Albacora, the Search for the Giant Broadbill

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FOREWORD The sport of big-game fishing holds a dangerous fascination that has only one parallel elsewhere in life. Getting involved in it is like falling into the clutches of a jealous lover. From the day the involvement starts, your time, your thoughts, your energy and your money must all be dedicated to a single consuming cause. Once I devoted years to mastering techniques in painting and sculpture. Today I am a painter who does not paint and a sculptor who does not sculpt. I fish. Its terrible, insist my friends, and even my mother. From the walls where they hang, the characters in my pictures seem to point accusing fingers at me. But I am very happy. My husband, Lou, and I have found a way to follow our first love, the sea, not idly or wastefully, but for a purpose. Together we fish for science. After a lifetime of hard work in the oil business, Lou became financially independent some years ago. But his final achievement of business success left him with neither an aim nor an outlet for his creative urge. Scientific studies of the great fish have helped satisfy both needs. Fish safaris probably sound glamorous, but there is a good deal more to them than sheer romance. Ever since our first expedition, nearly everyone I meet has greeted me with the same opening line Oh, what a glamorous and exciting life you must lead. On your next trip couldnt you find room for a hairdresser Or a doctor or a lawyer or a gin rummy partner, or whatever else the questioner thinks he does best. I have a standard answer. I say, Glamour, no. Excitement, yes. Sorry, I cant use you. But that first question is only a teaser. The tough ones follow fast. Where do you go What do you catch What do you do with what you catch When How Why I am pleased and flattered that people want to know. I hope this story provides them with the answers. The Search for the Giant Broadbill The ocean welcomed us without the dancing spray of whitecaps or the blinking of reflected stars. At four oclock in the morning, as we set out to find the giant broadbill swordfish, the sky was dark and the sea was cold. All that the ocean offered the seven people who were gathered on our rugged fishing cruiser, the Explorer, was the strong and unmistakable odor of iodine. Yet that odor was inducement enough. This was in June, but not like any June at home in New York City. The Explorer was running out of Iquique, a Chilean seacoast village almost 1, 500 miles below the equator, which lies upon a barren strip of land, hard pressed between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...