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VY: Talk about spear fishing. What was that like? What did you do?

NH: Well, Los Angeles is different, because they have Catalina Island and everything, they had what they called pelagic fish, it's blue water (hunting), and (fish) come in and they go. They're not there swimming around like you see in the videos, and fortunately I got with a group that was strictly spear fishing and free diving, no scuba. They weren't a bunch of diehard (guys), have to get the biggest fish and everything, we had a pretty good time. This is Los Angeles.

VY: So what do you do when you go spear fishing?

NH: Just swim out (from the boat) or take a boat to the kelp beds and just kind of watch the bait. Those days, rivers of bait, black things crossing each other. And when the bait breaks, something spooked it, so you dive down slowly, and sure enough, some big yellowtail, hamachi, would come by. And Los Angeles has a fish called a white sea bass that lives in the kelp. And I understand lately there have been some tunas going through there. And, of course, equipment varies according to the size of your fish, bigger fish, bigger guns. Which, in those days, we made our own.

VY: How do you make one?

NH: You have a pattern, and you have the basic trigger. Like I went and got piano wire which has a very good spring to it. And we had a machinist kind of form the shafts for us. Which didn't cost much, it cost ten dollars, now it cost a hundred, something like that. And it's rubber powered, rubber tubing, and the notches on the shaft, pull the trigger and it releases. And it varies, variations of it.

VY: Okay, so you basically made your own, what do you call it, a spear?

NH: Those days it was just starting, the divers were just learning how to capture these big fish. So that was interesting, it was kind of at the beginning. And most of the time we didn't get anything, so that's okay. [Laughs]

VY: What would you do when you did? What did you do with the fish?

NH: You gut it, and they have a holding thing on the boat, bring it home. And that time I was (living) at a boarding house, and I'd just give it to the landlord, they would cook it. Lobster diving.

VY: Did you catch lobster also?

NH: Yeah, free diving. Lot of fun.

VY: That's interesting. So after you left L.A., did you ever do that again?

NH: I came up north. Up north it's rougher diving, roughest diving I've ever done. The water is dirty, you can't see sometimes, most of the time three feet, and what's tricky about diving up here is the currents, because there's a lot of big boulders and things. And mainly up here it's what they call rockfish, ling cod, probably up north it's similar to your type of fish. And what really I like is abalone diving, I like that.

VY: Did you do the abalone diving, did you do that in Monterey?

NH: Monterey is pretty well fished out. For us it's a two-hour drive (north). And up north it's a little different the further up north you go, from San Francisco, more abalone. Easy pickings if the ocean's not rough.

VY: Did you ever have competition from the sea lions?

NH: Oh, yeah. Sea lion was in Los Angeles. One incident I was... the sun was going down, I was diving off of a diving boat, they would take us up (current and anchor) and we'd have to swim wherever we were going. And they put a light on, the sun was going out, and I'm swimming to the light and I'm enjoying a slight current, enjoying just the current taking me back to the boat. And my gun has reflectors on it, tape and stuff, look like fish. All of a sudden a sea lion, bang, grabs my gun and then let go.

VY: Grabs your gun?

NH: And I didn't know what, I look up, and there's a sea lion twenty feet away already, just like that. The other incident was I had a barracuda on a stringer, and this sea lion kept coming around in circles -- this is another incident. And it came right up to me like that, and I took my gun like that, you can't spear it, so the other way, but he's looking, right? So you (look like) Maori? You know how they go, "Waaah?" That's how I made a face, and he wanted that barracuda. But after that I just had it off, out of the water and I swam back to the boat.

VY: So you weren't going to shoot the sea lion, you were just going to try to bop him on the head?

NH: Yeah, I just wanted him to get away from me. I mean, he was that close to me. This was a sea lion, not a little seal, this is a big sea lion.

VY: Okay, well, that's interesting.

NH: That was my life for sixty-two years. I just quit about three years ago.

VY: Spear fishing?

NH: Yeah.

VY: Really.

NH: Oh, abalone diving.

VY: Abalone diving, really?

NH: If there was a passion, that was it.

VY: Did you ever sell the fish that you caught, or the abalone that you caught?

NH: You can't do that, (it's illegal).

VY: Oh, you can't?

NH: Yeah. I would give it to somebody if they wanted abalone, I had a big family, and (my wife's) family, they just (liked abalone), had no problem giving it away.

VY: Is there a quota to how many you can catch?

NH: When I first started it was ten, and then it got down to the last twenty-five per year. I don't know, it was ten per day and I don't know how many days (per year), and the last two to three years, they closed it.

VY: Completely?

NH: Yes. Because I believe the change in the weather, and three or four years ago there was a big die-off, a lot of abalone just died because the water became warm. So the Fish and Game just closed it completely. It's a good thing I was on my, end of my career, but these other guys, I feel sorry for 'em.

VY: It sounds like the abalone population has declined quite a bit.

NH: Yeah.

VY: Okay, so let's go --

NH: Don't get me on diving. [Laughs]

VY: I want to hear about diving. Do you want to talk about anything else about diving?

NH: No. It was part of my life when you, coming up with this interview thing, and I think it affected a lot of my life, what I did.

VY: Well, talk about that. In what ways did it affect your life?

NH: I want to make sure I have a day off to go. When I took over the nursery, we were working seven days, six and a half to seven days. I cut it down to five and a half. Then I rotated the people working on weekends. Somebody had to work on the seventh day, I rotated among four people. But before I took over, my dad and my uncle, they would work seven days.

VY: But then, for you, a day off was to go abalone diving.

NH: Not necessarily. By that time, I got married, and then I had other commitments. [Laughs]

VY: I see.

NH: We try to balance it out, Gail and I.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.