Squiding

Far off shore in the Sea of Thailand traditional Thai fishing boats attach dozens of intensely bright lights across a boom hanging above the water, green lights attracting shrimp and white ones attracting squid. Often times there are so many boats out fishing that their lights in the distance look like another city lying across the bay. On this particular night, however, there was only a single squid boat not far off shore, sitting alone with the full moon. From the edge of a pier, the deck of the boat was just visible and I sat, my legs swinging above the waves, hoping to see huge nets loaded with squid pulled from the sea. A bottle of beer later, there was no movement on the boat—not a single silhoutte on the deck—and I lost my patience—or at least figured I can walk down to the bar and get a beer without worrying that I'd miss a thing. But before I walked off the pier, several Thai men were walking towards me brandishing their own empty beer bottles.

The men swung their empty Singh bottles casually at their sides, holding them upside down by the neck. Around the base of the bottle more-conventional fishing lures were hooked on a mass of fishing line wrapped tightly around the glass. One by one the men, stopping around the single light illuminating the dock, plucked the lure off the coils of line, then began to cast their fluorescent pink, yellow, and green lures into the sea. The distance they could throw them was impressive, the line flying off the end of the beer bottle without resistance, only to be slowly, steadily, reeled in and wrapped back around the bottle again.

Without fishing line and a lure of my own, my empty bottle was rendered useless and my only option was to find the only kind of beer bottle I find useful: a full one. In the time it took me to walk to the bar on shore and walk back, the first catch of the night was made: a small squid, no bigger than bite size or bait size. Unlike a fish, the squid never physically struggled, flipped, or flopped on the dock. Instead, its wet tentacles lay lifeless, its eyes were large and placid. On its back, however, formations of tiny black dots flashed across the body, life still persisting through splattered inkblots, constantly morphing into different natural patterns. Even after watching the squid's peculiar chemical firings for several minutes, I was unable to find any pattern, and a half an hour later was amazed to find the opaque, gelatinous body of the squid still producing modest fireworks on its back.


An hour later the men continued to casually cast their translucent lines out to sea and the squid boat remained floating in the swells of the night’s waves. Since the first catch, the men had failed to fool another squid with their strange fake fish and the boat at sea still hadn’t pulled in a single squid. Eventually the boat’s lights turned off in a systematic shutdown, clusters of five or so at a time, until the dark seascape was left illuminated only by the moon. The men, too, spent the night without another catch. But their demeanor, their songs and jokes, their relaxed posture, their lack of squid, remained unchanged. They weren’t out on the pier fishing for dinner, or to stock their restaurant; they were out fishing for fun, for something to do on a lazy Friday night.