Harpooning, or vare in creole, is one of the traditional fishing methods that used to be very popular in Seychelles until around the 1960’s and is sadly almost not practiced anymore. It is an exciting way to catch rays, sharks and turtles and requires great skills. As a young boy, I looked forward to partaking in harpooning trips in a pirogue in the bay of Grand’ Anse, Praslin Island.
A Harpooner Ready to Strike
Origin of the word’ Vare’
Vare is a word of Portuguese origin. Vare ‘a kind of harpoon for fishing manatees, turtles or large fish. It is associated with vara meaning ‘thin branch of a tree, rod, wand, sapling, stick’, and varar ‘to pierce through’ , attested in French since 1640.
Below is an extract from’ Le Dictionnaire étymologique des créoles français d’Amérique (DECA) et le « langage des îles » by Annegret Bollée, from research she did in the creole language of Cape Verde Islands:
...Les tortues de mer font une bonne partie des vivres du païs ; il y en a quantité d’une grandeur prodigieuse, de quatre pieds & plus ; on les prend dans la mer à la vare, qui est une espece de baston ferré… (Bouton 1640, 73-74) ;… Le pêcheur (qu’on appelle vareur) prend un petit canot, va au lieu où la pêche se doit faire armé d’une grande perche droite et longue comme une pertuisane, au bout de laquelle est le clou à vare auquel la ligne est attachée ; le vareur est tout debout sur le nez du canot avec deux matelots, l’un gabare jusqu’à ce qu’on soit à une raisonnable distance du poisson, que le vareur perce avec la vare qu’il lui darde, tandis que l’autre matelot laisse courir sa ligne contre la toste du canot, jusqu’à ce que le poisson ait jeté son feu et passé sa furie puis il la retire, et l’animal se raidissant, le canot se retrouve bientôt dessus… (Breton 1665/1999, 179)…
What is Harpooning?
This fishing method makes use of a harpoon. A harpoon, or larpon, (Fr. harpon) is a pole that has a steel point with one or more barbs at the end and usually attached to a retrieving line. Some have detachable heads, and some have fixed heads. Harpoons with detachable heads will have a line attached to the head. Traditionally, harpooning is done either by wading in the shallows next to the beach or on reef flats in the lagoon, or from a boat or a pirogue in deeper water.
Wade Harpooning
Wade harpooning takes place in shallow water. The water must be calm because water clarity is critical in spotting the target fish. This method of harpooning requires a lot of skill. The key to success for any wade harpooner is to be always on the alert with the harpoon ready to be thrown in a split second, and to apply a stealthy approach. This is because most fish detect external movement and noise from the lateral line that runs down the sides of their bodies. Consequently, it is critical that vibrations in the water are minimised.
The wading Technique
I learned the technique of wading as a young boy growing up on Praslin Island from one of my many uncles, Théolin Barallon, who was an expert turtle harpooner.
Most of the time one would be wading in calm knee-deep water. It’s very tempting to wade quickly through this depth of water to get to your target, but your vibrations travel long distances. To avoid spooking fish, slowly slide your foot forward instead of taking regular steps. I call this method the sliding method.
To perform the slide, you need to sneak forward using the front and thinnest part of your leg to mimic a knife slicing through the water every time you make a step. With each step, you move your foot just over the bottom, and slowly slide it forward until it is fully extended in front of you. Then you can plant that foot and begin sliding the rear foot forward.
The Boat harpooning Technique
On a harpooning trip there would usually be three fishermen on board. One is the striker; one is the spotter, and one is the paddler. The paddler never rows but paddles standing up to minimize the production of noise and vibration. At times, the striker is also the spotter. No engine is used because the noise of the engine would scare any fish away from the boat.
The paddler must be careful when paddling because he needs to keep any noise to the bare minimum. He cannot not afford, for example, to hit the side of the pirogue, or boudin, with his paddle as this noise is enough to alert the fish! This activity is a quiet affair and even talking, if needed, is very soft and, in most cases, the spotter uses sign language to indicate that he has spotted a target, and with his arm guides the paddler to it.
A turtle hunter aiming a harpoon at an adult green turtle at Cosmoledo Atoll in 1982. Photo Jeanne Mortimer
The harpoons are always rigged to be used at any time. The rope is cleanly coiled in the front of the pirogue ensuring that there is nothing close to it that can get tangled up when the strike is made. This is because when the strike is made the rope must be able to deploy neatly without any obstruction.
The Excitement
There is nothing like the sheer excitement of seeing your target and the heart pounding moment before a strike is made. Once the striker identifies the fish they want to catch, they carefully approach the fish, until they get close enough to strike or thrust the harpoon into the fish to catch it. The harpoon is typically connected to a line so that fishermen can pull their catch on to the boat.
