We are now in the western San Blas, where the islands are more numerous and farther from the shore. The eastern islands form a long archipelago strung out along the mainland, but the western islands are scattered in groups, roughly marking out a 10 by 20 mile oblong cruising area, in which we are just at the eastern edge. This is where the yachties hang out, so we're hanging out too.
It's a reefy place. Fringing reefs surround whole island groups, and the wind-whipped Caribbean crashes hard onto them, sending up amazing plumes of white foam. For several nights we sat at anchor among a group of small islands called the Coco Bandero Cays, close to the outer reef where a shipwrecked freighter sits, permanently parked among the waves. Among the cays were lots of smaller reefs, many of them also breaking in the ocean swell; in fact, when we approached the anchorage we saw nothing but reef, a little scary until we got close enough to discern the narrow channel between dark arcs of coral.
You'd think that with all this coral around, the snorkeling would be terrific. In fact, it's somewhat spooky. The visibility is okay, usually not great but not bad, and some of the coral formations are spectacular. Towering pillars, sheer walls, brightly colored sponges -- the terrain is gorgeous, a multihued city of dizzying shapes. But it's nearly uninhabited.
Relentless fishing pressure has been the underwater equivalent of the neutron bomb, leaving coral standing but wiping out the fish life. On a reef that in the Bahamas or Aves would be swarming with snappers, grunts, and groupers, there is nothing but a few small schools of tiny inedible reef fish such as wrasses and chromis. In the Eastern Caribbean, where the edible fish had been largely fished out, we still saw plentiful schools of parrotfish, which when caught spoil quickly, and are not usually eaten. But here we have seen many parrotfish in the bottoms of Kuna canoes, destined for the table -- and correspondingly fewer parrotfish swimming around.
Mostly the Kuna handline from their canoes, but many have old masks and fins and dive for lobster and crab. If there is a legal minimum size here, they ignore it. The pathetically undersized lobsters they peddle to cruisers speak volumes about the state of the fishery here. (One friend of ours confessed she bought a bunch and then set them free. Of course, they would likely get caught again within the week or the month.) We have seen only a few lobsters of the size that would be legal in the Bahamas. I suggested to one fisherman that they only catch the large ones, and let the small ones grow and reproduce. He told us that the "lobster planes" which buy from the fishermen for shipment to Panama City for restaurants still buy the small ones -- they pay less for them, but they still buy them. I suppose they call them "jumbo shrimp" on the menu.
Certainly the cruisers fish too. But we can't imagine that the impact of 200 or so boats a year approaches that of over 50,000 Kuna. Of course they were here first, and many of them are more desperate for the protein (or the cash) that fishing provides. We have the luxury of being pickier about our food. After Britt pulled the fillets off a barracuda we caught trolling on our way into the Rio Diablo area, there was still quite a bit of meat left on the skeleton, so we waved over the closest canoe. "Puedes usar esto?" we asked, and he nodded gratefully, so we tossed him our "trash" and he paddled off.
We've managed to spear a few lobster here, a few fish there. We had been impressed by the quantity and size of the reef crabs peddled by the Playon Chico fishermen, and surprised we hadn't seen any while snorkeling. It turns out we just needed to look a little harder. One day we saw one crab, the next day we saw a half-dozen. Our big crab haul was on a lovely reef near Green Island, which surprised us with a large (relatively speaking) number of fish, plus astonishingly clear water. Not only did we see a goodly bunch of crabs, but we spotted an octopus in the act of eating one! Octopi must have thick hide to manage a diet of crabs, and a lot of bravery besides, considering the crabs are fully as big as the octopi. Tentacles splayed out around the crab's spiny shell like a parachute, the octopus somehow shrugged itself slowly backward into a cave to devour its meal. Or at least, that's what it had planned; when we poked our heads into the cave opening, the octopus panicked and unwrapped itself from its prey, shooting back into the deepest recesses of the cave. That's when the other crabs in the cave panicked and headed for the exit -- and became our meal.
Another seafood meal was put together by Karni, an Israeli boat here in the Green Island anchorage. Their teenage son got a huge dog snapper with his spear gun, so they invited the entire anchorage over for a potluck dinner. There was us, an American singlehander, a German couple, a Swiss woman, a Polish family, and an Argentinian family. As everyone but the Argentinians spoke English fluently, that was the lingua franca, but enough of us could manage sufficient Spanish that nobody was left out. The Germans and the Swiss spoke German to each other, the Israelis talked to each other and their dogs in Hebrew, so the languages were as varied as the food.
Speaking of varied food, we are still doing pretty well despite being a month out of Cartagena (and real grocery stores). We have been catching snappers, mackerel, squid, and the occasional crustacean. We bought plantains from one Kuna family, a bunch of bananas from another, coconuts from others. In stores in Playon Chico and Nargana we found eggs, onions, sweet peppers, and even tomatoes. The tomatoes came from the storekeeper's brother's backyard garden, all green (but ripening just fine on the boat). An enterprising young Kuna with an outboard on his canoe cruises the popular anchorages every few days, selling fruit and vegetables (we got some oranges and a sweet, ripe pineapple) and taking orders for items to buy back in town.
The only thing that we were running out of, which threatened to put an end to our San Blas cruising, was propane. We'd finished off a tank shortly after arriving in Panama, and although a tank usually lasts six weeks or more, we didn't want to be caught short. The Kuna villages sell something called "Tropicgas", a mixture of butane and propane which is probably similar to what we bought in Bequia, and although other cruisers reassured us that it would work in our stove, the tank valve system here in Panama is not compatible with American valves. When we'd put the query to the morning radio net, another cruiser (Dan on Calliope -- the other American in the Green Island anchorage) had told us he had a hose with appropriate ends that he'd loan us so we could transfer gas from a Panamanian tank. We weren't far from Green Island at the time, so we moved there later that day. Dan came by our boat later and told us he'd loaned a crucial part to someone else who wouldn't be back for a week -- but maybe something in our spare parts bin would fit. "But you don't need to bother," Dan continued, "because Ian over there on Millenial Destiny has a nearly full 25-pound tank he wants to use up before he goes to Colon tomorrow, and it's got an American valve, and he has a hose for it. So you might as well just buy some cooking gas from him." We tied Ian's tank to our rail upside down, hooked it to our empty tank, opened the valves, and left them for a couple of hours. We have no idea how much gas we managed to get into the tank, but it was perceptibly heavier (and the other one lighter) when we unhooked them. More importantly, we hooked it into our stove and it works. So we have enough gas now to grill a whole lot of fish!
Now all we have to do is catch them.