Extract from ‘Around the World in (More Than) 80 Days’ by Mina Trafford, 2020. Originally published as a newspaper column, March 2013.
As I write this, I am reclining in the most comfortable chair of my life, on the balcony of my hotel as the last rays of sunlight cast the sky in gorgeous pinks and golds. I’m in Porto Branco, the largest town on the island of São Tomás, in the Papagaios Archipelago. I’d always intended to visit here, but never quite found the time. All I can say, is I’m glad I finally did.
Over the coming week, I’ll talk about the local cuisine, historical and cultural site of interest, some great walks I went on and more, but I want to open with the mystery that has swallowed up my time.
I was walking out of the sea on my second day and spotted an unusual rock. Picking it up it looked like a fossil. More specifically, it looked like a fish with a shell. Like a snail-fish. I am no expert though, so I went and found one, or as near as I could manage in my beach resort.
Tristão Mangual owns a cute blue-and-white-fronted shop just off the main square in Porto Branco selling geodes, crystals, fossils – if it’s pretty and came out of the ground, he had it. He’s a boisterous chap with a spark in his eye when I say ‘I found this weird fish-snail, what is it?’
‘That is an aldeão,’ he grins. ‘You’ve never heard of them?’
‘No, should I have?’
‘The aldeão is the most fascinating little fish. This fossil here is from the late Oligocene, but we still have them here and there. Do you dive?’ I tell him I do. ‘Well, then…’ He grabs a map of the island from the tourist information stand and circles a spot a little way down the coast and out to sea. ‘Find someone to take you out here, tell them you seek aldeão.’
‘They still exist? Are they really fish with shells?’
‘You’ll see, you’ll see,’ he smiles, and will say no more on the matter.
Now, I’m not one to sail to a random spot on the ocean on the advice of an oddly happy geologist, but I needed to know more and at the time didn’t know how to spell ‘aldeão’ to Google it. That’s how I found myself hiring a boat the next morning and travelling out to find what dwelt within the circle of mystery.
This wasn’t my first dive - you’ll recall from previous columns my misadventure with the over-friendly cleaner fish – but most of my dives have been on reefs, or the occasional wreck. This was my first visit to a seagrass meadow. What is a seagrass meadow, you ask? Don’t worry, so did I.
At its simplest, a seagrass meadow does what it says on the tin. Imagine a field of long grass, except underwater, and you’re pretty much on the money. They plants in them are actual grasses, albeit ones that recolonized the sea back in dinosaur times. You find them around many coasts around the world at depths of up to 50m. Beyond that there isn’t enough sunlight for the plants to thrive. In their shallower waters however, thrive is an understatement. My diving buddy, Rubinho, said they were the most diverse ecosystem in the whole archipelago, and he may well be right. I’ll talk more about the many weird creatures I saw in a later column – for now I want to focus on the aldeão.
Rubinho said ‘aldeão’ translates as villager, or townsperson, but when pressed as to why said to discover it for myself. Did all the locals get together to set up this mystery? And so, diving gear in tow I fall overboard and descend to the grassy plain below.
The boat is a few hundred metres out to sea and the water around 30m deep. Below the surface I see nothing but grass in all direction. Rubinho beckons for me to follow. After a while he stops and points out a fish. It’s about 15cm long and mostly green, with patches of orange and blue. Well camouflaged for sure. I take it this is an aldeão. Cautiously, we follow it into the grasses where it approaches a cluster of snail shells, each around the same size as the fish itself. Far too small to fit inside.
