Plage de l’Escalet near St. Tropez – New Discoveries

Aguillette, Needlefish, or Garfish

A few weeks ago, I went to visit the small town of St. Tropez. The town itself is rich and full of pomp. Huge yachts, fancy cars, lots of celebrities all about, and expensive designer shops. Not exactly my kind of place.

The town was nice enough, I enjoyed to architecture and the setting quite a bit. However, the highlight was the nearby beach of l’Escalet. What a jewel. Clear water, beautiful sands, and a healthy ecosystem as far as I could tell.

I have never seen as many fish anywhere in the Mediterranean as I saw there. Huge schools of sardines and saupe were everywhere, and at times, I could hardly fit even a small part of the schools into the view of my wide angle. I took a bunch of video, and condensed it down to around four minutes.

While editing the video, I realized I had over ten solid minutes of footage of huge schools of fish. School after school passed my angle of view, and it was honestly hard to cut it down.The end result is below. I just want to say that I accidentally grabbed my chipped wide angle dome on the way out the door (I bought another one after I chipped my first one, and kept it for spare parts). It is fine for photos – it rarely ever shows, but for video, it shows almost all the time. I also had something on my lens on the interior of my camera, but once I hit the water, there was nothing to be done about it. Sorry for that and I hope you can enjoy the vid just the same!

Sole (flounder) and a grande vive (greater weever)

To my absolute delight, I finally got close to a bunch of species that I had either very rarely seen from a distance, or never even knew existed in my area. These included the aguillette (needlefish, or garfish), rombou, petite sole jaune (both are varieties of flounders), grande vive (greater weever), and what I think is a dragonnet, but I have not been able to get a positive identification on it yet.

I got some decent photos of all of them, and then immediately began researching my new discoveries online the second I arrived at home. It turns out that the vive (or weever), has a vicious poisonous sting that can cause intensive pain for up to two weeks. It has dorsal fins with spines that if touched, will inject their venom and make the aggressor wish they had never gone near.

I also learned that the aguillette (or needlefish) has been known to be attracted to flashy objects, sometime propelling themselves towards the object while airborne. In other countries, these fish are a huge danger to fishermen while fishing at night. They will occasionally hurl themselves out of the water towards the light source, and stick their shark points into whatever they hit, including people. Their sharp beaks can pierce arteries, organs, and flesh. I even read one report of a young man in the Mediterranean who was pierced through his nose and out the side of his cheek. A little bit of surgery later, and he was good as new.

However, such attacks are rare in this area. But this leads me to a huge question; why do I always seem to learn these types of things AFTER I go chasing after something with my camera?

As always, enjoy the photos!

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