back on track (and backtracking a bit...)

for those who don't remember, one of my activities would be to go to the filet table where they filet the incoming catch from the sportfishermen.

typically, they target the "big game" such as dorado, sailfish and grouper among others. but occasionally they don't get squat. so they end up catching stuff like this guy.

This is a jawfish and lives on the bottom of the ocean. they dig these burrows and build these incredibly intricate entrances with shells very carefully inlaid into the sand to hold up the entrance. it would make any mason proud. when the sportfishermen indicate they want a certain fish the captain will try to take them where they tend to occur. so if you want dorado or sailfish, they're going to take you far offshore and often over seamounts. if you want yellowtail or grouper they're going to take you to certain points on the islands and troll. well, when NOTHING is happening the captain starts to worry about his tip, so he'll take them to certain spots that are very deep where he KNOWS he can get them SOMETHING, such as gold spotted cabrilla, or occasionally a baqueta (remind me to find those pics so you can see them too). but if you're fishing the bottom you're going to come up with a few of these guys too. the unfortunate thing is that they're all mouth, hardly any meat so even if you get a big one, you're not getting much from it and it dies anyway =( take a look at the mouth and teeth and tell me what you think they eat.


This is Noe. he's one of the filet guys. He would have to be the fastest, strongest, most accurate fileters i've ever seen. i've seen other guys and thought, damn they're good (believe me fileting fish is NOT as easy as you think) and i've seen other guys just butcher the hell out of the fish. but then i saw Noe and thought, shit this guy is an ARTIST. amazing.


which is pretty funny when you get a good look at his hands. they're like BEAR PAWS. all meat and no fingers. hee. i love Noe, he's muy buena onda and his dad is the one that helped me out of major jams with my motors and was always incredibly kind to me.



this is the working end of a california sheepshead. now these you don't see too often on the reef. as you can imagine, since is said it was a CALIFORNIA sheepshead that it lives in cold cold water so here in Loreto these suckers are found DEEP. so now you've seen the mouth, what do you think they eat?



this is brad weighing a leopard grouper. he would weigh them before they were fileted and then extract the gonads and weigh those too. then he creates what is called a gonad somatic index, GSI, which indicates the relationship between body weight and the gonad weight and it's importance in its reproductive behavior. for example, grey whales have a VERY large GSI because they participate in what's called "sperm competition" meaning the females will mate with multiple males and the male that can not only fill the female with sperm but also push out the sperm of the previous suitors wins and you need really really big balls to do that. similar with groupers, they spawn in large groups but they don't inseminate the female. both the females and the males expel their gametes into the water column so the male that can be the closest and put out so much sperm he's increasing his chances to hit a few million eggs in the trillions of gallons of ocean water.

the funny part about this is that i noticed that when the filet guys were talking or teasing or yelling at each other they would end their sentences with (phonetically) "way." for example "muevete tu culo, way" (move your ass, "way"). so i finally asked why they ended their sentences that way. gali explained to me that "way" is someone who's girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend (or i can imagine by anyone). in otherwords he's cuckolded. so when fish would come in off the boats, they would point at the fish and say "brad, you weigh?" and brad would say, "yes, i'll weigh them" they would just fall apart in peals of laughter. they picked on my quite a bit, but they picked on brad a bit more sometimes i think because he didn't speak any spanish so half the time i would have to explain what they were saying, and of course i'm cracking up too.

that was, of course, until brad told his rodeo joke (which will NOT get told here - it was DIRTY!) then they loved him. of course, i had to translate it to spanish for them WHILE i was cracking up and when i finished the entire palapa was laughing so hard i was just crying. so then after that when they wanted me to blush they would jump around and yell, "miCHELE! roDEOOOOO!!!"

ok
guess you had to be there. maybe i'll tell the story over beer one day....