The Eyes of the Sky / Syaman Rapongan | 夏曼•藍波安
Translated by Tim Smith
Originally published in print in Ora Nui 4
The ocean is a starry sky, and the starry sky is an ocean. It has been this way ever since Hundun, when time was a muddy swirl. The water is a world of all life and all mythologies, and it is a world in which my family has evolved for many thousands of years. My kind does not interest marine biologists, but this is no bad thing; ultimately, there can be no mystery following the disclosure of one’s secrets.
When I was little, I heard from my great-grandfather that the ancestors of the ancestors of the Tao people told a story. Now, a so-called civilised person like you needn’t question how it is that I, a fish, am telling this story. It is enough for me to say that you need not be cynical, need not sit in front of a computer or a television all day all year long and thereby presume to know everything there is to know about the world. Anyway, it goes like this:
In the sky lived the Ta-u-do Langarahen.[1] These were deities who watched the Tao people and made note of their good and bad deeds. Every Tao person was assigned a deity who would observe them from birth and who would, upon death, apply judgement and then send the Tao’s spirit either to heaven on a white island or, if the person had been bad, to a pit at the bottom of the sea.
Si Omzapaw was the god of all these deities. On his knees were his grandchildren. Si Omana was the god of all humankind, and Si Omima was the god of all sea creatures. At some point, Si Omzapaw asked the pair: ‘Do you wish to become the first ancestors of this beautiful island?’ The two grandchildren agreed and were sent to Ponso no-Tao.[2] The sister became the first of the Bamboo People, and the brother became the first of the Stone People.
The god created a path through the ocean and called it a current; it was for the flying fish. One day, the Bamboo People and the Stone People broke Heavenly Law by cooking flying fish together with ordinary seafood and shellfish. After this transgression, both people and fish became sick, with humans reaching a point of near extinction. The gods asked Mavenhend so Panid,[3] leader of the flying fish, to visit the dreams of one of the wise men of the Stone People and explain to him the cause of this sickness. The next morning, Mavenhend so Panid and the island’s inhabitants agreed to meet in a tidal pool called Yabnoy. Mavenhend so Panid flew into the tidal pool and taught the Stone People how to classify fish. Since then, a bond has existed between the Tao people and the fish. The Tao formed sacred patriarchal fishing groups with rituals governing the catching of flying fish, and they handed down traditions as well as methods of fishing and farming.
Some say that the people living at that time were not real people, that they were half human half ghost, that it was later that they evolved and displayed the characteristics of real people and then moved from the mountain valleys to a hillside by the sea called Jicyakawyan.
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One day, a group of people were walking along a precipitous cliff looking for a path that would take them down to the shore. When they looked out at the surface of the flickering blue sea, they marvelled at the myriad fish swimming leisurely. There was an especially large fish whose silvery body reflected a light more dazzling than the afternoon sun itself. When night fell, the massive figure was again illuminated, this time by the light of the moon; it was like a giant radiant fish scale. When they saw this fish, the Stone People slaughtered a goat and wrapped its innards to a long piece of wood to use as bait. They twisted a rope and tied this rope to the end of a piece of bamboo as thick as a man’s thigh. They wedged the root-end of the bamboo into a crevice in the exposed reef. They threw the bait into the sea and stood on the coral gazing at the large sparkling fish, watching its movements.
Soon, the fish swallowed the bait; the long wooden stick stuck fast in its throat. The fish pulled on the rope, driving down into the sea. In a split-second, the thick bamboo was bent into the shape of a bow. Again and again, the rope was pulled taut. If the bamboo was straight like a flagpole, it meant the fish had stopped resisting. If it was bowed, it meant the fish was trying hard to escape. After a long while the fish tried for a final time to break free by pulling into the deep sea, but its energy was exhausted. The bamboo straightened abruptly from bow to flagpole, and the fish was jerked out of the water and onto land. This fish was called Manilacilat.[4] It is the big sparkly fish; the Tao call it Cilat. I am a descendant of the Manilacilat. That evening, the people celebrated the victory with a feast and a song:
Kongo paro kamowamong ya dobou do zajid
Am mowamong no pinonozayin namen
Ka tokatokad na mangay do ilawod
Karaneranes na mangay do irala
Mapi raparapa so atey no vik
Ivagot da so panarosarowayin[5]
In the black painted night, a giant Cilat was gliding under the boat. The fishing group was surprised to see such a large fish near the surface of the sea. Lit by the eyes of the sky, the Cilat coruscated silvery light. At times it swam all the way to the distant horizon. For the season of the flying fish, it came back to the island. Its universe is the ocean. It devoured all that we fed it. In the end our intelligence triumphed, and we cooked taro to accompany its flesh, looking forward to the passing of winter and the coming of spring.
The islanders called themselves Yami, or Tao. According to their system for categorizing fish, I am a Cilat. I am longer than 160 centimetres, and I weigh over 70 kilograms. They call a large Cilat like me Arilus; I am bigger than anything their ancestors imagined. During the flying fish season, from February to June, the Tao are excited to hunt for fish like me. I am their most prized catch. We Cilat are fierce and strong and handsome, and the Tao tell endless tales of fighting with fish like me.
