A Night in the life of a Nicaraguan Fisherman

It’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s the time that most people are thinking about their commute home. Rush hour traffic, day care pick ups, and check out lines at the grocery store. I relish with the knowing that for today, that isn’t me. Instead, I’m sitting half-in the elongated shade of a small fishing boat. My toes are dipped in the cool sand, and the receding sun shines intrusively into my eyes, causing a sheen of sweat to break out across my face. For today, my work is just beginning.

I’m in a small, industrious town on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, Central America. (I won’t name where, as some of the fishing practices I witnessed are illegal). The town I’m in has yet to become over-infused with tourism, and fishing still persists as one of the main industries for the local people. The beach here is rimmed with an assortment of colorful fiberglass fishing boats called ‘lancha’s’. During the day time, the boats sit in rainbow clusters just above the high tide line, enduring the lingering sun until the late afternoon when the fishermen congregate on the beach to bein their nightly trade.

Tonight, I will join a crew of local fishermen.

The men (and I) will fish from 4pm until morning. They carry with them a single light bulb which gets strung up on a stick and connected to an old car battery. They will travel kilometers offshore into the open Pacific ocean, and at night you can see the tiny sparkle of their single bulbs as they dance in and out of the swell. Like stars that have fallen low to the horizon, blinking to and from existence.

For years, I’ve wondered what happens out there. What’s going on beneath those distant spheres of light which are their worlds? Miles from shore- fully exposed under the raw tropical sky while the mighty Pacific rumbles, conjuring up schemes of wickedness beneath them. What do they see out there? Between the blankets of sea and sky, surrounded by darkness.

These men carry no life jackets. Many of them can not swim. They have no emergency equipment. No flares, no radios, no oars, no first aid. There is no way with which to communicate if something goes wrong. The lancha’s offer no protection from the elements. During the winter, when monsoons* ravage the coastline, the men will fish all the same. Enduring* the wind and rain. Casting their hooks while they huddle beneath hole-ridden tarps.

The captain has agreed to take me for one night as a favor to a mutual friend of ours. Also, on account of that I’ve offered to pay for half of the gasoline , which is usually a hefty expense for the tradesmen. I’ve been trying to weasel my way into a night of fishing with the locals for a long time, most of which I spent disbelieving that it would actually happen seeing as the cultural odds are stacked heavily against me. Women don’t fish in Nicaragua. And although it has been done-foreigners don’t fish either.

I’ve arrived early, and as I wait for my crew to arrive, I try and to look cool and calm. Eventually the captain arrives and soon after, a couple more. We exchange a few words. I’m early, he tells me. I fallow the fishermen up to the ‘collectiva’, a miniscule warehouse, which is a couple hundred meters up a hill and tucked into a cluster of bungalows. Here is where they keep the equipment they will need for their long night out on the water. Outboard motors, car batteries, jerry cans, and industrial coolers which they will use to store their catch until morning.

The fishermen around me have increased in numbers-all men and boys. The boys are assigned various tasks by the older men- carrying nets and batteries down to the boats, filling jugs with water, and sorting bags of ice. Gasoline is measured out and poured meticulously-so as not to waste a drop-into Jerry Cans. A volumptuous woman appears, with boxes of fish hooks, which she passes around to the men. There is a lot of smack talk going around. The way men talk when women aren’t around. They are teasing each other in such a way that only comes with a life-times’ supply of familiarity.

My presence is conspicuous, but hardly acknowledged. It appears as if the guys are merely ‘tolerating’ me, although I know that by morning, the village will be alive with curiosity about the ‘chela’ who (for better or worse) consciously chose to disrupt the cultural status quo. I am unsure whether they are indignant or just uncomfortably shy, but it’s too late to turn back now.

When I ask if I can help, they seem to reluctant and awkward-but start handing me a couple light buckets to bring down to the lanchas.

Once the boats have been loaded, and the motor secured to the back, we use logs to roll the lanchas down to the waters’ edge. The captain, who I’ll call Eddie, instructs me to get in, sit in the very middle of the first pew, and not to move. His eyes warn me that this isn’t a field trip, and if I don’t behave it will be a long swim back to shore. So I climb up and wait obediantly while the boys push the boat into the roiling swell.

20 feet offshore, there is an outcropping of rock that resembles a thick wall. The exit into the open ocean is a 15 foot gap between the between two volcanic baricades. The swell is large today, and it pulsates and jacks up into a salty blockade where the rock wall bottlenecks the incoming wave. I realize that if Eddie’s timing isn’t perfect, we will all become fish food.

