Fishy tales from La Gomera

Beaked whale stranded in Charco del Conde, Valle Gran Rey (Image: Ayuntamiento Valle Gran Rey)

While we're roasting in Gomera-like summer heat here in the west of Ireland, Damien Enright (himself 'stranded' in La Gomera due to Corona curtailments) reported from the island in the Irish Examiner yesterday:

'' Damien Enright: Merciless predation on the beaches of Gomera

Gomera is always replete with stories to tell, and this week is no exception. For me, it began in serendipitous accord with my recent theme of “small is beautiful” when I found myself waist-high in the sea surrounded by small, lifeless fish floating laterally, not belly up, glittering like spangles on the surface.

I picked one up, then two. They were as fresh as if in life, unusual and elegant. I laid two across my open palm, one pink, one metallic blue, each with a nose one third of its body length. Snipe trumpet fish, they are called, ‘trompeteros’. So long is the appendage that snipe trombone fish might suit them better. I took photos. I’d display them but the space is better filled by the image of a second item of deep-water fauna that beached here, so I will just tell the trumpet fish story.

They live at depths in tropical and sub-tropical waters in sea mounts at depths to 600m. They come to the surface at night to feed on crustacean zooplankton and return at dawn. Wouldn’t it take them half the night just to arrive? No, because, in shoals, they ride currents like geyser spouts rising from the submarine canyons. Tragically, however, they sometimes cannot find gaps in the ‘geysers’ and, not strong enough to swim against them, cannot make the return journey to the cool, dark depths that are their home.

Stranded on the surface under the heat of the sun, they die in their millions, are a feast for gulls, wash up in swathes on island beaches, forming heaps half the height of haystacks until buried rather than left stinking in the sun.

Snipe trumpet fish close up (Damien Enright)

A tragic sight, but not so sad as the solitary creature lying on broken rocks at the mouth of ‘the baby beach’ as it is called, a shallow pool with a fringe of black sand and perfect for children’s bathing.

I watched it as it was washed in, a dead cuvier’s beaked whale, the tide carrying it relentlessly onto the rocks where it lay as the sea pulled back. Later, the beach was cordoned off until yesterday when a big boat got in at high tide to harpoon it and tow it to the pier where a JCB lifted it onto a truck to be taken away for burial.

Cuvier’s beaked whales are toothed whales that can dive deeper (to over 1km) and stay underwater longer (20 to 40 minutes) than any other mammal. Incredibly, studies have recorded them at depths of 3km, staying 138 minutes without coming up for air. The ‘beak’ enables them to suck in their prey, often of giant squid or octopus. The jaw makes them appear to be smiling. Mature adults average 6m in length. The whale on the rocks was about 4m, a rough estimate when my son scrambled over the rocks and stood alongside it to take a picture.

What fate brought this fine creature to its untimely demise? As we know, the laws of nature are unforgiving, and not always fair. It is not always for food that predators kill, but for sport.

We have seen Attenborough television footage of orcas tossing live seals into the air like netballs players throw a ball. Orcas or sharks may have killed this animal not for food but for fun. The flesh of the tail had been stripped away leaving a metre of bare white vertebrae, as thick as your arm.

Without the tail to drive its plunge, the animal couldn’t dive to its native depths and evade the killers.

The many wounds on its body may have been sustained in battles with other males, shark bites and rock tears as it washed ashore; blood was in pools around it, blood which, until earlier, poured into the sea.

The scent and sight of blood naturally attracts even more predators. It was sad to see this unique, apparently healthy, animal lying dead on the sharp black rocks fringing the beach of black sand.

Presently, there is the annual run of bluefin tuna between the islands of La Gomera and El Hierro, and sharks, orcas and local artisan-owned fishing boats gather to harvest the bounty.

Fishing boats can take a quota of 500kg per year. One of my son’s friends comes from a Hierro fishing family. Last year, his father’s quota was filled by just two bluefin one of almost 300kg, the other of 190kg.

What happens if a boat hooks a bluefin that weighs over half a ton (if any exist still) half the size of the boat and almost as powerful as its engines. How can they let it go? I don’t know. Life’s a learning process.

I’m curious to find out.'' (Damien Enright, Irish Examiner)