Spearing on Northwest Island

Geography

NW Island is one of the islands in the Capricorn Group, located just on the tropic. Other islands in the group include Lady Musgrave, Heron and Tryon Islands.

The island is one of the larger islands on the Great Barrier Reef, it takes a little more than an hour to walk around it (well, it usually takes more because you have to stop all the time to watch the incredible scenery). It's covered with trees but the beach consists of coral sand. The reef itself is much much bigger than the island and is shaped like a big fish, the island itself is situated on the "head" of it. Here is more detailed geographic info and a map.

Climate

I've visited the island in July, December and January. In July it's very mild, a little bit more than 20C in the day and sun most of the time. In the night it can get chilly and I found it too cold for shorts. In December and January the weather is incredible ! Around 30C in the day (sometimes more) and lots and lots of sun. In the night it usually doesn't get below 20C, it's great. In January we got quite a few squalls when it just pours down but they pass quickly and your stuff dries fast in the heat.

The Fish

The stars indicate (my estimate of) eating quality, four being the highest.

Coral Trout ****
This is my favourite target. They live among the coral, often under ledges and in caves. If you know where to find them and how to approach with a lot of stealth they are not too hard to get and they taste fantastic ! Definitely 4-star eating fish. Some of them grow quite large, up to a few kilos. The small ones are abundant but you're not allowed to take them. Should you happen to get a bad shot they always always find a cave to hide in and usually the caves are too deep and narrow for you to follow. If you wait real long they might stick their noses out again but it didn't happen very often for me. The big ones prefer to stay a little bit deeper, usually between 10 and 25m.

Spangled Emperor ****
This fish is the favourite for more experienced spearo's (who can hold their breath longer and wait them out and who have better gear than me). They act a bit more like pelagics and you usually see them in schools or small groups in the middle of the water, they're very shy but also inquisitive. Unless you have a very powerful gun the best way to get them is to take a real deep breath and then swim to the bottom and wait for them. If you can wait long enough they get curious and sometimes they swim up to you - be prepared to wait a while though ! They seem to like commotion and I saw them many times around the anchor chain to our boats. They are excellent eating, especially good for sashimi, the raw meat tastes almost like oyster.

Barramundi Cod ****
This fish is quite rare this far south and is really cute, I almost find it hard to shoot them but when I recall how tasty they are I usually overcome this. They're always found among the coral, often in caves. They swim real funny, very slowly and with many strange turns, often swimming almost upside down. When you see them they usually see you at the same time and nick off but don't worry, they usually don't swim very far and if you just stick around you're very likely to spot it again. The only problem with Barramundi Cod is that since they're always found deep in among the coral you risk smashing up your speartip trying to shoot them.

Mangrove Jack ****!
My favourite eating fish. I didn't see many enough to be able to say anything about their habits, the ones I got I found under overhangs, fights like crazy when shot. DON'T mix this fish up with red seabass, the latter fish eats coral and can be very poisonous, ciguetaric (spelling ?).

Bream *
This is what you shoot when there's five minutes left to spear and you know there's no fresh food in the camp. It's not very tasty but it is extremely simple to shoot, they're abundant and some of them are so docile you can almost press the speartip against their heads before you shoot. What I cannot understand is how these buggers avoid getting eaten by sharks.

Painted Sweetlip **
This is a pretty boring fish, silvery with yellow dots and streaks. It behaves pretty much the same way as bream, although a bit more cautious. Often found under plate coral. This fish is slightly harder to catch than bream and it tastes slightly better - but only slightly.

Spotted Trevally **1/2
A smaller pelagic, the big ones weigh between one and two pounds. Every time I saw them they were travelling very fast in big schools. The best way to shoot them is to see if the school "converges" somewhere, for instance when they swim around a headland, and then wait for them there. Often seen over the sand at high tide (typically when you swim back to the camp with your gun uncocked). The meat is pretty hard, very similar to North Sea Mackerel which was my favourite food as a kid.

Snubnosed Trevally *** (A dead one.)
Most of the time you don't see any for days but then certain days there's loads of them. At high tide they sometimes move across the reef flat in big schools, usually the water over the sand is a bit murky and it's a thrill seeing these big fish darting past you fast as nothing. If you're fast you can get real good shots at them but I stopped doing this after one of my buddies told me a big tiger had been seen a few times at my fav. spot ... They grow quite big and one fish feeds a lot of people.

Drummer ** 1/2 (A dead one.)
Same thing as snubnosed trevally, sometimes they're abundant, most of the time you see none. One of the few fish I could get with my first (very weak) speargun due to the fact that you can get real close to them inside caves. The problem is getting them out from the cave after you shoot them, preferably without getting entangled in the shooting line - NOT a funny experience when breathhold diving.