Indeed, their panowang canoes are curved like my ribs; the shape slices across waves and is said to possess an affecting beauty. The greatest of their anglers create ornaments for the chest, layering agate over my pierced rib bones in arrangements that are like the crests of breaking waves, accentuating femininity or boasting of the anglers’ achievements (depending on the wearer). Certainly, you could say that the Tao coexisted with the movements and lives of the sea.
But I have discovered that the fishermen of these many islands now despise my ‘old’ flesh, seeing it as nothing but a commodity for exchange in markets, where we are categorized as a cheap fish. Our flesh is torn apart by machines and mixed with mangled shark, mahi-mahi, marlin, and others to sell as yú sōng, an exquisite part of your breakfast. This is the final price for us beautiful cilat, and it is the most lamentable thing.
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From 2000 to 2006, the flying fish seasons brought devastating famine to predatory fish and Tao people alike. If you live in a big city and cannot see the ocean, you might find it difficult to understand our starvation, much like how we fish find it difficult to understand the misery visited upon humans by typhoons, torrential rains, and tsunamis. Nevertheless, the tragedy is the same.
During those six years, fleets of death came from the southern end of Taiwan equipped with a new fishing technology. Each fleet consisted of about eight motorized four-ton bamboo rafts, as well as a mothership which weighed maybe ten tons. Tied behind each raft was 1000 meters of plastic rope with colourful tassels attached along its length; each tassel tuft was about one and a half metres long and floated in the water. The rafts worked in pairs, and each pair went out early in the morning and spent two to three hours herding the flying fish toward the shore—the ropes at first spread wide and then gradually brought together. The flying fish, initially diffuse, were frightened by the vivid encroaching ropes, so they formed large groups: hundreds into thousands, thousands into tens of thousands. The mahi-mahi, omnivorous and unfussy, noticed their prey and rose from deeper waters to form a semicircle—a group of their own—around the trapped fish, where they waited for an opportunity to strike. However, these mahi-mahi themselves often became lost souls caught in the nets.
For me, when prey is in sight, a greediness is natural. But experience tells me that long plastic ropes tied to boats are traps. When the two bamboo rafts approached like a pair of slowly closing pliers, the crew unloaded into the water a nylon net the size of a football pitch. By the time the bamboo rafts were fully aligned, the net was beneath the fish; from then on, the flying fish and the mahi-mahi were crowded together. Ten or more of the crew dived into the sea and began herding the fish; others remained onboard, gathering the net. The net tightened and the fish were pushed together. Never mind how the mahi-mahi struggled, it was impossible to escape. However hungry they were, when mixed with the flying fish in the trap, they were overcome by panic and lost all predatory instinct; their countless tails waved in terror like enlarged sardines, churning the sea into foam. They pushed blindly against the nylon net but were unable to break free. Clearly, this new hunting strategy makes predatory fish redundant (not to mention depleting the sea of its microorganisms).
The crew stood on the boat watching the net ascend. Tens of thousands of fish were dropped onto the deck. Disturbing grins appeared, hinting at the profits to be made in overfishing these currents.
The motorized rafts that were deployed around Orchid Island brought in around ten tons per catch. Four groups meant forty tons of fish. Each day contains two shifts. That's eighty tons a day. Those alien fishing vessels surrounded the island for at least ten days. Imagine the volume of flying fish caught and the situation for us predatory fish. It was dreadful. We could never catch up with human technology. I know from observation that a season of fishing by six Tao tribes results in a combined catch of around five tons—less than the amount caught in a single day by one of these vessels.
And so the Tao were also starving. Starving, that is, until May of 2007, when young men, piloting speedboats purchased from Taiwan, blocked the invading vessels and prevented the impending flying fish extinction. After this, I was again able to eat fish and wander the sea.
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The Tao people of Orchid Island adhere to the principles explained to them so long ago by Mavaheng so Panid. At the start of each February, they hold a ceremony and summon our spirits using blood of rooster and boar. I feel that we Cilat, Vawuyu, Kavavawuyu, and Arayu[6] are deeply respected; that is a gratifying feeling. It is comparable, perhaps, to the feeling experienced when one’s colonizers evince some respect. I no longer journey ten thousand nautical miles for food (that kind of mileage can really tire out a fish). I simply rest, graze, wait to be hunted in the pure waters on the Island of Man,[7] or else gaze into the moon at high tide, and expect my natural end.
[1] Meaning: ‘those who are admired from the land’
[2] Meaning: ‘The Island of Man’. Today known also as Orchid Island.
[3] Meaning: ‘blacked-winged flying fish’
[4] Meaning, ‘sparkly fish.’ Also known as giant trevally.
[5] Swimming and gliding beneath the boat, what is that fish?The fish belongs to the greatest fisherman at the end of the boat. At times it swims to a faraway island. At times it swims back to our island. Feasting upon the innards of the boar. We enjoy the large taro and we enjoy the giant fish.
[6] Respectively: trevally, tuna, yellowfin tuna, and mahi-mahi.
[7] Island of Man (Pongso noTa-u) refers to Orchid Island.
Syman Rapongan was born in 1957 on Orchid Island in southern Taiwan. In 2005 he sailed across the South Pacific on a canoe. Rapongan is known for his prose and novels. His writing expresses the Tao people’s strong connection to the sea, taking readers along in an exploration of the ocean that is rich with history. He writes about the various father figures in Tao culture. Through his stories, he finds answers when traditions are confronted by modernity.