Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 392 is a conversation with Key West waterman Cole Harrison, who chased the South Pacific until he was living in Fiji. He explains how he went from guiding spearfishing and whale swims in Tonga to crossing roughly 2,500 miles of open Pacific by sailboat from Tahiti to Fiji, how he carries the spearfishing skills he learned as a Key West kid into waters full of dogtooth tuna and yellowfin, and what it actually takes to clear a boat into Fiji and be welcomed into a village.
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Cole Harrison is a waterman from Key West, Florida, who fell in love with the South Pacific and built a life in Fiji. He goes by triple-c dot Cole on Instagram, started out guiding spearfishing and whale swims in Tonga, and now spends his time spearfishing, surfing, and fishing on Fiji's west coast.
Cole's path ran from Key West to Tonga, where he worked as a spearfishing and whale swim guide, back to Key West, and then on to Fiji after a chance meeting opened the door. A big part of the journey was a sailboat passage of roughly 2,500 miles across the open Pacific from Tahiti to Fiji.
Cole crossed over 2,000 miles of open ocean, roughly 2,500 miles from Tahiti to Fiji, on a sailboat, a passage he made with two crewmates he had known for less than a year. He describes it as a blast despite the scale, part of a string of long passages crossing large bodies of water in the South Pacific.
Cole spearfishes for South Pacific species he never encountered in Florida, including the dogtooth tuna, a hard-fighting fish that does not exist in the Keys, along with an excellent yellowfin tuna bite. He brings the spearfishing techniques he learned growing up in Key West and applies them to these new fisheries.
Cole explains the realities of clearing in: sailors prepare for it by flying the Q flag, and there are import duties, with a tax he cites of around twenty percent or more on a boat. To be welcomed into a village you perform a sevusevu, a traditional offering of kava root, which the village crushes, grinds, mixes with water, and drinks together.
Cole describes a waterman's life on Fiji's west coast: surfing breaks when he can get out, spearfishing and fishing, and chasing the best yellowfin tuna bite he has seen there. He notes it can be hard to get out on the water, but once you are plugged in it is a rich, fun place to live the ocean life he chased from Key West.
My friend Jake Perry told me about Cole, and the moment I heard the setup I was hooked: what in the world is a Key West conch doing in Fiji? I looked him up and found a waterman doing genuinely amazing things on the other side of the planet. Fiji is a place I have always wanted to go, full of fish we do not have, like the dogtooth tuna. I wanted to hear how Cole got there and how he is fishing it. Press play in the YouTube player above.
Cole's route is a story in itself: from Key West to Tonga, where he guided spearfishing and whale swims, back home, and then on to Fiji after a chance meeting opened a door. He traces how a love of the South Pacific, sparked working for a spearfishing operation, pulled him farther and farther from Florida. It is the kind of follow-your-passion path a lot of listeners daydream about. Hear how it actually unfolded in the episode.
Cole crossed roughly 2,500 miles of open ocean from Tahiti to Fiji on a sailboat with two guys he had known less than a year, and he describes it as a blast. He gets into the realities of long passages, why boats hate sitting idle, and what those weeks at sea actually feel like. For a fisherman like me, used to motherships, the sailing side is a whole different world. Listen to him describe the crossing in the player above.
This is the part I most wanted to hear. Cole takes the spearfishing skills he learned as a Key West kid and applies them to South Pacific fish we simply do not have, especially the dogtooth tuna, plus the best yellowfin bite he has seen. He explains how the techniques translate and where they have to change for new water. Press play to hear how he hunts these fish.
Cole walks through the practical and the cultural side of arriving by boat: flying the Q flag, the import duties and the tax on a sailboat, and the sevusevu, a traditional offering of kava root that a village crushes, mixes with water, and drinks together to welcome you. It is a reminder that living somewhere like Fiji is about respect and relationship, not just logistics. Listen to that section in the episode.
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The day after this one, what stuck with me was how completely Cole committed. He did not visit the South Pacific; he sailed 2,500 miles and made a life there, carrying the skills he learned as a kid into water most of us will never see.
Fiji has been on my list forever, and talking to Cole moved it up. If you have ever wondered what it actually takes to chase the ocean to the other side of the world, listen to the whole thing.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Cole Harrison is a Key West waterman who fell in love with the South Pacific and built a life in Fiji, where he goes by triple-c dot Cole on Instagram. He started out guiding spearfishing and whale swims in Tonga, crossed roughly 2,500 miles of open Pacific by sailboat from Tahiti to Fiji, and now spends his days surfing, fishing, and spearfishing the west coast of Fiji, applying the techniques he learned growing up in the Florida Keys to species like dogtooth and yellowfin tuna.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 392 — Cole Harrison — Sailing 2,500 Miles From Tahiti to Fiji.
Cole Harrison: I've picked up two new sports since I've been here. I started kiteboarding, and I've really been able to dial in on my surfing. I've surfed before, but I was far from good, and I've been able to have my best session last week, so I'm really riding high off that — just catching wave after wave, and that felt good. And then, yeah, they have the spearfishing, the fishing — the yellowfin tuna bite is the best tuna bite I've seen here. Caught a wahoo, caught a marlin here. It can be hard to get out on the water, but once you get plugged in, it's fun to get out to the surf breaks. My name is Cole Harrison, and this is the Tom Rowland podcast.
Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody, welcome to the show today. Man, got a great one — we're gonna venture to a different part of the world and find out what in the world is a Key West conch doing in Fiji, and that's exactly what we're gonna find out. We're gonna catch up with Cole Harrison. He's on Instagram — spelled out, C-C-C, Triple C, dot Cole. He's got a fantastic Instagram; that's where I found out about him. My friend Jake Perry told me about him, and I looked him up, and sure enough, man, he's doing some really amazing stuff, and we're gonna find out about that right away.
But before we get there, we need to go over a couple of things. We have always had a dedicated email address so that I could communicate with you and you could communicate with me, and that's worked out pretty well, but I think I found a better way to do that. You can text me at (305) 930-7346. That's (305) 930-7346, and what that will do is open up a conversation between you and me. We can actually talk about things — that's a little bit better than an email, and it's definitely better than DMs. I cannot keep up with the DMs; mostly it's spam in my social accounts, and I feel bad because a lot of people send me a DM, and it just doesn't get answered. So I would like to talk to you, I'd like to keep up with you, I'd like to get to know you better. The text is going to be the best way — it's not going to get any spam, and it is really me. That's not my cell phone, but it is a way that you can text me and I will text you back, and you can give me show suggestions, guest suggestions, ask questions about the show, whatever you like to do. Now, we'll still have the dedicated email address if you prefer that route, podcast@saltwaterexperience.com. Send me a text, send me an email, I'd love to hear from you. I really value your suggestions on guests — we've taken a ton of those and actually tracked those people down, and some of our best shows have come from suggestions. So I invite you to send the text, let me know what you think or who you think should be on the show, and we'll see if we can do it.
Now we're gonna get on to our show with Cole Harrison. As I said, Cole Harrison is from Key West. He found his way to Tonga, way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and he really liked it. He made his way back to Key West, was spending some time there, had a chance meeting with someone, and that turned into a way for him to go to Fiji. The story is really cool, and the things he's doing and the fish he's catching and spearfishing for over there are really cool. Fiji is a place I've always wanted to go — it's definitely on my bucket list, a drop-dead gorgeous place. It has fish we don't have, like the dogtooth tuna, and we're gonna talk about the dogtooth tuna and how Cole is spearfishing for these fish, using the things he learned as a kid in Key West and taking them over into the Pacific Ocean. So without any further ado, here we go with Cole Harrison. Alright, what's up, Cole? How are you?
Cole Harrison: Oh, I'm doing well. Just starting off my day here in beautiful Fiji, on the West Coast.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I appreciate you doing this at this time. It's 3 o'clock on the East Coast, so that means it's 7 or 8 in the morning your time, right?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, we're actually a day ahead of you, so living in the future. It's Saturday here, 7 or 9 AM at this point.
Tom Rowland: I gotcha. So you're in Fiji, and you're a Key West waterman — a Key West kid ends up in Fiji. How does that happen?
Cole Harrison: I fell in love with the South Pacific working in Tonga as a spearfishing guide and whale-swim guide for Rob Torelli. He gave me an opportunity when I was a young, 24-year-old, in-water guide and boat captain — excuse the two-stroke outboard going by, I'm in the marina right now. To be able to see all these different fish — I know all the fish back home, but to jump in the ocean and not have a clue what anything is was mind-boggling. It was like another planet. I did two seasons there, and then I met a seaplane pilot in Key West two years ago. And he's like, 'I have a sailboat sitting in Tahiti ready to go.' I was a hundred percent in once I heard that and tried to do everything I could to make it happen, and it actually went as planned — go figure.
Tom Rowland: Wow. And why did he have a sailboat just sitting in Tahiti, and what brought him to Key West?
Cole Harrison: He's a spearfisher himself. He bought the boat in the U.S. Virgin Islands and sailed it through the Panama Canal, to the Galapagos, then crossed the Pacific and arrived all the way in French Polynesia. It was a break to get back home — they have a sailing season, so after the season they flew back and the boat just sat there on a mooring for a year, and boats don't like that. So he was definitely keen to get back and get sailing, especially before he had his baby girl. This is Adam Schwitz, by the way, and he was flying seaplanes to the Dry Tortugas down in Key West, just looking for a way to spear, and that's how we met. I sailed across 2,500 miles with two guys I hadn't really known for a year, and we had a blast.
Tom Rowland: I bet. So did you sail in Key West? What do you know about sailing?
Cole Harrison: I did the Key West Sailing Camp when I was a kid, sailing in Garrison Bight — the little square boats, and then eventually the Sunfish and the Laser. But my parents actually sailed into Key West in '79 on a 38-foot sailboat that they built in the mountains of Costa Rica in 1970. They lived on that sailboat for ten years, so I kind of had it in my blood, I guess. But this was the first passage I'd made crossing large bodies of water.
Tom Rowland: Did it go smoothly?
