Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Abalone season - 2005

Yesterday was the second day of the abalone season in Western Australia. For seven weeks on Sunday mornings the good citizens of this burg are allowed to venture onto the limestone reefs along our coast for an hour and a half, and strip them of the slimy moluscs. The race is on from 7am to 8.30am.

The bag limit is 20 creatures per person, provided they are in possession of a licence, which costs $75. This also allows "harvest" of crayfish and other desirable delicacies.

The great white hunters in this household tend not to enter the water on the first day of the abalone season. I suspect this is because they forget when it starts. However the resultant media publicity with photographs of hoards of Asian immigrants who didn't forget usually triggers a primordial urge that they had better get in quick for their cut of the action.

Son number two (24) was the chief protagonist yesterday. His preparation began during the week with a visit to a dive shop which was closing down. He returned triumphant from the closing down sale with a gleaming $35 catch bag with which he could stash the twenty sobbing abalone once he had pried them from their snug homes.

These devices are called catch bags because every time a customer leaves the shop with one tucked under his arm the sales staff snigger, "Eh, eh! Caught another one!"

Not only did son number two buy a $35 dollar catch bag, on impulse he also bought a nine hundred dollar underwater camera. Seeing as the shop was closing down, I suspect the sales staff might have said, "Phew!" as he left the place.

My lad assures me that the original price of the camera was $1,500. This is probably why it was still on the shelf. So far it has taken a couple of blurry pictures of the bottom of our swimming pool. We noticed something was going on in the back yard the first night it came home. There were these brilliant flashes of light from the strobe and we thought an electrical storm was approaching.

Then came the search for his rubber booties. Where were they? He had them last year. Accusations flew back and forth, because two of his brothers also consider themselves to be crash hot dive experts.

Their mother is very good at finding things and in no time at all discovered a pair in a plastic barrel next to the lathe. It was an obvious place to look. Then she found a third bootie somewhere else. Magic! Except they were differing sizes. "You should look after your gear." I unhelpfully advised, then was told to get lost.

The target are for my son's sea hunt yesterday was the seaward side of Penguin Island, now a half hour's drive south of Fremantle. It used to be a couple of hours when I was a kid.

Penguin island is potentially a hangout for sharks. I've seen them in the past when I used to dive, but only small ones. However, with what we now know about white pointers, I wouldn't go beyond the shallows now. I told my son my feelings, which of course made no difference.

There is a submerged sandbar connecting the mainland and the small island and this saves people like my son from forking out for a ferry ticket. He was swimming with a mate, and about two hundred other people of mostly Asian appearance. Quite good odds when big sharks are about.

Naturally the largest abalone are in the most difficult places where Asian gourmands fear to go, and there was a fair onshore wind driving up the surf. But the lads managed to get their catch limit fairly quickly and started heading back to shore where the Fishery inspectors were waiting.

Suddenly! Yes suddenly, the $35 catch bag came loose from his belt and descended into a deep gully. He dived after it but discovered it was in a very deep gully. Too deep for him or his mate to reach. There was a lot of surging in the water and the bag disappeared amongst the underwater plants. It also contained his fishing licence in its waterproof cover.

So out there behind Penguin Island in the surf this morning there lies an expensive catch bag with 20 trapped abalone. I feel very sorry for them. He will venture out next week and try for a recovery.

© MMV Paul R. Weaver.

About the writer

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days.

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