo I finally got the chance to visit a top-notch spearing location, Miyake Jima. It's not that other places to spear in Japan are bad, its just that they often have more cranky fisherman than fish. But Miyake Jima is small volcanic island reasonably far from the mainland that sits bang in the tail end of the Kuroshio or Black Current. The Kuroshio brings warm water up from the tropics to the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Izu. As such Japan possesses the northern most coral reefs in the world. It also very recently (in the year 2000) had a massive volcanic eruption that devastated much of the landscape, from both lava and poisonous gas. The islands inhabitants were evacuated and only recently returned last year, with the requirement that they carry gas masks with them at all times. Gas continues to pour from the volcano crater, so loudspeakers placed across the island blast out hourly updates and sometimes warnings in Japanese, creating a strange, ominous atmosphere, akin to the last half hour of a science fiction disaster movie.
The evidence of the most recent eruption is everywhere - huge swathes of dead trees, massive rock hard lava beds, and my favourite, the ruined former junior high school. It's quite a site - filled up with lava to the third floor, a burned out, blackened shell of a building. Its torturously warped metal window frames indicate the immense heat the lava that poured in must have generated. It was kind of like all my adolescent fantasies about high school come true. Well, maybe not all of them.
So there is also lot of environmental damage above ground, but underwater the fish life is very healthy. I'm not sure if this because of fishing pressure dropping during the evacuation, or if it was always this way and the fish just didn't suffer from all the volcanic activity. In anycase a good place for a spear.
I joined my four spearing buddies at Tokyo Takeshiba port to take the overnight ferry to Miyake Jima. Actually the last train to Takeshiba port is worth a mention; its a very high set and narrow train that weaves its way through the skyscrapers of eastern Tokyo city - very Blade Runner-esque and futuristic.
On the ferry we promptly got drunk, despite knowing we would arrive at Miyake Jima at 5 in the morning and go spearing straight away. So after about 3 hours sleep we woke up to the sounds of birds chirping (actually a recording piped through the ferry's PA system) and, hungover, stumbled into the rental van. A short drive and we were gearing up next to a row of tetrapods running north along the shore. Tetrapods are the large concrete structures the Japanese use to protect against Tsunami. They often nurture an abundance of sea life such as crayfish and abalone, but, being no-take species in Miyake Jima, I instead ventured south along the rock wall, discovering the calm and clear blue water the perfect cure for my hangover.
Moving out towards deeper water I saw a large round rock starting at about 5 metres. I curved down over its surface and discovered a fast and silvery snapper type fish near the bottom at 9 metres. I hit it with an ok shot I thought, but the fish took off so fast it was hard to tell. The reel I only recently fixed to my Omer 110cm gun spun like crazy and soon the fish was 15 metres away. Not really familiar with the new real I put the brakes on too quickly and the fish tore off. Dang it! Not sure what it was, maybe an ishiizaki. All I was left with was a empty spear and a length of let out line, that tangled up when I reeled it back in
Swimming on, I saw a big parrot fish 15 minutes later and my heartbeat went crazy. It was enormous, maybe 85cm long, blue, with a huge hump on its head. When I first took a shot I completely underestimated the distance between us because of its size and my spear fell just short. Oddly the parrot fish was curious enough to stick around for me to reload and get my breathing under control, and so I was finally able to drop down and place a shot low in behind the gills at a depth of 10 metres. Man, did that fish go crazy! In the space of a few seconds it wove its way under and out of three different boulders, flapping its whole body with every muscle it had. Before I even had a chance to tighten the reel much, the line got caught on some rocks and promptly snapped. The fish flapped around some more under a rock to work its way off the spear and then it was gone. So I lost the fish, but it was incredible just to feel the kind of power it had.
Yet it wasn't easy finding my spear, it was lost somewhere under a rock at 12 metres. By then I was really unhappy with the reel. I got my spear back, after 4 of 5 dives, rigged it so I could keep diving, and eventually caught a mixed bag of mejina, a kind of bream or blackfish, and sawtail. There were also numerous turtles around too, which make for nice company.
I came back to the beach to find half my buddies asleep in the carpark - the drunken night on the ferry had caught up with them.
Next up went we diving at a spectacular location with 15 to 20 metre drop offs just a few metres away from the rock entry. This was very indicative of the volcanic nature of the island and was really spectacular. Care has to be taken though in choosing spots on Miyake Jima, though. The volcano is still very active and there are poisonous gas vents underwater that will literally kill you if you dive near them. I was lucky to go with guys who had been to Miyake Jima before and all the spots we dived were known to them.
I swam out past the drop-offs and slowly sunk down on some mejina I saw at 10 to 15 metres. On the way down though I glimpsed something larger out of the corner of my eye and changed direction, tacking like a skydiver to position my self closer. It was a big fuefukidai, a type of emperor fish. It had seen me and was turning away, but still a little curious. I kept calm and slowly swum up behind its tail. It was just about to bolt, but before it did it turned to keep me in eyesight, opening itself up for a shot behind the head and out the gills on the other side.
Before I jumped in the water this time I had knocked the reel off my gun, but I didn't attach my float line, so with just the shooting line I had a real fight all the way back to the surface. The fuefukidai wanted to hole up, but I kept a grip on my speargun and swam up, praying the fish wouldn't tear off. Luckily it was a good shot and I made it to the surface before the need to breathe was too urgent, actually my dive watch said the time was 50 seconds which is not that long, so I guess I could've gone on a little longer.
For the rest of the dive I felt very dangerous and was able to plug mejina and other fish with ease, but nothing the same size as the fuefukidai. It was spooking dragging around so much fish on my belt though. Although Japan is pretty well void of dangerous sharks, the fuefukidai would occasionally bump against the bag of my legs and give me a scare. A big moray eel also took an interest in the fish hanging off me, and it was then that I decided to call the dive quits, but not before spotting a beautiful lion fish in the shallows.
The fuefukidai was about 70cm long and probably weighed between 3 and 4 kg. I didn't bother to weigh or measure it though. I was just happy to see it on the dinner table that night. It was more than 4 hungry guys could finish.
We all had another dive the next morning before catching the ferry back, and I caught a nice selection of fish including an ishiidai, a fish prized by sashimi connoisseurs, and a kampachi, a tasty type of small kingfish/amberjack common in Japan and hard to shoot because of its small size and speed. A school of them suddenly school around me and I had one thought, ("don't think") and I got a lucky shot off.
On the whole I had most of the luck during the trip, compared to my buddies. Hideo busted his spear on the first dive, shooting at a in a cave. He subsequently stuck to the camera and got some good photos. Kei was keen to christen his new 3-band woody on a big fish, but found it was too long and big for the conditions. He also lost a big fuefukidai like the one I caught, it tore out and disappeared into a cave. Conversely, Jamie found his gun a little too short for most fish with such good visibility, but he did catch a great ishiigakidai on the last dive, a beautiful spotted fish related to the striped ishiidai I caught, but even more highly prized for sashimi. Jamie was also happy for another reason;he is a biologist researching zoanthids, a type of soft coral, and he collected some new specimens during the trip. One zoanthid he found has never been discovered this far north, and so his subsequent paper will document the extension of its range. And his spearing buddies get acknowledgements, how sweet is that?
Yugyug - doing my bit for science - Tokyo, Japan.
photos: the junior high school destroyed by the eruption, lionfish, me and fuefukidai, one days catch (from bottom, ishiidai, ishiigakidai, kampachi, parrot fish, mejina.), jamie and ishiigakidai.
Attachments
Last edited:
