Ships and fishes

When I was a child, my grandmother, a lover of fish curries, used to cook a lot of fish curries for us. Vegetarians, please bear with the first paragraph. I will not dwell on my barbaric tendencies too long.

I had her blood – I loved most types of fish. My favourite was her Tuna in coconut curry. Spicy like crazy, I have yet to eat another one like the one she used to make. Everytime I visited her, she should specially make the Tuna (choora) in coconut curry (pachakarachathu). I was the choorakutty. She taught me how to eat fish without wasting any part or any flesh. She was very proud of how I took to her lessons. I used to love eating the fish head in curry (I think this was never in the choora pachakarachathu) and she always told me that eating the fish eyes would make my eye sight very very good.

Hence, it is, after 25 years in the computer industry, when I could spot a ship 20NM away, I was very much reminded of her. After 3-4 days of hardly crossing any ships, my acquired skills were getting very rusty. I was very disappointed that I could not spot BBC Topaz, coming towards us, though it was just 18.9NM away. I strained and looked at the horizon. “Use the binoculars” – said K. I refused and continued to peer at the horizon – the sky was clear at the horizon today. So K guided me, “I can see it now with my eyes”. I was disappointed and looked left and right – “more to the left” and as I scanned my eyes to the left, he said “look for a bump at the horizon”. Voila!!!! There it was – a small bump at the horizon. Jai Ammoomma and her fish curries and fish eyes.

This one was a very different ship. “Is it a fishing ship?” – I asked K, the officer on watch when it was around 14 NM away. “It is a heavy lift”. I looked through my lens – it has some heavy crane like structure. K explained what a heavy lift is. We looked forward to seeing it cross close to us to see what it is carrying – perhaps an aircraft’s parts? No – there were some cranes, but we could not make out what it was carrying. Ri with her binoculars and me with my camera – we wondered whether the people on the other ship could spot us watching them.

Last few days have been quite alone in the South Atlantic Ocean. If we were lucky, we would cross a couple of ships but that too, quite far. One of the ships traveled with us very far – it was with us half of yesterday and this morning too. It was still on the radar until a couple of hours ago.

So it was, with Jian Liong, a few days back as well. It was more than 20 NM when I saw her appear in the display. I, again, looked at 20 NM – my normal spotting distance but it was a cloudy day – so there was no chance to spot her at that distance. By the time I could spot her, I saw that she was white and an interesting one – seemed like a small one. J was on watch when I first spotted her. He told me it would be sometime before it came close enough. As it came closer, G, the officer on the watch at the time, told me that it was a fishing boat. I took a picture. A bit later, he told me that it was a squid jigger.

Squid Jiggers are fishing ships that fish for squids. He said it looked like it was on its way to Argentina where it would replenish stock and then move towards Antarctica where they fish for huge squids. These squids are so huge that they made squid balls out of them – he was surprised I had not heard of squid balls. These ships typically have very strong lights on the black poles that I could see – these lights can be normally be seen from very far at night – also by the squids which get attracted to the ship. They all come towards it, get caught and are then tipped or jigged over to the hold – this is how the ship earned the name of jigger. Unfortunately, this one was not fishing. They would not be switching on the lights. G later fished out for me a picture of the squid jigger that shows it during day time and at night – including that here.

Squids were never my favourite but my sister’s and father’s. This was the only fish my grandmother could never get me to love. Perhaps, I can try squid balls and see.