Check out this squid lure I unwrapped off a piece of stag horn
coral while scuba diving off Mahalika in Mindanao. It is kind of neat. Look at
all those hooks on the tail.
Chris noticed a puffer fish hooked and tangled on a different piece
and cut the line and set him loose. It was all puffed up and made a
slow escape. There were a few fishermans long lines that
had broken free and were tangled around the corals.
One of those small
line cutters is a handy thing to keep tucked in the pocket of your BCD
should you could get wrapped in some loose line and have a problem.
The idea of a long line is to have one long strand of heavier line
with a bunch of hooks on lighter line spaced at intervals along the
main chord. Occasionally they get tangled up on obstructions on the
bottom and have to be abandoned by the fishermen.
They will remain
active until the baits have disintegrated, usually in a day or so. Fish
that are hooked are screwed of course and will die and get eaten by other fish
eventually. Then the hooks rust away but the line is there for quite a
while but then it provides a base for algae and and other organisms to
cling to.
Here is a view of what a fish trap looks like. There are loads of
configurations all made out of woven strips of bamboo. These are about
2 meters across. Some fishermen use smaller ones. They are a pretty
common sight to come across when diving.
One
of the most amazing things I witnessed was a skin diver in the
Philippines at 42 meters with just a spear gun and goggles. He waited
to make sure it was a safe shot and then nailed an oriental sweetlips.
He would hold a rock to get to depth and then carefully work his way
over to some wreckage and swoosh he would get his breakfast.
He did have a cord wrapped around his chest that he would tug and his mates would reel him to the surface. Still pretty amazing!
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