Author’s Note: “What goes down must come up” as they say in American stock markets and exchanges . . . or . . . as the card game unsnarkily says “Go Fish!” Permit your author this brief island return to talk about a shipwreck as a metaphor for what may be on our surface-search radar screens going forward.

-Marlow

Arbutus 1987
Courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida and Dale McDonald

Nearly 40 years ago, a small freighter called the Arbutus began to take on water during a storm about 30 miles west of Key West, Florida. The ship sank in 25 feet of water.

For many years after it went under, it was the only fishable wreck in the lower Keys that actually stuck out of the water with its rusted wheelhouse, half of which was out of the water. Gulls perched on the wreck’s rigging mast and watched the bait fish below.

Although that development no doubt was a rotten break for the owners, crew, and insurers of the Arbutus, it was another in a series of lucky breaks for Key West’s light-tackle fishermen. For them, the latest wreck meant another place to fish.

When the Arbutus settled on the bottom, the long, snaggle-toothed barracudas that inhabit the shallow, blue-green waters of the Florida’s Keys had another home.

There were nearly 100 shipwrecks back in the ‘70s within reachable distance of Key West’s light-tackle fishermen and guides. “Fishin’ for ‘cudas at the wrecks” was as standard a Key West activity as eating grits-n-grunts and key lime pie, hoisting a cold one at the original location of Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar, by then renamed Capt. Tony’s Saloon, chatting with treasure hunter Mel Fisher as he ran his still-not-successful treasure salvor business from a back-of-the-bar table at the Chart Room with Jimmy Buffet strumming his guitar nearby for free beer and tips.

It is still one of America’s great saltwater fishing experiences, fighting big barracudas in the Florida Keys until your arms beg for mercy.

Methinks in the aftermath of the coming stagflated recession, we’ll see land-based barracudas chasing investment opportunities in the multiple ship wreckage sites that’re sure to happen when the recession storm winds slam America’s shores.

Before they go fishing later, we’re seeing them now perched like the gulls on Arbutus’s rigging looking and evaluating their game fish.

Not that this will be easy for these fast-as-lighting, swooping, slashing, swimming bargain hunters. The lucky few who are successful will learn to appreciate how hard their work was while finally having the time to enjoy the fruits of their labors many years later. They’ll also toast the memories of the legions of other barracudas that were caught by the vagaries of too little, too much, too soon, too late.

That’s why it’s called fishing and not catching.

Barracuda off Key West 1978

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