CaribSeek Books | Playa Pabou | The Adventures of Captain Don by Donal A. Stewart

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Playa Pabou

June of 1962. We were anchored just off-shore of Heit's Pier. We'd been there since our arrival the month before. Still had a date in Antigua, but Bonaire was nice and the hurricane season had just begun.

We also needed a third crew member, but could find no Bonairean who wanted to go to Antigua. Just one more reason to stay put. We couldn't even guarantee food for the trip. Percy, my partner in all things wet, couldn't understand how I could own a ship like the Valerie Queen and be as broke as I was. "63 cents ain't broke," l would tell him. "Should a been around during the depression. Zero was broke."

This part of the beachfront was called Playa Pabou, a section of waterfront that stretched from the custom house to Playa Lechi. Just a little over a mile. It was explained to me that it was called pabou or "west," because the sun sets on this side of town. Playa Pariba ("east") was the other side, where the sun rises. It all made good sense to me, except that the front street ran north and south.

We came to know every rock, coral, fish and piece of junk on Playa Pabou, from the surface to the base of the drop-off. Collecting small aquarium fish was what it was all about; the main reason we were diving. But Percy and I were always on the lookout for that elusive fish which would be the first "whatever" and bring a golden price. A guy can dream, can't he.

The salt water aquarium business was big in Europe and there never seemed to be enough fish to supply the demand. We had several European accounts clamoring for them and could find most of the species we needed right here in Playa Pabou.

It was a risky business at its best, sometimes dangerous. While it involved difficult collecting skills, it also required a huge amount of luck when shipping. A freight handler breaking a container in Curaçao, maybe a plane lay-over in Venezuela, or a cold snap at the Amsterdam airport ... As I said, risky. Some days, Percy and I would free dive along the drop-off. This was good for the Rock Beauties and Pygmy Angels. I was still struggling to best 80 feet while Percy, with ease, was free diving to a hundred.

We had developed a special technique for netting the deeper guys, like the Royal Grammas. They like 50-foot-plus water where usually more than a minute was required to net them.

Photo © Coles Phinizy

I would drop down using two small hand-held sweep nets and would start playing the fish. When my minute was up, Percy, who had been hyperventilating as he watched me from the surface, would dive down and hover above me, then slide his hands down my arms to take the nets without missing a beat. The fish would be ours.

Financially, our whole venture was a mess. Chartering the Valerie Queen for day sailing was impractical because of her size. In those days the sport divers who would pay to dive with Captain Don were few and far between. Ninety percent of the divers were hunters but I found that a no-go sport and always lost the sale.

Percy had shot a few Yellowtail Snappers in those first weeks which we sold for enough money to buy several breads, a can of butter and five pounds of funchi. The ship's stock of maple syrup was inexhaustible, more than enough to last forever. Percy hated the stuff, but I found energy in every spoonful. While in Colombia, maple syrup and bananas had been my mainstay for months.

By September, I had a compressor that was putting out almost breathable air. I had made a cotton filter and exchanged mineral oil for the hair oil I'd started with. This was a big improvement. We had received a telegram to ship Pygmy Angels now if we wished to keep the German account. Since we needed this money to eat, there was little choice of what we had to do.

Just north of a dry rooi we had discovered a wonderful colony of pygmies. They were deep on the side of a steep sandy hill dropping off into several hundred feet or more. An unimaginative dive, just a dirty hill littered with old tires. But the pygmies thrived there.

We had been at 80 feet, give or take a yard or two, for some minutes. My trusty red ribbon had long since gone black, and the curious side of me wondered just how much air I had left. Free ascents were considered normal for me and Percy, but jumping for the surface raised hell for the little fish held captive in the bottles. I had collected maybe a dozen pygmies and a few grammas when I realized that Percy was no longer around.

Then I saw it ... a bubble train well off in the blue. I knew he was fooling around again at the bottom of the hill. This wasn't the first time he had slid down the mountain and I worried that one of these deep dives would be his last. When you start with only 1100 pounds of air, you should avoid the deep stuff.

Photo © Coles Phinizy

I had just collected one last pygmy and was stuffing it into my holding bottle when Percy slid up past me, easily kicking his way up the hill. I looked at his plastic bottle as he went by and thought it was empty. Damn him, I thought, sightseeing when we needed fish for the German account. I knew some anger as I turned and followed him up the hill.

Slow and easy was the name of the game when bringing fish from depth. At maybe 50 feet, my ribbon turned a dirty red, and I stopped for a little decompression, mostly for the fish. Then I stopped again at around twenty. Percy was waiting at ten feet, and I thought it strange that he was doing a third stop.

Percy was smoking and sitting on the beach when I crawled out of the water. I shucked my tank down to the sand and then turned to face him, holding up my bottle for him to see that it was full. He just watched me for a moment, then reached down and lifted his bottle.

From an old postcard.
Photo credit unknown

I had to move closer to see what it was he was trying to show me. There was only one fish in his bottle. My first impression was pink, red, some yellow, and long and narrow with black spots on the fins. "Sweet Jesus!" I whispered.

Percy laughed and flipped his cigarette out into the water.

"Mardi Gras," he said. "Meet the Bonaire surprise, Mr. Mardi Gras."

A year later in a 1963 scientific paper "Studies on the Fauna of Caribbean Islands, "Dr. John E. Randall described a new species: one of the most complexly and beautifully colored of West Indian fishes." He named it Chorististium carmabi in honor of the Caribbean Marine Biological Institute (CARMABI), adding that a colored drawing by Donal A. Stewart of the fish, first discovered by Percy D. Sweetnan in September 1962, "leave no doubt of the identity of the fish as carmabi."

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