The first catch of the season is always an occasion for more than idle curiosity.
In our family it has assumed the status of ritual in an understated kind of a way; that it is to say, it is not stated at all, but rather goes some way to explaining the excitement and the numbers of us late-night talkers and tipplers who rose like sleep-walkers at 6am to greet the low tide and the high tidings, whatever they might be, of the sea.
"Putting the net out" is an indicator that we have tossed off the shackles of our city lives and been reclaimed by the hunter-gatherer mode that resides somewhere deep inside our collective consciousness.
Those of the whanau, kept from the annual gathering by work or other commitments and who will arrive later in the month invariably ask, "Have you put the net out yet?", and then demand the details, down to every last crab and stripped carcass, as if these were the critical harbingers, more urgent than for instance a long-range weather report, of the summer to come.
The net's bounty across the years provides hours of reminiscences - "remember when . . ."
- and an oral history of our occupation of the bay; in the first years we came here, back in the early '80s, the net would sag and drag with paddle crabs, a dozen or two at a time, and perhaps a kahawai or two; sometimes there'd be a dogfish and the odd flattie; occasionally a snapper and one or two other non-descript species that would nevertheless find themselves in the frying pan later that day and provide a feed, along with the tuatua gathered from underfoot.
But in truth, the catch has always more symbolic than substantial, especially in later years - and so it will be again this year, the scant evidence exaggerated and digitally enhanced by the younger members of the clan, the markers of "that summer" now a few bytes in a computer's memory or displayed as a screen-saver in high-rise offices of big-city law firms or merchant banks or future family photograph albums.
So it proved this time around: four paddle crabs, a sprat and the bare skeleton of some now unidentifiable species.
But it was what greeted our arrival at the net that will be noted in the family annals: 2009 will go down as the year of the stingray.
In that hazy dawn, the four-wheel-drives parked on the vast acreage of golden sand revealed by the receding waters, and with sundry members of the party already knee-deep in water, the sudden cry of "shark" electrified the assembled and sent them scrambling for the sand.
Out beyond the far end of the net two tell-tale dorsal fins tacked and glided and kept us transfixed until, as if satisfied with the attention garnered by their little sideshow, they drifted away.
We gathered, a little more hesitantly this time, for a further assault on the net, this time to be sent back by a "What's that" - a pointing arm revealing a flapping fin in the shallows.
Perhaps the sharks had come back.
But, no, closer inspection revealed a stingray, or two, lolling about in the warm shallows of the bay, sated probably, on the plentiful pipi and tuatua hereabouts.
The hunting party waited again before shuffling carefully into the knee-deep waters looking intently for the giveaway shadows gliding here and there around us.
Despite common mythology to the contrary, rays are not aggressive creatures.
Generally, they will avoid perceived threats and sting with their barbed tails only if cornered or stood on.
And the venom of the sting likewise has assumed exaggerated proportions - the untimely death of Aussie wildlife adventurer Steve Irwin nothwithstanding.
If you happen to get struck by one, you should rest and treat the wound as soon as possible with a hot liquid, water, tea, even urine - which goes some way to neutralising the poison - and in remote locations may be the only remedy available.
We now know this because around the time we were harvesting the first net of the summer, at Golden Bay beaches, one to the east and one to the west, two people suffered stingray attacks, and a modicum of medical advice was contained in the subsequent reports.
The waters of Golden Bay seem a little warmer than usual for this time of year, and perhaps it is this that has brought the stingrays into the shallows.
Or perhaps not.
But in future, when we gather and tell tales over the season's first catch, this will be known as the summer of the stingray.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor of the Otago Daily Times.