The Barb
The barb is a sharp point projected in reverse direction to the main point of the harpoon tip. When the barbed harpoon head is embedded in the flesh of the fish, the barbs grip the tissue, and the harpooner can then retrieve the catch. Sometimes the harpooner holds the other end of the line and sometimes the line is attached to a float that drags behind the prey, identifying its location, preventing it from escaping and exhausting it.
An example of a harpoon barb
When the fish is too big, like a manta ray, or dyabdemer (fr. diable de mer),a buoy is tied at the end of the rope and the fish is allowed to swim away for a while until it gets tired, and then the buoy is retrieved, and the fish pulled in.
When throwing a harpoon at a target, the harpooner always aims slightly below the fish and not straight at it. This gives a more accurate strike. They did not know of the laws of refraction (the bending of light), but the law was applied.
When to go harpooning
Harpooning is practiced during the day as well as during the night. Day harpooning would usually be done year-round, but night harpooning is usually done during full moon in the northwest monsoon. The main reason is that during the northwest monsoon the sea is very calm inside the lagoon, and this makes it easier to identify the target. Also, the full moon provides light that facilitates the identification of the target fish. In the very early days of settlement, night harpooning was conducted with a ‘flambeau’, which is a flaming torch, especially one made of several thick wicks dipped in wax or turtle oil; or hurricane lamp or fanal, which was placed at the bow of the pirogue.
Types of Harpoons
Harpooning is a completely selective method of fishing since the target must be seen before striking. Therefore, the size of the target can be assessed before the strike is made. The fishermen will consequently carry a series of harpoons for different circumstances as described below. There are different types of harpoons used by the Seychellois fishermen. These are the lafrin , larmanten, clou, lans, fwin and sagay.
Lafrin
The lafrin is a light harpoon, the shaft of which is made out of hard wood. It is used to harpoon smaller fish like ray fish and baby shark in shallow waters inside the reef. It usually has a fixed barb and is used either from a pirogue or by wading on the flats, reefs or near the shoreline.
Lafrin head with fixed barb
Larmanten
The larmanten, or toggle head harpoon, is a heavier harpoon targeting bigger fish and is always used from a boat or a pirogue. Its shaft is made of heavy hard timber and has a detachable forged iron head which is called a toggle harpoon head. A toggle head harpoon is one where the barb is held streamlined to the harpoon shaft for striking, then it pivots or toggles, around the centre of the head to a right angle to the shaft after penetration when force is applied to the line, thereby preventing withdrawal of the head and the escape of the target fish.
Toggle Head Harpoon or larmanten
Attached to the harpoon head is about 20 metres of heavy line. It runs through guides along the length of the shaft. The guides are loops of rope fastened to the pipe with a clove hitch and two half-hitches. The line is held by the harpooner or anybody on the boat and it is then pulled in to retrieve the catch. After the strike, the head would detach from the shaft which is retrieved before the harpooned fish is brought into the boat.
Toggle Head Harpoon Ready for Use
The larmanten is reminiscent of harpoons used during the whaling period and its name derives from ‘lamantin’ which is the French name for a dugong. This was probably because this type of harpoon was used by the sailors to harpoon dugongs that were once numerous on some of the islands of Seychelles,
Old Photo of Fisherman with Larmanten next to Manta Ray
Clou
The clou is a heavy harpoon usually made from approximately 2 metres of galvanised pipe, one end of which is stoppered with a wooden plug. Into this plug is jammed a hand-forged detachable head. The head is made of an iron shaft pointed and slotted at one end. Within the slot is a riveted iron bar that swivels freely through a ninety-degree arc. It acts as a barb. The rigging is the same as that of the larmanten. The pipe is at times filled with gravel to give the harpoon more weight. The clou was used to harpoon turtles that were close to the surface, torti lavol, and also on mating turtles. It is heavy enough to penetrate both turtles so both could be caught. The clou derives form the French word clou meaning a nail.
Lans
The lans is a flat harpoon with no barbs . Its main purpose is to cut through the flesh and to immobilise the fish and is used when the fish is harpooned and brought close to the boat. It is mostly used on sharks or any fish that could be a risk to the fishermen if brought alive in the boat. It is always hand- held; and not thrown and not usually tied to any rope.
Flat Harpoon – Lans
Fwin
The Fwin is derived from the French word foëne which is an eel spear although in Seychelles the fwin is more a type of trident than an eel spear. Eels are traditionally caught with a spear whilst they are lying in the mud, with the spears being used from a boat, bank or from mud-flats once the tide has receded. The spear is thrust downwards into the mud where an eel is thought to be. Eel spears are made of flat metal tines, a prong or sharp point, such as that on a fork, usually with rounded ends set close together. They are designed in such a way as to hold the eel in between the tines without damaging it.
