Hunter Gathering At Gulf Specimen
By ANNE RUDLOE, Ph.D.

It was the year we were fishing for Kemp's Ridley sea turtles to tag and release for the National Marine Fisheries Service. The most endangered of all the sea turtles, Kemp's Ridleys range around the Gulf and Atlantic coast feasting on the abundance of blue crabs that live in the marshes, bays and grass beds.  How the turtles got to Panacea in the northern Gulf of Mexico from their only hatching beach in Mexico was a mystery and how they returned to that beach from all over the Atlantic coast after they matured was another.

If we caught a turtle, it would be tagged and released. But should a turtle be captured with a tag in its flipper, it would tell us something of how young turtles use the marshes and grass beds, where they go, how fast they grow, how long they stay around a given area.  We would have a few more details of how this endangered species uses its world--details that might help to preserve it from extinction.

I went to Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory's aquarium one morning to meet the rest of the crew for a day of net fishing on the project. They hadn't arrived yet so I wandered in to look at the seawater trays. Water bubbled through the filters.  Seahorses hid in the seaweed, their black and bronze heads dusted with gold flecks. Starfish moved effortlessly over the sand and the octopus was out of its burrow. Red hermit crabs with bright blue eyes carried waving sea anemones on their shells. Together with animals that looked like plants and plants unlike any on land, they challenge our concepts of what it means to be an animal, of what it means to be alive.

"Is this really okay, what we do here?" I asked myself for the thousandth time. I wondered about the place and always had. Did it fit the concept of right livelihood, a way of earning a living that created no suffering or harm to others? We kept everything alive but sooner or later many of these animals would be shipped out on a jet to university biologists. Some would be kept in aquaria for years and others would be used for experimental work. None would ever swim in the open ocean again. They helped to build people's awareness of the diversity and beauty of living beings and they contributed new scientific knowledge. Some might contribute drugs against cancer some day but none were here of their own volition.

The animal rights people didn't seem to be concerned with these lowly invertebrates that lacked friendly eyes and big brains and soft fur or feathers, but they were as fully alive as any mammal. Was this really okay?

"Yes!" I finally decided, standing there waiting, "It is."

We were still living as hunter gatherers with the biological supply service even though it was now embedded into a complex technological system of jet planes and universities and research. And hunter gathering is the niche humans evolved with--how we stayed a harmonious part of the planet for thousands of years--as hunters with respect for their prey, living as an intimate part of a holistic system--developing the concept of the sacred to help us fit into it with awareness.

In fact, I decided, to do this was not only okay, it was a gift and essential to the environmental activist work I did--there are so very few left today who still follow this ancient and honorable way of life. Agriculture is what led to the problems of being out of balance with our planet, of too many people, of huge disparities of wealth, and maybe even of large scale genocidal war instead of tribal raids. Agriculture and the population surplus it had created, myself included, that's what threatened the planet's health--not subsistence hunting and gathering, I concluded triumphantly.

And what we did was still subsistence level, there wasn't any financial fat in it. Nowadays, the goal of our hunting and gathering was to bring others into contact with the living world so they'd know a little about it first hand instead of on TV, appreciate a little of the ancient reality within which we all once lived.

Our crew came driving up and a half hour later, our little turtle fishing boat raced past the green marsh, into the Gulf of Mexico in the bright morning. Everything was created anew in this instant, it was the very first morning of the world, still sparkling fresh from creation. The newly risen sun turned the calm sea to glittering gold, snowy cumulus clouds floated over our tiny heads and there was glory to just being alive in such a blue and golden morning.

This day's fishing site was next to a huge oyster bar, several miles down the coast. When we got there, the falling tide was racing around the end of the bar and in the calm lee, small menhaden swirled in huge schools. They looked like moving patches of raindrops hitting the water, and as a school approached, we listened to the pattering sound of them breaking the surface. Hundreds of gulls, cormorants, terns and pelicans wheeled and screamed, feeding on the concentrated fish. Others, already full, rested on the oyster bar, motionless in the morning sun. In deeper water a little further offshore, jacks and sharks leaped in their own dance of life and death. As we set out three hundred yards of net, a porpoise played and leaped along side, watching our every move. We were the best thing that had happened for it all morning.

Fishing for turtles took a lot of patience. We sat with the net for twelve hours, checking it every thirty minutes to insure that if a turtle got caught, it wouldn't drown before we reached it. A lot of days we didn't catch any at all. Most of the time was spent sitting and watching. It was a good time to catch up on reading and we didn't talk much. No small talk could go on for that many hours so after a while we quit trying and just relaxed.

The frantic swarming of menhaden and birds lasted for about an hour until the falling tide scattered the fish schools further offshore and the birds scattered. The morning continued to turn, the sun rose higher in the sky and the sea and marsh were silent under the weight of the heat and the glare. Not only was there nothing happening, but it was inconceivable that there ever was or could have been.

The tide fell until by noon the sea grass began to be exposed on the tide flats. Then the place came to life again, this time with mullet. The mirror surface of the grass streaked shallows broke into splashes and ripples everywhere as mullet rolled and fed. While we sat, ten or twelve ospreys hovered and circled overhead. They dropped from the sky like arrows, sometimes seizing a mullet, sometimes pulling out of the dive at the last second.

When it was time to check the net, we pulled our skiff along the corkline by hand, lifting it up, looking for the flash of white in the murky water that meant either a ray, a shark or a turtle. The mesh was so big that anything smaller passed through, and if it was a shark or a ray we released it. Waves slapped on the bow of our boat as we pulled it along the top of the turtle net off Piney Island. Most of the time the net was empty, and I realized in a way I never did before that this once common sea turtle really was close to extinction.

It was time to pull the net for the tenth time that day. This was more like waiting in ambush for big game than it was like fishing. Native American hunters, when they stalked game, had a wealth of knowledge of the animals' habits, behavior and movement patterns, knowledge that they used to track the game effectively. But they did more. A hunt was often preceded by a period of meditation and purification, and in the hunt they tried to let go of thinking, merge themselves with the world, to let the animal know the hunters' need. Then it would come and compassionately allow itself to be taken that the people might continue to live. The hunter and the hunted were bound together in mutual relationship and respect. The hunters' spiritual practice was an integral part of living and essential for survival.

We had chosen the most likely tide, the spot with the best turtle habitat. We had built a net that would fish efficiently, had talked to other fishermen about where they'd spotted turtles. But when the rational, analytical mind had done everything it could to insure catching a turtle, when the long silent waiting began, we found ourselves settling into the ancient still meditation, asking the turtle to come and allow itself to be caught. And when it did, we gave thanks for the gift of the turtle, tagged it and sent it on its way with respect.