There is yelling. People are pushing the boat into the chop. I watch as Eddie stares intently into the ocean assessing the swell interval. Suddenly the yelling increases to an indecipherable din, and movement of the boat into the sea increases. The two other guys jump on-and Eddie as well. Suddenly the prop is in the water. With a practiced twist of the throttle, the captain floors it decisively through the tiny opening. Suddenly, I’m floating. I’m in the air for a second, which feels delightfully long, ….then WHAM-my backside makes contact with the hard fiberglass as we gun it up the face of the next wave.

If it was too late before, its REALLY too late now. With hardly a sentimental glance back to shore, Eddie opens up the throttle into the vast western nothingness. Beside me is Pablo (also a psuedonym)- he is middle aged and quiet. And on the pew in front of me sits Flaco-I guess him to be around my age, and I instantly take a liking to his youthful energy. Behind us- the captain navigates the endless plain with a GPS-it is the only specialized equiptment that the guys will use. The GPS will show the captain where we are, and what is the depth of sea beneath us.

The time is beyond me, but I guestimate we are about 5 km from shore when Eddie idles down. He says that we are over a reef. The depth, when I ask, is 38 meters. Pato scampers up to the front in preparation to setting the anchor. The anchor is a crude imitation made of bent re-bar welded onto a piece of steel pipe. The line is thin and chafing-but its all that they have. Eddie doesn’t wait for the anchor to catch before he kills the engine. I stand up to help, but I receive what I was coming to think of as “the stare.” The sit down, shut up, and don’t move look of intimidation that I was becoming used to obeying. “Sit.” he told me. I sat.

When the anchor was all the way out, Flaco and Pablo started setting a small net which they attached to the anchor line. It wasn’t to catch the deep-sea fish-just carnada, sardinas -bait in other words. This was the most primitive fishing set up I had ever seen. Hooks-weight-and bait. That’s it. The line is wrapped around a wooden paddle, which looks as if it could serve as a cutting board under different circumstances. The men are slicing off fleshy chunks of sardine left over from last nights’ venture. Eddie asks me if I would like to fish. Of course I would. He hands me a paddle, and begins to tie a hook and weight onto the end of the line. He pierces the hook with a meaty piece of sardine and tells me to throw it over. I do. Flaco and Pablo are creating similar designs with their gear, and soon we’re all waiting the for the bites that will so cruelly mandate the future of these men and their families.

The sun has sunk below the horizon and the western clouds are alive with a buffet of vivid colors. The east offers a clever silhouette of landscape. With the distance, the steep cliffs could be mistaken as soft summery rolling hills-the effect is enchanting. To see the onset of night, surrounded only by the vastness of the sea, is an aberration for me, and my eyes lay favor to the darkening sea scape* where the stars are settling in to their positions for their circadian romp across the sky.

We are fishing for Pargo- otherwise known as red snapper. These fishermen work for a Union, so the price of each type of fish they catch will vary depending on the fluctuations of the market. Right now, Pargo is selling for 350 Cordova’s a pound, which works out to about US 9.30$. The older fishermen of the village have told me stories of boats coming back loaded to the brim. Sometimes the boats couldn’t even manage to fish for a whole night before they were so overloaded they had to make their way back to shore. These days though, its not uncommon for the boats to return with barely enough fish to cover the gasoline consumption-let alone food for their families. Their greatest resource is disappearing within the meager time frame of single generation-inducing wars of poverty on the shoreline.

I sit in the boat with my feet over the side-my toes brush the crest of the small waves that cast their whisper into the thin fiberglass hall. The wind is pure salt against my grimy face. The stars flaunt themselves above us. The night is surreal-clean, and cool. Pablo, Eddie and Flaco chat amicably amongst themselves. For them, there is nothing poetic about this night. This is simply what they do. What they must do to support their families. Fishing is what their fathers have done before them and for most of the fishermen along the cost of Nicaragua, this is the only thing that they know how to do. Not many generations ago, fishing was a livable, thriving trade. Now that’s debatable at best.

I’m struck by the (dichotomy wrongness? warped reality? Surrealty) of this circumstance. If I was with a group on Canadians right now, we would have paid hundreds of dollars to be doing what I am doing right now. We would be using expensive rods, downriggers, sonar, and all the newest technology to track and trick these deep sea fish into biting our hooks. We would be passing around cold beers, and sharing war stories about fish of unrealistic proportions.

But here I was,

These fishermen don’t have the luxury of using rods.

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