Netting Cuttlefish in the Gulf of Thailand

Ban Phe harbor. Thailand.

In 2005 I moved back to Thailand, where I had served as a proselyting missionary some 25 years earlier, to teach English and to solace a crumbled heart. I thought I was saying 'good-bye' to the circus life forever. I was back under the big top a few years later -- but that is a different story from the one I want to tell today.

After obtaining my TEFL certification at a school in Ban Phe, on the gulf of Thailand, I stayed on to begin my pedagogical career among the children of the Ban Phe fishing fleet. The kids were a rowdy lot of laggardly scholars, for the most part; more interested in going out in their father's boats than learning to conjugate verbs. I can't say I blamed them too much, for I, too, loved to stroll along the harbor, inhaling the tang of the salt air (and drying fish) and wishing to be out on the blue waters chasing tuna and mackerel. 
Although studious and cautious by nature, I did manage to chase and capture a curious specimen of Thai pulchritude --her name was Joom, and perhaps it would be more correct to say that she chased and captured ME. That point will remain forever debatable in the annals of star-crossed lovers.
We met over dishes of green papaya salad in a seaside cafe during the monsoon, and by the time the dry season was at hand we were a couple. What drew us together and kept our cultural differences at bay for so long was a mutual love of fishing and the big waters. I had grown up just a few blocks from the Mississippi in Minneapolis, and Joom had grown up on a rice farm in the boondocks of parched northeastern Thailand -- where, she claimed, she had dreamed of splashing in the waves and digging clams on the beach since childhood. After working twenty years as a hotel maid in Bangkok Joom had finally saved up enough money to come to Ban Phe, where living was cheap, to loll along the seaside and find herself a 'farang' (foreign) boyfriend. Always frank and up-front about her thoughts and feelings, after the first few dates Joom told me that, as a teacher, I would never make very much money, not really enough to provide her with the lifestyle she had set her heart on, but: "You have the good heart, so we will stay poor but be happy." Joom didn't think I made enough for us to get married -- but I could date her for as long as I wanted. That was good enough for me. 

This year, 2019, the government of Thailand has closed the fisheries in the Gulf of Thailand for the summer months in order to help the fish stock revive from its exhausted state. But back in 2005 the Gulf still teemed with fish, so one day Joom and I hired a small boat and its crew to go out for a night of cuttlefish netting.

The Thais consume huge quantities of cuttlefish, either dried and mangled to a shoe leather consistency, like beef jerky, or dried and then fried in hot oil -- which causes the cuttlefish to puff up like a sponge, with a vivid and exalting taste that goes so well with sticky rice and raw Thai eggplant that it was our main meal for days on end when my teacher's salary threatened to give out before the end of the month. A plate of fried cuttlefish, sticky rice, and a half dozen eggplants cost about fifteen cents to prepare.

We left the Ban Phe dock at 11 p.m. to chug out a dozen miles, where the captain dropped anchor and the crew aimed a dozen strong flashlights down into the water. Soon the cuttlefish rose from the depths, hypnotized by the light. The captain explained that the cuttlefish think the lights are the full moon, which triggers their mating instincts. So when they surface they are in the throes of Eros and never notice the large nets that scoop them up by the hundreds. Joom and I spent a happy night netting cuttlefish, while the younger crew members, some barely in their teens, set about gutting them, removing the cuttle bone, and putting the carcasses on ice. Cuttle bones are those white surfboard-shaped items you see in parakeet cages, which the birds nibble at to keep their beaks cleaned and sharpened. Although I don't know the trade stats today, Thailand used to be the world's largest exporter of cuttle bones to pet stores and commercial pet food companies. I know that back in those halcyon days with Joom there were so many cuttle bones on the market that the price plummeted until fishermen just tossed the things overboard rather than let them take up space -- and so the Ban Phe beaches were littered with bleaching cuttle bones for miles in either direction. Sort of a seaside Elephant's Graveyard. 

At one point in our romance Joom actually found a small and decrepit fishing boat for sale that I could afford to buy if I spared myself the trouble of eating three times a day. It was a great bargain, said Joom, and because it was her cousin selling it we could knock down the price even more. Joom, like most Thais, was related by blood or marriage to three quarters of the population of Thailand -- or at least thought she was whenever there was a discount to pursue. 

"The monks only eat once a day" she told me, as a selling point, "and look how healthy they stay!"

 But I knew Joom's superstitious weakness, so I pointed out to her that the feminine eyes that were traditionally painted onto the prow of a boat by Buddhist monks who specialized in that folk art, to ward off the evil eye, had worn off this particular boat. Horrified at the thought of sailing the seven seas in a hex haunted craft, Joom ceased nagging me about it, and we went back to our billing and cooing -- and fishing.

Joom often went down to the beach to dig for clams, as she always dreamed she would one day. She would bring back several dozen large white clams that she laid directly on the charcoal brazier -- where they sizzled, then popped open with the sound of a cap gun. Since Joom didn't bother to go digging them far away from Ban Phe's municipal storm drains that emptied directly out onto the beach, I refused to touch her clams for quite some time. But eventually the refulgent aroma of clams steamed in their own juice was too much to resist, and I gobbled a round dozen of 'em in one sitting.
That was a mistake . . . 

There is no need to go into details. Suffice it to say that there was a run on Sit and Smile brand TP down at the Carrefour store that same day. 

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I never plan a single thing/I'd rather wait and see/what each day will bring to me/by serendipity/Some days nothing much occurs/and some days are a hoot/and some days I just stay in bed/and put my life on mute.