155 

 to pull up the line ; but pulling up one fish and letting the line out 

 again may take twenty minutes or more. 



At that depth, 50 to 100 fathoms, the water is colder than at the 

 top, and quite often the fishes down there are different from those 

 commonly found in the surface layers. On parts of the Kenya 

 coast, for example, natives who learnt the trick from visiting 

 Japanese fishermen haul up from this deep, cooler water numbers 

 of fish of kinds that it is astonishing to see in such tropical climes. 



The people of the Comores have apparently always practised 

 deep-line fishing. At least that is what you learn on inquiry, but 

 one has to be cautious in accepting statements about the past from 

 natives in those parts, since the average East African native has a 

 much poorer sense of time than any European. Once a thing has 

 happened it is past and done with, and we constantly found that 

 it is exceedingly difficult to establish whether a past event had 

 taken place last week, last month, or last year. In that area the 

 Comores are almost unique in structure, for beneath the sea they 

 apparently slope steeply and uniformly down, in many cases at an 

 angle of 60 to 70 degrees, which is very steep indeed. As a result, 

 there is deep water close to the shore, except only off part of 

 Mayotte, where there is a large reef to the west. It is therefore 

 possible to fish in quite deep water without going far from the 

 shore, which is a great advantage, because it means that on the 

 leeward side of the island such fishing can be carried out during 

 even the windy seasons, which cover most of the year. 



The Comoran natives are not distinguished by great energy; 

 indeed, in that respect they fall below the average, already low, 

 and they are not uniform in performance — ^those on Anjouan being 

 considered the most progessive and energetic, while those on 

 badly disease-ridden Mohilla are notoriously lethargic and hard 

 to move. This is reflected in the proportion who will take the 

 trouble to go fishing and in the time they give to it, so that it is 

 not surprising that the Coelacanth story featured Anjouan, where 

 the most energetic Comorans live. 



In this deep-line fishing at the Comores they catch distinctive, 

 well-known fishes, like certain large Rock Cods, some specialised 

 species of the Snapper family, and the cosmopolitan 'Oil-fish' 

 (Ruvettus), a rather elongate Snoek-like fish with peculiar scales. 

 This fish is very oily and in some parts has an evil reputation, it 