Trident Head
The trident on the other hand has thick barbed tines, which trap the speared fish firmly. The word “trident” comes from the French word ‘trident’, which in turn comes from the Latin word ‘tridens’’ or tridentis’: tri meaning “three” and ‘dentis’ meaning “teeth”, referring specifically to the three prongs, or “teeth”, of the harpoon. They are used to spear flat fish especially ray fish and the three prongs make it easier to land the harpooned fish.
Sagay
The Sagay is a spear made from a strong, hard and thin wood. It is like a javelin and can at time, although rarely, have a hardened tip installed. It does not have a barb and is used mainly on the reef flats to spear small fish and octopus. Sagay derives from the French word ‘sagaie’ that comes from the Middle French word ‘azagaie’ or ‘assegai’ and means a Paleolithic bone javelin point. Middle French (French: moyen français) is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the mid-14th to the early 17th centuries. The words ‘azagaie’ or ‘assegai’ may have in turn derived from the Arabic word ‘az-zaġāyah’, derived from the Berber zagaya). It was a type of short spear used as a throwing weapon, heavier than the javelin, the blade being more developed than the latter. It was widely spread among the peoples of Africa.
Local Fisherman with a ‘Sagay’
A turtle harpooning episode
I reproduce below, with permission, a small extract from a book written by D R Sherman called The Boat, published in 1973. I knew Ron, who used to live at Anse Boudin, on Praslin Island, when I was managing the Côte d’Or Lodge, in the early 1980’s, the first hotel I managed. If you want to have a glimpse of life on Praslin in the 1970’s, please source this book.
This extract describes two of the main characters of the book going on a turtle harpooning trip, using, now forgotten, harpooning techniques…
“ It was after nine in the morning. The sun was already hot on their bare backs. The wind was blowing roughly north-west about eight knots. It helped to cool them, but it also raised a chop on the sea, and the glitter of the sun on the dancing water seared their searching eyes and made their reconnaissance more difficult.
Jean was in the stern. He was standing, as was Francis in the bow. They used their oars as paddles, first on one side and then on the other.
The blades dipped into the water and then lifted dripping and then thrust in once again. The pirogue rocked precariously, but they were not aware of it. Their bodies automatically computed angles and shifted balance to compensate.
Protruding over the bow of the pirogue was part of the twenty-foot length of piping. The business end of it was stoppered with a wooden plug. Into this plug was jammed the detachable harpoon head. It was a simple affair, an iron shaft pointed and slotted at one end. Within the slot was a riveted iron bar that swivelled freely through a ninety-degree arc. It acted as a barb.
Attached to the harpoon head was sixty feet of quarter-inch tarred shark line. It ran through guides fore and aft on the length of pipe. The guides were loops of rope fastened to the pipe with a clove hitch and two half-hitches. The spare line was coiled down, and the free end secured to a cleat in the bow.
With this, they speared the hawksbill and green turtles when they were deep. If they were lucky enough to surprise one on the surface, they used the short wooden-shafted harpoon which had its own separate head and length of line.
They paddled without talking. They worked the northern length of Curieuse Island without any luck. They brought the pirogue about and set off on the return pass.
It was an occupation that required even more patience than fishing, and the element of luck involved was even greater.
They had gone a quarter mile when Jean hissed. The sea, like everything else, had a pattern. It varied from hour to hour, and even from one moment to the next. But it was there, and if a man attuned himself to it, any change or disruption of that pattern alerted him instantly, even though he was not strictly conscious of what it was that has caught his attention.
Francis turned. He followed the direction of Jean’s pointing arm. He saw it at once, a dark patch in the sea, and then he saw a mottled flipper break the surface of the water and come down lazily with a small splash.
They turned the boat in a flash. They dug their paddles in, their bodies bent almost double as they drove the blades through the water.
They were ten yards from the hawksbill when it turned its pointed reptilian head towards them. It inspected them calmly for a moment and then sounded smoothly.
Standing as they were in the boat they could see the dark moving smudge of its body under the water. It swam along slowly, about fifteen feet down, but it took all their strength to drive the pirogue along fast enough to keep it in sight.
The sweat poured down their bodies as they followed the hawksbill’s erratic course, and the air that they sucked into their burning lungs seemed also to be on fire. But they were oblivious of the punishment they were taking. They were intent on the chase, two men performing a primitive ritual.
