In 1493, when Columbus was on his second expedition to the Americas, the Spaniards accompanying the ship saw the Scene of indians hunting sea turtles near the Queen's Garden Islands, which surprised some Spaniards, so they recorded the whole event in their diaries, allowing us to get a glimpse of it.
Ps: Located 80 km south of the main island of Cuba, the Queen's Garden Islands are a 160 km long archipelago linked by low-lying coral islands.
Bass
The "hunting fish" used by the Indians is actually a kind of "echenis mancrates", also known as sucker fish, sticky boat fish, and indian head fish.
Suction cups for bass fish
The bass is a deformed carnivorous marine fish with an extremely elongated body, a flattened head, and a cylindrical shape that gradually becomes backwards, and at the top there is an oblong "suction cup" formed by the metamorphosis of the first dorsal fin, and the bass fish relies on this suction cup to adsorb the bottom of the boat or other large fish for long-distance swimming and feeding.
Bass adsorbed on sharks
Bass like to attach to the bodies of larger fish such as sharks, turtles, whales, manta rays, etc., and once they reach areas rich in bait, they will leave their hosts to ingest food.
Although the bass are very weak and have almost no attack ability, the bass can snatch the shark's prey or slow down the shark's swimming speed, but the shark can't do anything with them, and some sharks even starve to death! Because the sucking power of the bass is so great, the shark can't get rid of it, let alone attack the bass.
Indians living by the sea discovered this feature of the bass and invented a clever and unique method of fishing.
The Indians will deliberately catch some bass to feed, and choose larger catfish to take to fishing boats, once the Indians find that there are large marine animals such as turtles in the nearby waters, the Indians will tie a long rope to the tail of the fish, and then put it into the sea to let it track the prey.
Bass and sharks
Once the bass is firmly attached to the prey, the Indians will tighten the rope until they pull the fish and prey to the surface of the sea, and at this time, the Indians will give the bass some food as a reward, just as hunters on land treat hounds and falcons.
The Spanish sailors who saw the scene for the first time were captivated by the unique fishing method of the Indians, and then the "people of insight" on the ship recorded the scene in writing:
"Now you will hear of a new method of fishing, just as we hunted hares in the wilderness of the plains with greyhounds. They also fish with hunting fish, which we never know of shape or structure, but its body shape is very similar to that of a large eel, with a very tough piece of skin at the back of the head, as if there is a sac on it. Fishermen tie the fish to the side of the boat with a rope and lower it to a depth where the fish can hide close to the keel or the bottom of the boat, because the fish must not be able to see the air for a long time. In this way, when the fisherman finds any big fish or turtle, they let go of the rope, and when it finds that it has been relaxed, it quickly pounces on the fish and turtle like an arrow. Its skin sac can grasp the prey so firmly that no one has the strength to let go, unless little by little slowly pulling the rope, it can drag him to the water's edge, because when it sees the sun, it will relax and absorb, and the prey will be dragged to the water's edge, so immediately enough fishermen will go down from the boat to catch the prey and catch it until the boat, and after doing these work, the fisherman will let go of the rope, and the fish that is long enough to hunt can return to the place in its water. Here the fisherman puts down a piece of the meat of the prey with another rope as a reward, just as we often reward the hounds after killing the prey. They gave us four turtles that we caught this way, and a large number of other turtles of this size almost filled their fishing boats because they regarded these fish and turtles as delicacies. ”
Bass adsorbed on turtles