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As I went down to the sea for a swim on New Year’s Day, a big man in a camo wetsuit came dripping up the street with spear in hand and a dozen dead fish hanging from his belt.
In the shower at Makalei Beach Park, other camo commandos rinsed off their gear. Offshore, the wind-tossed sea was covered in red-flagged divers’ floats.
Welcome to 2018: From a fish’s perspective, it’s Dunkirk without any rescue.
Fishing is banned during odd-numbered years and permitted on even-numbered years in the waters of the Waikiki Diamond Head Shoreline Fisheries Management Area, which stretches from the Diamond Head lighthouse to the Natatorium and includes our neighborhood beaches.
Throughout the year I swim laps over the reef wearing a mask, and from the beginning to end of 2017 I saw the shallows go from deserted to populated with schools of juvenile opelu (mackerel scad) and the occasional moi (threadfin), uhu (parrotfish) and other inshore species. During a year without human predation they grow tame, making them easy to pick off when restrictions lift.
As I swam this New Year’s Day, I saw no fish except for a few little tropical species — wrasses, manini and the lonely two-spot butterflyfish and Moorish idol whose companions had vanished back in 2016.
Farther out, I spotted four people standing hunched on the seaward edge of the reef, inside the surf break at Suis. They were affixing a bushy evergreen tree to rusty metal pilings, detritus of World War II.
Planting a post-Christmas tree on the reef has been a neighborhood tradition since the 1960s, but I had never seen anyone actually doing it. I felt as if I’d inadvertently caught Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy in action.
Once the tree was standing they headed in. I intercepted the first swimmer, a young man of 20, and asked how long they’d been doing this.
“About seven years,” he said. “It’s really Dad who does it. We just help him out.”
His dad caught up and explained that he and his family had taken on the tradition at the request of a friend who had died.
He refused to give their names. “The identity of those who place the tree should always be a secret.”
UNDERWATER, in the sun-dappled shallows, a quick movement caught my eye: a beautiful little eel of a type I’d never seen, striped in white, red and black bands, swimming quickly just above the sand. It looked happy and seasonal, like an undulating candy cane.
I hoped this sighting might be a good omen for the new year. An hour later, I was laid low by flu.
A week later, when there was sun and the water was clear, I went for my second swim of the year. I wished I’d stayed in bed when I saw the eel. It was floating lifeless, crumpled, a large shiny fishhook embedded in its little jaw.
Elsewhere on the silted reef glinted discarded fishing weights made of lead, a toxic heavy metal.
I picked up the weights and also wanted to retrieve the metal in the eel’s jaw, which could snag another fish, but couldn’t overcome my squeamishness, dating back to small-kid days of fishing with bamboo poles when my cousin or uncle would have to unhook my thrashing catch. I memorized the eel’s location and walked up the beach, where I found an empty plastic bag.
In the interval the tide had risen and the water turned murky. I couldn’t find the eel, but came upon another of a different species, with a big pointed head and a long, thin tail. There was a bloody red spot in its gills; at least someone had removed the hook.
The killing had been a frenzy, taking collateral lives like these. And the tree on the reef now seemed grotesquely out of place. Walking home, I wondered about these new year amusements centered on a dead tree and dead fish, and whether our heedless energies could instead be harnessed to restore the life of the sea.
“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.
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