Fishing for Treasure

Running up to the shore, Ken flung his bag underneath a tree before he rolled up his shorts and wadded thigh deep into the water. Leaving my bag next to his in a more gentle manner, I followed him into the water. Sazzy stayed behind to look over the bags.

At the spot where he stood, there was a small congregation of well eroded rocks. Carefully stepping over their round tops, Ken bent down to look at the foot of these rocks. Hiding away from the direct sunlight were tiny little crustacean looking sea creatures. They looked like tiny blue lobsters.

Ken quickly reached into the shadows and grabbed several of these tiny blue lobsters.

"These tiny little lobsters, called star crabs, can't hurt you. They're claws are not strong enough to cause pain. But we can't take too many of them away since it'll hurt their population and create long term shortages. So we are only going to take one per person. You try it!"

Opening his hands, he only had two star crabs in his palms. Turning my head, I tried to imitate his actions and 'grabbed' them. Except much slower and gentler since I was afraid I would crush them. At first, I missed. But after Ken laughed at my actions and gave me more detailed pointers, I finally caught one. Their shells felt cool against my palms as I lifted them out of the water.

Opening my palm, I watched as Ken silently dangled two fingers over the star crabs, let them pinch his fingertips, then moved them back to the water. The one on my hand was 'vigorously' pinching the skin on my fingers. They actually kind of tickled.

Waddling back to the beach, Ken dug through his bag to take a foldable cylinder that was full of tiny holes. Opening up the top which had a zipper, Ken placed the star crabs into the cylinder, and zipped the cylinder close. He submerged the cylinder half into the sand under the water.

"This is a water cage. We keep our fish and seafood fresh here before we bring them back."

Abandoning the water cage, we headed further into the sea. Occasionally, Ken would suck in a deep breath and duck his head under water, before surfacing and pointing to certain areas.

Sometimes Ken would turn over rocks and make quick grabs to catch a particularly fast fish. Sometimes the fish were too fast even for him, and would swim away from us. Ken would first explain what type of sea creature we were looking for, how it looked liked and how to catch it, before demonstrating for me. Then we would disturb the creature's habitat, kidnap it from its home and Ken would look at its size and judge whether it would make it onto our plates for dinner.

Most of these animals were released back into the ocean, sometimes partly due to the fact they were too young, too old, or just not big enough. There were also some that he said were too endangered to eat. And a couple of fish that he said were pregnant, thus could not be eaten.

"We need to make sure the fish don't view this area as too dangerous and start to avoid it. That would make hunting them a larger pain. So the general rule is to only take enough to eat for the day."

Explaining so, Ken let go another fish from his hands back into the water.

"An example is, we caught too much of this fish so we must release them. Doesn't help that they are so easy to catch though."

Ken sighed as we continued.

And eventually we finished our hunt for the 'small fries' and were going to be moving on to the 'main event'. Something Ken called 'fishing for treasure'.

"Quick stand over there! Wave your hands to make the fish swim towards me!"

Taking part in Ken's 'fishing for treasure', he would exclaim and point his fingers in a certain direction, then get me to quickly waddle there and use my hands to direct the fish closer to shore and make it easier to catch. And although we had let several of the fish slip though our flimsy human 'net', after a while I got more used to it and we managed to nab around 3 fish before Ken washed the sweat off his forehead with seawater and we went to shore to rest.

"Next we need to go and check the traps for any creature greedy enough to take the bait. Which is a lot."

We put today's yield into the cage.

Letting out a large sigh of happiness and exhaustion, we basked in the sun until our clothes dried off before getting up and heading further down the beach. When we walked far enough to encounter several obviously planted bushes near the sea, Ken set his water cage in the sea again and headed over to pluck leaves from those bushes. A lot of leaves.

Essentially reaching and grabbing three full fists of leaves, Ken then led me to one of the metal traps set near a 'water cliff'.

"The land over here immediately drops down very deep, almost like a cliff underwater, so no one is really encouraged to swim near here. However, it's the perfect area to catch certain types of delicious fish that would otherwise require us to get a boat and go to sea."

Gesturing for me to open the locks on the trap, Ken moved all the leaves to one hand and used the other to grip the hard shell of the creature that was in the trap. Then substituting the creature with leaves, we left to pick up the water cage and then head back to the inn.

"There are a lot of laws that anyone harvesting from the sea has to follow. Mother says it's to help us make sure both we and our food can live on the planet together. Conservation or something like that. Anyway, normal tourists aren't allowed onto the beach. Not that they should try considering there are tons of parasites that live in the ocean."

While talking Ken tilted his head towards my leg, and looking down, I saw something that reminded me of a leech attached to my leg.

"They are easy enough to remove, but I don't think regular tourists would like to experience this. Ah, Mother has come to help us!"

Right at the protective barrier Candice was waiting with empty hands for us. Seeing her, Ken waved vigorously and we quickened our steps.

Taking the water cage as well as the creature Ken had caught, a 'sea dragon' that roughly resembled a turtle, Candice told us to remove our parasites before we entered the barrier.

Bending down Ken casually pulled off the leech creature from his leg, as well as one star fish shaped parasite latching onto the back of his thigh, and one more fish like parasite that was attached to his elbow. Throwing them into the woods, 'as food for the animals' he said, he instructed me on how to remove the parasites myself.

"For the one that looks like a worm, you need to remove it like opening a tab on a can. Catch the slightly hard upper rim of the mouth, then pull up with a slight angle so you can remove the teeth without removing your skin and flesh with it. Then the one that looks like a fish you can just pop it off without worries. The one that looks like a starfish is a little tricky. You cannot remove it from the edges, it'll attach to your body tighter. Instead grab the sides of it with a finger at each web between its arms, then apply slight pressure from the fingertips, moving the pressure such that it's like you're lifting something off a table. Finally, once you get the main body removed, squeeze the main body a bit and the arms will let go. Then you can throw it into the forest. The forest creatures actually love this parasite, since it's quite sweet to animals. We can't eat it though so there's no use collecting it."

Once I turned my whole body around and we double checked there were no parasites left, we stepped back into the barrier.

"Based on the ingredients we harvested today, I think Mother will cook some Starry sky soup, some fried stars or fried star crabs and dried fish."

Licking my salty lips, we headed back into the inn and washed up. Then we headed straight to the kitchen to watch Candice cook.