Posts by underwatermike

  • new spearfisherman in mozambique

    Hi thank you very much..
    woldcup..i'm returning to Moz on the 10th of June luckely..johannesburg is freeeezing cold and the influx of thousands of worldcup tourists has started.. its nice to see and meet people with different accents and languages all the time but i have to return to work.


    Thank you for the railgun tip Papaa.. i scanned further through this furum and saw the lengthy debates you guys have undergone since 2008 ..to pump or not to pump.. i've been to one shop all they had was Cressi fins, Cressi spearguns (phneumo/band).. any idea how Cressi matches up with Rob Allen..i'll go and do some more gun exploring today.


    and Attan i love the oath you quote.. you must be a healthy eater! i used to order my rump steak from the butcher..and it had to be as thick as the butcher's elbow!! now livving in Moz.. i just eat prawn, fish and chicken..there's meat in moz really only old imported low quality meat from surrounding countries..there's no wild either (only the reserves close to africa) locals ate everything during the long civil war.


    LunkerBuster..on the african reports..i'll practise with an intro if i may..
    an hour flight from johannesburg takes you to dirty water Moz capital Maputo..here you can take a three hour govenment fairy from the Porto (harbour) to the small Island of Inhaca where if you mingle with the friendly locals in the forest and when they trust you.. take you out spearfishing with them..i didnt have a liscence or gun so just swam allong..there is a small scuba shop..and masterdiver came along with his speargun. the skipper of the canoo sized boat was an oldish local man (in most african langueages, showing respec for old men is to call them "Madala") Khip and his son (both locals) the master diver, his girlfriend (on scuba gear) and myself.. it took me 3days to get the guys to take me with but they managed to see my passion for the open blue..we got together the afternoon (the morning was for drinking red wine and tippo tinto rum at the mercado (market) and spent about an hour fixing a pipegun's trigger as well as a loose handle..with the equipment ok the Madala Kip then got into an hour long discussion in portuguess with another elder..i always knew it was cause i was there, a new face..they didnt know if they could trust me ..i learnt later the other elder worked for gov fisheries;/..i just kept quiet and waited in the african sun (with a cold black beer eventually ofcourse) for this to play out..it did eventually when i payed for the tiny buggies fuel in advance..the five of us were off..made the 45 min trip between the two islands (inhaca and portuguess island) into the open ocean.. we got to point where the islands lighthouse lined up with a hill in the forest as well as another point on the other island.. This was the spot. I slipped in the water almost immediatly..
    and saw everything, the 20- 25m deep clear turquise surrounding a steamboat shipwreck, coral and hordes of correl fish..there was no sand..just correl and life.. i was still exploring the nooks and crannies..when i spotted a spear fly from above..it was the masterdiver.. i then heard a sound i'll never forget.. he shot a giant ray..the sound this fish made was like a piglett or dog screaming in slow motion..i got the chills straight away..why shoot a bloody ray and it was almost the size of a medium manta.. then the screaaaming stopped and the ray took off upwards and away then downwards again pulling the diver who's holding onto the buoy, all over the place.. a minute or two later the old man's son shot his shaft into the ray (behind the two eyes' centre) and onther screaaam eminated from the animal. so now two spears two buoys and two divers were being dragged through the turquoise with the ray surfacing every now and then.. the first time i see a fish pull two divers around in the water with floats... the divers then took turns to go down and hit the ray on the head with their guns (they should've had your shark spikes) in attempt to put it out of missery but the fish just took off everytime.. i then got involved when i saw the guys were tiring (must've been almost 10 mins already) , i politely asked the young master diver for his speargun and went down to hit ray between the eyes when he stopped and lifted his massive tail past me in slooow motion.. i recoiled at the same slow speed realising only at that point the actual danger..after breaking the tail (the young local managed this) the ray just sped off again..we then surfaced into current fulll of jellies! pink blue mostly white box shaped (tissue box sized) it was then that i was glad this didnt happen in north ausie or summatran waters..the water was warmer than 28degrees C so we were almost naked..arms legs neck face hands..everything burning. The guys let go off the buoys and made a b-line back to the tiny boat now only visible on the horison.. i tried swimming to the boat for a minute but quickly reallised that you'd have to go through the peacefull hord of stinging gel..took a deep breath and slowly went down..looked for a small patch of sand in all the corral found a piece.. and slowly rolled from left hand elbow shoulder back face hair legs chest to the right side through the sand not rubbing just rolling and came out clean leaving the sting in the sandpit with no burns..held onto the corral and looked up..it was just jellyfish everwhere...i knew the law of ocean..panic and you die..gauged the direction of the current and started crossing it even further from the boat staying at the bottom though..eventually you have to give in to the fact that you have to surface and i surfaced in to jellies again..went down burning like hell once more while forcing myself to burn calmy and repeat the sandpit excercise..swam further away and then surfaced out of the school quite far from the speck of a boat..drifted on my back for a minute to rest and made my way back to the boat in arch away from the jelly current by swimming as close to the reef and below the currents.
    When i got to the boat everyone was urinating on themselves and the girl was crying screaming (panic).. i told them about the sandpit story but they were convinced that uric acid was the key and there were no intention of reentering the water. so we left circling the area for 5 minutes looking for the two big red buoys..nothing. I asked the dude why the hell he shot the ray..he replied 'why not?' i just though what an idiot..he was never going to eat the ray..more like one of my directors from a big mining house going to pole to hunt and shoot a polar bear..the rush and prestige.. this was when i thought to my self..do i really want to get into spearfishening..do all spearfisherman disregard the beauty of the ocean kill for the sake of killing? that night i went back into the full mooned ocean strip between the two islands (calm waters) swam upto local dows and chatted to locals in my broken portuguess mixed with a bit of zulu, setswana, swaili, afrikaans and english..drank local coconut beer with them and eventually forgot about the screams the peacefull ray made that afternoon i returned from the water at four that morning.


    Taking a 2hour flight north from maputo you reach the city of Beira..another two and a half hour private flight north from Beira and you reach the village of Tuipito. this and hours drive north from Moma, and an hour south from Angoche..this village only got power in the last two years from our mining site...the villiage on the beach is called Tibane..and you still have to listen for a generator running to get a cold beer a local bar.. heaven..the water is quite dirty from all the rivers..but we have two islands about 20km in to the ocean with turquoise waterand pristene corrals.


    Ok guys i''l stop now before i bore you and get banned from this forum.
    Thanks again for the nice welcome.
    ciao
    mike

  • new spearfisherman in mozambique

    helo
    i'm Mike a mining engineer (metallurgist) in northern mozambique (1 year). i've been snorkeling for 25years..recently qualified in open water scuba (would've done scuba 20 years ago if i could afford it and lived close to the ocean)..anyway.. i use to to be able to hold my breath longer than 3mins (i know this is peanuts for you pros)..but this was in boring swimmingpools hundreds of killometers from the ocean. I now make a point of it to work and live next to ocean..even starting a masters degree in mechanical eng to providing greater job oppertunities for myself in the ocean (like ocean engineer, offshore eng or oilrigs).
    I went to a diving shop this morning (in johannesburg, southafrica) to purchase my first speargun (and divecomputer/watch)..and wasnt sure what to get when i saw the Cressi phneumatic gun..its about 50% more expensive than the rubber but the thing that bugs me (a little) is that its a gun..not a slingshot..besides the customs problems i think i'll have, it kinda doesnt feel 'natural'...so i bought two spearfishing dvds "african spearfishing diaries" to learn a bit more before buy the gear..well and i found this blog on the net.
    thankyou just saying this outloud here in this forum just helped me make up my rubbermind!! cool