I was Gone Fishin’ recently, honouring a relatively recent tradition of the Tioman Merdeka fishing trip. Long may such trips last, and many be the unbelievable fishing tales that are spun.
The very first fishing trip for me was courtesy of an invite from an old friend “J” just weeks before the Covid-19 shutdowns of 2020.
Kuala Rompin in Pahang was then just beginning to feel the effect of reduced tourism, especially from Singaporeans who, perhaps, knew something about Covid-19 they weren’t sharing with us, or perhaps we Malaysians were just carrying on being Malaysians: “If Covid, then Covid lor: what to do? We must go, one.”
That trip was an embarrassing one for me – completely knocked out with sea sickness on the tame South China Sea. I had been advised to take seasickness pills, but of course I declined.
I told everybody I had actually been a fisherman in my younger days. True enough: when I came home from studies abroad with very mediocre grades, fishing off the coast of Penang was all I could do while I looked for a proper job.
But netting prawns and occasionally doing longline fishing in the calm waters off Penang was nothing like going out into the middle of the ocean. Since then, I seemed to have also developed vertigo, as well as selective recollection, where I seemed to recall being the master of the ocean and lord of everything in it.
So, on that first trip, with me lying down with my head covered, I caught nary a single fish. However, I certainly heard the whoops of delight of my friends reeling them in, and the thrashing of the fish on the boat’s floor.
I excused myself for the subsequent day’s session. I didn’t catch a single fish that trip. However, my friends’ generosity ensured I got to take some fish back home to back up my lies to my wife.
Starting a tradition
Nowadays, my fishing trips are relatively comfortable except when truly rough seas hit us. Pharmaceuticals – the humble sea-sickness pills – work wonders. I don’t leave home for fishing trips without them.
During a pause in one of the Covid shutdowns, we went out fishing again during the Merdeka holidays that year, and hence started the Merdeka fishing tradition.
Having retired by then, it was easy to take many days off because every day was and is an unpaid holiday. But our friend and benefactor J has a pretty big job in KL; in his case, he must truly believe that work is the annoying gap between fishing trips.
I’m familiar with the sea. I was born in Penang literally a hundred metres away from the beach. The sound of the roaring sea, especially at night, is music to my ears.
Many of the generations before me were also fishermen, as were many of the kampung folk. So I have the sea in my blood, which perhaps explains why I can be rather salty at times.
A whale of a visitor
The first Merdeka fishing trip was truly memorable in another way when a surprise visitor came calling, when we were about 50km offshore in the deep waters and the shipping lanes.
A huge whale shark came to visit. It was very curious, and circled around our boat to check us out. It came so close that I reached out and actually touched its fin, all the while screaming like an excited little girl.
I still have the video of that contact, and if you’re nice to me, I will play it for you, minus the sound. The whale shark is the world’s largest fish but our visitor was likely a juvenile, even if a juvenile whale shark is the size of a bus.
It’s a fish, and not quite a whale, which is a mammal, and not quite a shark, either, so the chances of us being eaten were relatively small, especially for the salty ones like me.
Shark attack
But we did see big scary sharks often enough.
One of the most exciting things about fishing off Kuala Rompin is that in the period of August to September we get another amazing visitor in droves: sailfish.
These are huge migratory bill fish with sharp sword-like snouts as well as huge dorsal fins (the ones on its back, to you landlubbers) that look like, well, a ship’s sail.
Hooking and bringing them on board for a quick photo before releasing them is a massively exciting thing. But occasionally the sailfish, which follow their food (sardines and other small prey fishes), are also followed by sharks that always say “don’t mind if I do” when offered a chance to eat fresh sailfish sashimi.
The sea around us would then turn red with blood. Big fish eat small fish feasting off smaller fishes still – that’s how Mother Nature works. Being able to watch it in real life is an honour and an experience worth repeating and exaggerating for ever and ever, just like any other fishing stories.
Amazing experience
Fishing off the peninsular east coast is truly an amazing experience. J, who has fished all over the world, thinks we have world-class fishing right off our own shores, something many Malaysians don’t seem to know.
You can fish off the west coast, too. However, you’d be trying your luck in the narrow, busy Straits of Malacca, whose waters have been overfished and polluted. Fishing there just doesn’t compare.
Up until the 1980s we still had sea turtles landing and laying eggs on my Penang kampung’s beaches.
These turtles were not the giant leatherbacks that used to swarm the east coast, but they surely were bigger than any turtles on land. Their eggs (back when there wasn’t that much concern about the survival of sea turtles) were absolutely delicious.
Deep thoughts
While fishing is exciting sport, it’s also quite sad. We literally harvest the abundance of the sea using ever more powerful tools and techniques. These range from the horrible sea-bed trawlers to fishing fleets with their own floating fish processing factories and GPS, and fish-finding sonar for even the weekend anglers.
On land, the ability to harvest any gifts from the earth (unless you’re despoiling pristine primary jungles) requires labour and resources to sow and care for your crops. And even then, nature can still play jokes on you with drafts or floods or blights.
Those who fish from the ocean, especially those who scoop up everything in their way and throw away most of the catch for not being commercially valuable, hardly ever give anything back to the sea. They treat the sea as this huge food bank that doesn’t ever run out of goodies and bounties.
That’s not true. Unsustainable fishing practices wipe out good fisheries, making food security a tougher challenge for all. It also forces fishermen to go after other species that they hadn’t bothered with, wreaking havoc with these too.
And this doesn’t even take into account the pollution, whether from chemicals, especially those so-called forever chemicals, to plastics that break down into minute particles that end up in the marine food chain and ultimately in all of us.
Takers, not givers
So when it comes to the seas and oceans, our relationship with them is mostly a one-way street. We take and take and hardly give anything back in return. The seas and oceans seem to belong to everybody, but that also means they belong to nobody, and hence are ripe for maximum exploitation.
I’d like to think us weekend anglers, who descend on Kuala Rompin and Tioman a few times a year at most, aren’t the worst of the culprits. Responsible boat captains who take us to sea try not to exhaust the stock, because they know their own livelihood is tied up to the sea always having plenty of fish.
The sea won’t ever run out of creatures whether big or small. But it can run out of creatures we want and need, to be replaced with creatures we don’t want or need.
Mother Nature isn’t out there crying out of sadness at our greed and neglect. It’s just adjusting the balance of nature, and at some point factors such as overfishing, pollution, warming and acidifying oceans will tilt the balance so much that humans will start to suffer.
These are pretty heavy thoughts to take with you on a weekend fishing trip. But it’s not all doom and gloom. The vast open ocean, fresh air, camaraderie and of course the actual catching of fish are memorable events.
But even with all the enjoyment, it’s worth thinking about the bigger picture once in a while.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