The turtle went deeper. One moment it was still in sight, the next it had vanished, its body merging and blending with the scattered rocks and coral on the bottom.
Francis searched the depths frantically. He felt an instant of harsh disappointment. He was about to crouch down and slip on his mask and get his head into the water over the side when he saw the motionless lump which he had thought was a coral head begin to move off.
He signalled hastily, and they dug their paddles into the water and took off after it once more. They were gasping for breath when the turtle began a shallow upward ascent. It gave them the chance to close with it.
When they were directly above it Francis shipped his oar. He crouched swiftly and donned his mask. He slid the long length of pipe down into the water, holding it against the gunwale to control its decent.
He leaned out over the side of the pirogue. He felt the ridge of the gunwale biting into his belly. He lowered his head till the face plate of the mask was just above the water.
He gesticulated frantically with his right hand. He heard the explosive grunts of effort from behind him as Jean endeavoured to comply quickly.
The boat swung slowly. To Francis, it was an eternity. He lifted his head and snatched a quick breath and the plunged his face below the surface again.
It was there now, directly below him. He lowered the pipe a little farther, his fingers gripping it tightly.
The turtle swam along, unaware of the poised menace, or unconcerned, thrusting lazily every two or three seconds with its flippers. It was accompanied by two eight-inch remoras. They were black on top with grey undersides, and periodically they closed in and attached themselves to the plastron of the turtle, vanishing momentarily from sight to reappear seconds later swimming free once again.
Something alerted the turtle. Perhaps it was the wash from the boat, or the small pressure alterations caused by the passage of the pipe through the water above it.
It twisted its head, cocking an eye upwards. In that instant Francis struck. He drove the heavy pipe down with all his might. The barbed harpoon head struck and broke through the carapace and went deep into the turtle’s body. He saw it rock and lurch under the impact of the blow, and then he jerked his head out of the water gasping for air.
He tore the mask off his head and made a grab for the line which was running out over the gunwale. It was a thick line, and easy to handle. He applied pressure to it gradually. He slowed the turtle, evaluating the tension on the line. But he had struck hard, and he knew the harpoon head was buried deep and fast.
He increased the pressure on the line. Its run-out slowed even further and they stopped altogether. He felt a slight jolt as he halted the turtle, and the pirogue began to move slowly through the water.
‘We’ve got him!’ Jean exclaimed happily. ‘A good one too, eh?’
‘Not bad.’
Francis held the line. His body was inclined backwards, braced against the pull, the muscles of his arms and back standing clean and rigid with the tension.
He could have brought the turtle in right then and there. He was tempted for a few moments, driven by an uncharacteristic impatience to get into the boat, which was the only time you could start to count your money. But they were strong creatures, and if you worked them too hard before they were tired, they struggled so furiously that sometimes their shells gave under strain and the harpoon head ripped free.
That was one of the hazards, but there were others too. The line snagged occasionally, and sometimes the pipe wedged inself in between coral heads. If the line did not break, or the harpoon tear free, it is necessary to dive and free them. It was not an auspicious time to be in the water, with blood pluming and smoking from the hole in the back of the turtle.
The hawksbill towed them for twenty minutes. At the end of that time, it was finished. Slowly Francis began to bring in the line, hand over hand, pausing briefly after each retrieval. Like a big fish, you never could tell with turtles. Sometimes they came in easily, other times they ran again and again. When they did you had to be ready.
He brought in more line. The pipe closed and thumped against the pirogue. Jean had waited for it. He seized it immediately and, snapping the quick-release knots on first one guide loop and then the other, he drew it into the boat.
Slowly Francis worked the turtle back to the surface and then carefully brought it against the side of the pirogue. IUt was worn out, finished, its flippers waving mechanically without strength and to no avail.
He secured the line beneath the sole of his right foot. He and Jean bent over and reached out. They took a flipper each, being careful to keep well clear of the horned bill which could take off a man’s finger as if it were made of nothing but jelly.
As if some silent communication had passed between them, they heaved simultaneously. The pirogue listed far over, lipping the water. With one final heave the turtle slithered over the gunwale on its back and crashed down into the boat with a thud that jarred the planking. It lay there, flippers waving helplessly, the wrinkled folds of skin on its neck stretching and contracting as it moved its head from side to side.
The ancient- looking eyes were half slitted. There was a wary wisdom in them, and they seemed to stare in mild reproof….
Sources
The Boat by D. R. Sherman
Le Dictionnaire étymologique des créoles français d’Amérique (DECA) et le « langage des îles »
Annegret Bollée
Any suggestions or comments about this post?
We welcome any suggestions or comments that will make this post more comprehensive. Please leave your comments below:
