Mangrove Blooms

We spent the night on the sea, off the coast, fishing from a small boat. My friend Paul was the fisherman, I the novice, but even he found it a profitless night. Each throw of the net dragged out only a measly catch of fish, some shrimps and crabs all cluttered in an assortment of man-made rubbish which the sea suspended in abundance. Most of the catch we threw back into the sea; they were too small or inedible. The garbage we piled in a corner of the boat to take it back to land from where it came. Too many large ships on the straits that night, their wake rocking the boat, making it difficult to cast the net.

It was not fish we were after but the wonderful feeling of the sea in the night, the sight of twinkling lights on the land far away and the ghostly shadows of the large ships that passed us. We had picked a night with a moon, but it seldom showed because of the low clouds. We smoked cigarettes, drank coffee from a flask and talked in whispers as people tend to do when they are out alone at sea.

As dawn approached we started the motor and headed towards land, pointing the boat to the mangrove coast that was still dark against the sky where we hoped to make one last attempt at the fish. The sea was flat and grey. The moon, free of the clouds now danced on the surface of the sea. Landward, slowly, the lightening dawn gave shape to the dark mangrove which silhouetted as trees along the watery coast. Then as my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see bright white and pink blossoms on the branches of the trees and as we grew nearer to them, even blue ones. The whole forest lining the coast was adorned with flowers. I had never seen the coast as I was seeing it.

I was steering the boat. Paul, facing me, had his back against what I was witnessing.

‘Look Paul’, I said, ‘the mangroves are in bloom’.

Paul turned around, took a quick look to where I was pointing then turned back, saying nothing.

As we neared the coast and the rows of mangrove trees that grew down from the land to the shallows, I gasped at what I saw. The flowers were plastic bags of all shapes and colours snared on the branches of the trees at high tide. Now they hung limp like neglected washing on a line on the branches of the mangrove trees all along the coast for as far as the eyes could see in the morning light.