TEAM TECATE

Typically a daily schedule is getting up early in the morning to dive and then arriving back at the trailer around noon. The reasons for this are that typically (well, in previous years) the wind picks up around noon and also because most of the sport fishing boats arrive on shore around noon to four. I’ve tried to go to many different places to get leopard grouper bodies to get measurements and otoliths but I’ve been more successful at the filet table of Arturo’s sportfishing in front of la pinta hotel.

Last year I was able to get about 400 samples from there alone (imagine how many leopard grouper are actually taken daily when you consider that arturo’s fleet is only a fraction of the number of boats that go out daily to fish and that doesn’t include the illegal fleets that fish in the park at night and then leave the park by morning).

This being my third season going to the filet table I obviously know quite a few people and lots of people know me. Last year, Gali ran the table and it was a running joke that I was his girlfriend. OBVIOUSLY, I was not…lol but it let me know I was welcome and that I was also “protected” in a way. It’s kind of hard to explain…

This year I arrived, and Gali didn’t work there anymore. In fact many of the kids that used to be there weren’t there so it seemed strange at first, but everyone was still nice. And there was lots of mention about gali not being there and how my boyfriend left me. After awhile three of the captains would hang out at the table more so than they did last year. And talk started about THEM being my new boyfriends.

These captains, Antonio, Jesus (momo), and Chico make up TEAM TECATE



because they show up at the table everyday with a couple six packs of tecate. The day of gordon’s first day at the filet table they offered him a tecate and told him they were “equipo tecate” and we hung out and poor Gordon didn’t understand a word they were saying but stood there and drank the tecate. When he finished, they offered him another which he took. When he declined the third tecate, he was officially kicked off team tecate. This hurt Gordon deeply and he has been concerned about getting back on. I of course explained that he would have another chance the next day and he can’t take it personally because neither Catherine nor I would ever be kicked off because we’re girls, because I’m their “girlfriend,” and because Catherine is “la Guerra!” (the blonde).

One day at the filet table someone had caught a mako shark. The guy who caught it, I’d actually seen as well for three years as a customer of Arturo’s and they had been interested in my grouper project in the past. I said “oh my god you kept a shark?” and he said “what! it’s not a leopard grouper!” and I said “as bad off as groupers are, sharks are WAY worse.” The filet guys filleted half for the guy and then the other half sat there and Gordon and I checked out the rest of this beautiful creature. I was so bummed I didn’t have my camera and then I asked if they would cut the head off so I could have the jaws. One of the filet guys called Guaymas (because he’s from Guaymas) cut the head off and then showed me on one side how to take the jaws out and then handed me the knife. While I was removing it he also talked about the teeth and said that they didn’t like it that I was diving so much and that one day I’m going to be eaten by a shark. Or at least one bite and I would be dead. I replied that in the six years I’ve been diving here I’ve NEVER seen anything more than a horn shark on the reef and the only other sharks I’ve seen have been in fishing pangas. They informed me that while I have not SEEN any sharks many sharks have seen me and, again, one bite from a mako and it doesn’t matter if it sticks around to eat me, I’m dead.

I got my first shark bite getting the jaws out and I said look, there, a shark bite and I’m still alive! They were not convinced. When we were leaving, TEAM TECATE was assembled in the shade in the back of chico’s truck and we started talking about the shark jaws. Momo wanted to know what I was going to do with it and why I didn’t clean it. I told him that I was going to wrap it in cheesecloth and bury it so beetles and ants can eat the meat off it. Well, let me tell you, I might as well have said “I’m going to go home and wear it on my head until it dries” he let me know I was crazy and that he worked for 20 years cleaning sharks for his dad and he knows how to clean jaws and if he had a knife he would do it for me. He also told us about a white shark that was caught in a net off Isla Coronados 20 years ago and that it was so big that you could pass the jaws over your body and nothing would touch you, and that you could try to straddle the shark and one of your feet wouldn’t be able to touch the ground on the other side. And I got another lecture about diving and being eaten by sharks. Next thing I know, we’ve agreed that momo and chico are going to follow us home and momo’s going to clean the shark jaws for me. When we get to the trailer, I get all my available knives and the sharpening stone for him. The knife he picks is the smaller, curved tip knife and he proceeds to sharpen it and then clean the jaws. And of course, drink tecate.

When he finished, chico and momo had argued about 100 times, momo had sharpened my little knife so much it no longer had a curved tip, Gordon got kicked off team tecate AGAIN, and my jaws were beautiful with two criss-crossed sticks to hold the jaws open while they dry.

VIVE TEAM TECATE!