Entering the water as a predator reminds you that our bodies are engineered for land. Even at that, they are engineered rather poorly. We dominate the biosphere’s hierarchy not so much because of what we can do physically, but because of how we have learned to do it. This capacity for learning – our abnormal amount of grey matter – lets us tame plants in neat little rows, shoot holes wild animals with explosively-charged pieces of metal, and drain the oceans of fish. The common denominator for each of these feats is the use of tools. As a species, we are really good at building things – shovels, guns, nets – to augment our weak but flexible bodies.
One of our first and most versatile tools is the spear: essentially a sharp piece of something attached to a long, rigid something else. For thousands of years this combination of long and sharp has advanced our reach and enhanced our force. Our pre-human ancestors used spears to fell mastodons. The Chinese perfected the art of using the spear as a weapon against other humans. Many groups of indigenous equatorial coast-dwellers still catch dinner every day with a spear in the water. 
I built my spear with a rusty three-inch nail I pulled out of my bungalow’s wall, a four-foot piece of gnarled tree branch and a roll of duct tape. With enough tape wrapped around the end, the tetanus-inflicting point smoothly tapers to the shaft, and I have an authentic, hand-made fish sticker.
With this five-minute hack job and a mask and snorkel, I enter the ocean for the first time not as a spectator but an active member of the ecosystem, if still an alien one.
Sunset Beach faces west, a short stretch of sand between two rocky promenades in a bend along the north shore of Ko Kraden, about ten miles of the west coast of Thailand, in the Andaman Sea. The sand is white and the water is a luscious shade of turquoise for roughly the first 300 feet. During low tide, a maze of sharp orange rocks covered in slimy plant matter emerge around the beach’s left corner, as you gaze out to sea. But when the tide comes in, these drowned stones become a feeding ground for thousands of brightly colored tropical fish ranging in size from little inch long clownfish to the (relatively) elephantine parrotfish, at almost two psychedelically colored feet from teeth to tail. With a water level wavering between three to six feet deep, it’s a perfect proving ground for the hungry amateur.
One of the difficulties with spear fishing is that fish are very good swimmers. While I pride myself on a certain natural aptitude for swimming, my bulky, jointed body doesn’t stand a chance in an agility contest with anything living here. If they sense an attack they can dart, weave, double-back or dive with the immediacy of an electrical pulse. And they are very good at sensing attacks. With protruding spherical eyes, fish have a near 360 degree field of vision. Water acts as a natural sound amplifier, carrying waves 4.3 times faster than the air, but even if it didn’t, a fish’s entire body acts as a microphone, (it’s roughly the same density as the water they’re swimming in – sound passes right through their body, vibrating the tiny, dense bones of the inner ear). And while humans can see and hear in the water, we certainly cannot smell. Fish detect chemical change by passing water over the tiny nostril-like holes on the front of their face, called nares; this “smelling” is one of the ways they search for food.
These attributes, carefully selected over millions of years of evolution, make fish very wary of foreigners. When my pale, gangly body floats by with a snorkel and nothing else, I look like a very ugly immigrant – one that couldn’t do much damage even if I tried – and the communal reaction is one of rather benign disinterest. The only time my presence warrants a reaction is when I make a move to try and reach out to touch a fish. However, when I enter the water with a rusty nail duct taped to a long piece of wood, and use this article as a forward appendage, a palpable sense of anxiety permeates through the shallows. The alien object with the sharp point instantly raises alarms in the aquatic community, and my presence is a planetary mass in their tiny satellite orbits. You can measure where the fish will be based on where I am. They circle in orbits just outside the reach of my stick, and constantly have one eye trained on me. Some curious ones will turn to stare straight at me, before deciding the best course of action is to dart under a rock. They are very good at keeping these immovable solid objects between themselves and the nail. I am constantly registering with frustration that the group of fish I was stalking – the ones that seemed to disappear thirty seconds ago – have been hanging out around my feet. As I’m rather encumbered by my mass, by the time I turn around they are already gone again. I will never out maneuver these guys. I have to outsmart them.
Which is how I’ve come to categorize three distinct techniques in the amateur spear hunter’s quiver.
  1. The One Handed Bum Rush: This is perhaps the least nuanced method, and the one I tried first, and most often. Holding the spear forward, with one arm partially extended, I locate a group of medium-sized fish, preferably densely packed and near a rock. The best way to rush is to wait for an incoming wave and to glide forward on it. This not only offers more propulsion than a human body could ever self-generate, it also looks much less conspicuous. Instead of a flapping noisy, attention calling motion, I simply let the wave push my stationary body until I get within range. At that point all pretense of secrecy is abandoned and I lash out with maximum effort at the middle of the group, hoping to pin one unlucky guy against the rock during their scattershot escape.
  1. The Two-Handed Concealed Guidance System: This is a more stalker-ish, predatory attack. The spear is held in the dominant right hand, which is extended as far back as possible, so that the spear point isn’t very far in front of my body, while left hand loosely holds the forward end of the stick. In theory, this protects the nail from view, making me a less menacing object as a whole. It also, with my arm fully cocked back, provides a great deal more torque, so that the subsequent spear thrust has much more force. Furthermore, the guiding left hand directs the spear so that it’s not so much a blind plunge as a quick sniper shot. Instead of blitzkrieging the fish before they know what’s happening, the key here is to try to be as inconspicuous as possible, until I am right on top of them and ready to unleash targeted death.
  1. The Cast Away: Adapted from Tom Hanks, this involves changing the game a little bit. Instead of being a water-borne predator, I use my considerable evolutionary advantage to amphibianize the battle. Instead of swimming through the shallows, I stand with my head bent forward. My feet are on solid ground (sand) and my mask-protected eyes are just below the surface – I transform into a satellite observer, looking down instead of across. Most importantly, I hold my spear completely out of the water, concealing all danger from the suspicious aquatic eyes. The key to this technique is rigid stillness. Walking around, kicking up dust and looking very unnatural, will just scare my prey away. Instead, I anchor down, and become just another part of the landscape. Eventually, the fish’s wariness will turn to curiosity and they will come check out these new pale, hairy rocks sticking out of the water. When that time comes, I strike downwards, splashing through the surface and hopefully not spearing my toes in the process.
There are major problems with each choice, (the first is too obvious, the second rips my palm apart and the third makes such a big splash when entering the water that everything is scared away) and I am sorry to report that in two hours of hunting, I went away trophy-less my first day.
It’s another matter completely to debate the morality of this practice – something I did at length, although I can assure the reader that I had every intent of eating my catch – and the discussion is a good one to have. But it’s impossible to debate the excitement, the plain old fun, of trying to catch a fish with nothing but a stick and your own wiles.  I never managed to do it, but I’m not going to stop trying.