The Last Whalers by Doug Bock Clark

Author:Doug Bock Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

A LITTLE AFTER FIVE A.M., as the emerging sun outshone the eastern stars but the western half of the sky still lay in night, Jon and his companions awoke and reeled in the drift nets. The first sections yielded only several two-foot Pacific mackerel tuna, but the foam floats of the next portion had been pulled underwater. When the men hauled the net to the surface, they discovered a seven-foot swordfish. The sail of its silky black dorsal fin was torn, the lenses of its huge yellow eyes were misted with blood, and a tattered flag of ripped net had twisted around its lance of a nose—the majestic creature was dead. It took all four men to wrestle the several hundred pounds of fish over the side. Then they had to double the tail back to fit it in the hold. It was so entangled in the nets that onshore they would have to cut it free, but no one would mind the afternoons of restitching that would follow: it was a windfall. Over the next hour, reeling in the rest of the net, they discovered a four-foot swordfish, a dozen or so more mackerel tuna, and a hundred-pound yellowfin tuna. The good haul highlighted the efficiency of driftnetting: in about ten hours of light work, Jon and the others had taken in more than a thousand pounds of meat.

They had just finished coiling the nets when the harrumphing of a large motor echoed across the glassy water. A schooner twice as long as VJO chugged out of the west, its ax-blade prow slicing directly at them. It flew no flag, though from its construction Jon could tell it was from Sulawesi, an island some seven hundred miles to the north. With no way to outrun the schooner, Jon swung VJO around to face it. The other men located their duri. Piracy was not unknown in the Savu Sea, and the water otherwise lay empty for miles around. As the mystery vessel approached, Jon discerned a quartet of men on the foredeck, all of them sunburned and salted, with the grimy appearance of having been at sea for days. Before their feet lay two huge sharks, and blood slathered the white decks.

Jon hailed the ship in Lamaholot, the regional language, but the men answered in Indonesian, the national language, which all citizens speak. They were Bajo Laut, “Sea Nomads,” members of an ethnic group that once ranged in flotillas across eastern Indonesia and the Philippines, rarely ever setting foot on land. (Scientists have found that the bodies of the Bajo Laut have adapted to such an extent to their marine lifestyle that they have better eyesight under the water than terrestrially based humans, as well as an improved ability to hold their breath while spearfishing, which they do for hours a day.) But like the Lamalerans, the Bajo Laut have had their traditional lifestyle overhauled by modernity, and most of them have now settled in stilted houses on barrier islands,

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