LIVING
LIVING
MARCH 2009
THE ONE THAT DIDN’T GET AWAY
On Saturday, 14th March 2009, Dimitri Tsolakou, aged 80 and his
daughter Maria were out fishing as usual in their dependable
fishing boat, ‘Vassiliki ‘on the sparkling blue water of Perdika. At
around 08.00 hours in the morning, they decided to pull in the
nets but found them heavy and impossible to haul and as they
took the boat closer which almost capsized in the process, they
noticed a tail of gigantic proportions. They immediately
identified the creature…a dog fish! a plankton feeder which had
strayed inland, only 500 meters from the marina.
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They realized in commercial fishing terms that
this was a fine catch and once they’d summoned help from a
fellow fisherman who possessed a larger vessel, the news spread
like a virus and people travelled from every corner of the
island to witness the extraction from the ocean to the concrete
slab of the quay. Journalists, locals, tourists, the port police
and fishermen vied for a good angle from which to photograph the
best catch of Dmitri’s 75 year history of fishing.
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The creature was estimated to weigh 2 tons and
measured approximately 8 metres in length. The fishing villagers
of Perdika knew exactly how to deal with this prize marine catch
and within 30 minutes, a lorry bearing a crane arrived to
extract it from the sea. It emerged slowly and impotently, an
un-successful escapologist suspended from a hook, ropes and
cables and landed with a rubbery thwack on the concrete where
children set about gingerly touching its black,coarsely textured
scales. It neither writhed nor struggled, so assumingly( and
hopefully,) death, or was it simply resignation? may have
started some time earlier.
I didn’t witness the final phase of its journey but I was
informed that it was being transported in a refridgerated lorry
to Piraeus fish market where it would be prepared to be sold for
human consumption.
Nevertheless, for Dimitri and Maria who have been fishing all
their lives and for the villagers of Perdika, this was a day to
be remembered and will probably be spoken about for a very long
time!