Other game
The fish I described above are the ones I could catch with my limited skill and quite mediochre equipment. There's also lots of pelagics around the island (mackerel, barracuda, giant trevally) and even though Plukky (my buddy/mentor) frequently caught these I just got one barracuda (that we had to chuck away because it was full of worms). Occasionally you see a maori wrasse and even though they're legal and big I like them too much to shoot them (supposedly they're not that good eating anyway).

Lobsters and Oysters

Yes, there's lobster too but if you think I'm gonna tell you the very few tricks I know you're wrong. Basically it's not very hard finding them, it just takes patience, you work yourself up along the reef checking out every single cave, crevice and plate coral you see. What's tricky is catching them. It's not a good idea shooting them (even though it's dead simple). The catch is that you cannot check in advance whether they're males or females. Should you shoot a female you're (hopefully) gonna feel quite bad, your buddies are going to flame you and if caught by a ranger you're gonna have to sell your car. I consider fresh lobster the best food in the world and they're definitely worth the work getting them. Look at a small pacific painted cray .

Oysters aren't too bad either and you can get lots at low tide. The rocks within walking distance are picked clean already so you need a boat to get to the ones a bit further away.

Sharks

Lots of these too. There's white- and blacktip reefsharks galore (look at a whitetip ) , pretty much every time you shoot anything of decent size they're gonna come to check if they can snatch it somehow. They're usually between 3 and 5 ft big but I saw a couple that were close to 6. In any case these sharks are not dangerous, they're pretty scared of you. They do have the potential to inflict substantial injuries though and people have been bitten when feeding them or when they try to steal your fish. I saw a few bronze (and silver) whalers as well. The biggest one I saw was about 7ft but I'm told they can get bigger. They can be pretty aggressive and if they want my fish they get it. Once Plukky had to give a big trout to one. Afterwards he really flamed me because I was supposed to have stayed in the boat to take his catch, well, I did stay in the boat for a while after that ... Tiger sharks are of course the real hazard, the only ones I saw were small but Plukky (who often went further off shore and went for bigger fish) saw quite a few and was even attacked by one. Hammerheads are supposed to stay at deeper water but nevertheless two were seen while I was on the island. A big one came to check me out when I was looking for a wounded cod under a big bommie. Luckily I didn't see it, if I had it would probably have been the end of my spearing career. Apart from the ones I mentioned above there's lots of other completely harmless ones; lemon sharks, wobbegongs, leopard sharks etc etc.

My gear

One thing is absolutely imperative regarding gear: bring spares ! The nearest dive store is very very far away.

The first time I was on the Island I had a very small and inefficient gun, it was just good for taking bream, drummers and medium sized coral trouts. Next time I was there I was better equiped; I had a large Untersee gun (the model was called Bazooka ) with a single 3/4 inch rubber. Unfortunately I didn't bring enough spare shafts and in the end my bent shafts weren't all that accurate.

Regarding wetsuits I think a 5mm long sleeve, long legs is most adequate in winter. A hood is recommended for coldblooded people but I don't like them. In summer I used a 3mm, short sleeve, long leg surf suit and that was fine.

A float is of course useful when going for larger fish but most of the time I was working among big coral boulders and then it's unbearable having a float line that gets entangled all the time.

Other animals

Apart from the ones we hunt there's lots of other sea creatures that make the dives enjoyable. Turtles are abundant, especially at dusk in the summer before they go up on the beach to lay their eggs. They come in all sizes, the largest ones weigh over 300lbs. Look at a loggerhead turtle. Rays are also very common. Stingrays are all over the place, some of them are humongous. Bluespotted rays are rarer, they're extremely pretty though. Occasionally you see manta rays (in summer you see lots of them from the boats though) and that's of course pretty nice. My favourite rays though are the Eaglerays, I had three of them in January who were always hanging around at one of my spearing spots. After a while they got completely used to me and would come pretty close to check me out. They move with an incredibly grace, with fins and tails pointing upwards they seem to glide motionlessly through the water. If you spook them the tail goes straight back and they're off before you know it. There're dolphins around, we saw stacks of them at times and even though they loved playing with the boats noone managed to get close underwater. All kinds of eels (look at a moray eel ) are found in the crevices, and they come out if you tempt them with some food. I just saw a couple of octupi but that's probably just because I didn't know where to look. At some spots giant clams are scattered all over the bottom, they have the prettiest colours. There's also lots of mermaids (or was that just in my dreams?).

You'll find more detailed info about animals on the island here .

Practicalities

After having obtained a camping permit it is possible to camp on NW Island, Lady Musgrave and Tryon. Boats can be chartered from Gladstone, it's about a 6 hour ride. You need to bring everything you need, including water. Some zones are protected and spearing is not allowed there, size and species restrictions also apply, you need to get info on all this before you leave the mainland.

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P-G Martinsson, pgm@math.chalmers.se

Last modified: Fri Feb 7 13:02:14 MET 1997