Real Anglers

This landlubber couldn’t keep his eyes off the window. Staying at the historic Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach, California, I was enjoying a nice meal with a window seat to the bay when the behavior of the birds caught my attention and gave me quite a show. Seagulls and pelicans were hunting a school of fish that was working its way through the area, and their techniques couldn’t have varied more drastically.


First, let’s take the gull. Pure white with a black streak on top of the wings, sleek, and graceful, she will fly over the water no more than ten feet from the surface, her head cocked down, her intense eyes fixed past the sheen glare of the sun off the ocean’s surface at what lies just beneath. She half-cocks her wings as she soars, tilting her head to veer right or left the way a motorcycle racer leans into a turn. Suddenly she spots her prey. Now here’s the fun part.

At that very moment she will do what at first I thought resembled what a combat pilot would refer to as a “Split S.” Except where the combat fighter is trying to disengage from battle, for the gull, the battle is just beginning. The wings come out, the ailerons come down, and the bird’s velocity is slowed by her rocket climb straight into the sky a good five feet. When the stall gives out, gravity takes over. The head, which must contain the engine, tilts down, the wings cock totally back, and the bird falls head-first like a suicide bomber aimed at a battleship. On the way down she tilts her head left or right to make any last-second adjustments, never taking her eyes off her moving target until she plunges head-first into the water, vanishing for a second. Her splash is graceful enough to resemble an Olympic diver.

At the moment the bird resurfaces, the wings beat wildly and she takes whatever she’s caught back up to cruising altitude. In four days aboard the Queen Mary, I’ve yet to see her rewards, which leads me to a few conclusions. Either she swallows her fish underwater, the fish is minnow in size, or she’s just a very bad hunter. I’m sure it must be the first. From acquisition of target to eventual flight again, the whole process takes about 2.5 seconds. Talk about quick on the trigger.

Now if the gull is the Greg Louganis of the maritime community, then the pelican is the fat kid who does a cannon ball off the diving board. Don’t get me wrong. The pelican can too be very graceful. At any moment of the day one can be seen skimming the surface of the ocean, his wing tips tickling the water. But this grace is not the case with his hunting method.

The pelican sits on top of the water, minding his own business. Suddenly he gets an urge and takes to flight with its massive wings beating hard to lift his fat belly from the water. Once airborne, he beats his heavy wings harshly until he spots his target. Whereas the gull dives straight down, making her spectators marvel at her gracefulness, the pelican, seemingly out of boredom, decides to take a forty-five degree angle to the water. He keeps his wings half-out to the side as if he’s too lazy to pull them all the way in, then he plunges into the sea with a boulder’s splash.

At this point in the gull’s method, she would get right back out of the water as if a shark were after her, but not the pelican. He keeps his body afloat, his butt protruding up in the air while his head searches around underwater for a good five seconds. He then emerges victoriously, a gullet with at least one fish. His head points to the sky and the fish then slides right down his throat. It may take two or three gulps to clear the bulge from his neck, but he eventually swallows the fish whole. While dining on the sun deck one evening I watched one bird with the tail of a good twelve-inch fish sticking out of its mouth. It slapped the pelican in the face many times before falling victim.

I’ve never seen the gull emerge victorious, just as I’ve never seen the pelican come out of the water without a catch. The human angler would be proud to have the catch rate of the pelican. What it lacks in style, it makes up for in efficiency. If the bottom line is the object then the pelican wins hands down. A rot gut whiskey will get you drunker much faster than a fine wine. But in angling, the bottom line isn’t always the target. I must say that as a gentleman, I prefer the style of the gull over the sloppy nature of the pelican. Style does count for something. The gull does what it can with what it’s got and never gives up, holding its graceful head never in shame for its shortcomings. The pelican merely takes advantage of what God gave him, the whole time smiling over at the gull as if to say, “Top that!” So it is in my angling practices that I strive to adopt the stylistic approach of the gull. That is until I become hungry enough.