The BIG Fish Story
22 January 2011
always an adventure!
Terry and the Manta Ray
It all started with having Sea Otter Jimmy (an outboard engine repair guy here in La Paz) come over to Cetus to do maintenance on our 10 year old Mercury outboard. He took it for a day and brought it back saying it was all tuned up and ready to go -- looked in good shape and should last us another 10 years. But the gas in it was old and he suggested we run it out.
Sooo, today Terry decided to take our neighbor Jim out with him to buzz around in the bay. When they were about a mile and a half away from the marina they spotted a small cylindrical green buoy (about 2 feet long and 8 inches diameter) and as they approached they saw a fin pop up near the buoy so they wanted to get even closer to investigate. They then saw another fin pop up about 8 feet away.
As they tried to approach the buoy it seemed to stay the same distance from them and they thought there must be a strong current keeping them from moving in on it. So it wasn't until they speeded up and got right on top of the buoy that they realized that the two fins belonged to one large manta ray!
The buoy was attached by a line to a bucket of cement that served as a weight to keep it in place -- somewhere -- but the poor manta ray had caught the line in it's mandible (the large c shaped appendage at their mouth) and had drug it from who knows where!
They knew they needed to free the ray from the buoy so the plan of action that they came up with was to lasso the buoy with hopes to drag it out of the mandibles. They succeeded in lassoing the buoy, they put the engine in reverse to pull the weighted buoy free, but even in full reverse, the 15 horse Mercury was no match for the Manta Ray that proceeded to pull them around the shallow bay.
They continued to try to free him in this fashion for several attempts, as they didn't want to go in forward since the ray was fairly close to the surface and they didn't want to hurt it with the propeller. It soon became clear this was a futile attempt.
So then they decided to out run the ray by pulling the buoy forward, out of the large mandibles. The problem was that every time they would go forward, the engine would spook him and he'd change course dragging them in a new direction.
They then sat silently for several minutes then gunned the engine swinging as wide as the 10 foot rope would allow until they were finally in front of the large ray, who dove and changed direction and was released from the restraint of the buoy.
The last glimpse of the ray was as both of his fins splashed the water as it was finally free to swim again.
In the midst of the whole adventure, Jim said to Terry, "I read about this in a book!", and Terry pointed out to him it was similar to the story he'd relayed in his latest book, Adventures Aboard S/V Casablanca.
Another amazingly true fish story!