Cole Harrison: It really did — no one got hurt. My left foot really just got the brunt of everything, stubbing my toes and toenails. Besides that, no one got hurt, and we caught some amazing fish. Nothing broke on the boat, and we actually stuck to the original game plan and where we were going.
Tom Rowland: So these guys you hooked up with — you didn't know them before this?
Cole Harrison: I met Adam Schwitz at a bar on the beach there in the U.S. Had a few beers, started talking, and then — he made the trip from Tahiti to Fiji with me; he's the captain, it's his sailboat. And then we needed a third guy, so I brought in Alex Thomas, who my mom had been wanting me to link up with since I was like 21. I never actually met him until I thought, maybe he's keen, and I asked him, and he was just like me — a hundred percent from the get-go. We never looked back, just charged it.
Tom Rowland: Oh, man — over 2,000 miles from Tahiti to Fiji. So how long does that take?
Cole Harrison: We had a timeline — Adam had to get back to his pregnant wife and make his anniversary, and Alex was taking time off work, so he had to get back. I kind of saw the opportunity to watch the sailboat, because boats don't like to sit, they need someone to watch them. I had a long, hard talk with my mate Chris Mendola at Fara-Al Charters, who I was working with at the time, and gave him as much of a heads-up as possible — I think I told him five months in advance that I probably wasn't gonna be returning, and tried to train up the next guy. It worked out really well. I'm lucky — Chris understood completely where I was coming from, why you go, why you go explore. He's been to Tonga, so he knows how special the South Pacific is.
Tom Rowland: That's super cool. So you get there, and at that point you just find a way to make a living. Did you know anything about Fiji, or how you were gonna make a living, or any plans at all, or did you just kind of figure it out?
Cole Harrison: I just tried to figure it out. I knew nothing of Fiji — I'd been to Tonga three times at this point, but Fiji I knew nothing about. We sail in, and Adam leaves two days after, and Alex leaves the next day. So after three days these guys who'd been staying with me are just gone, and now I'm by myself on a sailboat in the marina. But crazy enough, the first person we met was one of the old owners of the boat we were on — that bought the boat in South Africa. Sailing yacht heritage, built in South Africa. We met, I think, the third owner, who was the first one to actually go sailing on it and cross the Atlantic with his partner at the time. I ended up meeting these two people — one of their families owns the marina where we're staying, and the other owns Baobab Marine, one of the biggest marine shops here in Fiji. So I was very well connected right there. I'm not working over here in the traditional sense, but I'm working overseas trying to sell my photos, do some videos, just trying to hustle any way I can — social media kind of helps, sold some stock photos today, try to wheel and deal in that. Just trying to figure it out as I go.
Tom Rowland: We've had so many people on this podcast who've done something similar in all these different walks of life — some sailboat people, one person I talk about often is this homemade wanderlust woman who figured out how to become a professional backpacker, hiked the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, started making YouTube videos and built a whole community, got the Patreon thing going. Same with the SV Delos people, Sailing Sophisticated Lady, Rick Moore — he was on the show. It really is a viable way to make a living. It seems like you could do the same thing — you're in the coolest place doing the coolest things, people would want to see that.
Cole Harrison: Yeah, I try my best to share it. There's a lot that goes into it, and being in an amazing place like this, sometimes it's hard to be behind your computer editing videos — it kind of gets stored up on the hard drive, and unloading it can be difficult at times. But it's very possible — I've seen some spearfishers starting to tap into it. I had one video go viral, which kind of jump-started my YouTube channel, and I saw the potential with that, so I try to adapt. And this is my first podcast, so thank you for having me — my first Zoom call, even. Jeez.
Tom Rowland: There you go, man, you're on it now. Well, it looks like the weather is perfect — the leaves of the trees behind you are barely even moving. Is that because you're in shelter, or is it just calm there?
Cole Harrison: We're on the West Coast here — this is Vunda Marina, and this is the only place you can take out catamarans, and they have cyclone pits. We're just entering cyclone season, so this is the most cyclone-safe marina for sailboats. They can either take you out of the water and put your keel down into a cyclone pit that they dig out, so it's not on stilts. I'm in the water, so I'm putting my stern chains, took my anchor off, and put my chain on the center buoy. This is the West Coast, so it's kind of like the leeward side of the trade winds — generally pretty calm here, and just to the south you've got all the surf breaks, about 15 miles.
Tom Rowland: I'm sure you've been keeping up with it, but back home, particularly Louisiana this year, there have been a lot of hurricanes, a lot of storm activity — we even had one come right over Key West, wasn't a hurricane, was a tropical storm, but the weather's been really bad. So growing up in Key West and being familiar with hurricanes, do you see cultural differences with people who live in Fiji with cyclones? Is the preparation similar?
Cole Harrison: It's different, but very similar in most aspects. There are professionals, there are experts, they like to call everything, but they don't have the crazy news media to hype it up — you're lucky if there's one TV on at the bar. The most useful thing I use is my Windy app, where you can zoom out and actually see all the weather patterns, see how things are circulating, and basically I'm just looking for spinning formations forming off Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. I was fortunate enough to have a cyclone form on top of me — I flew in the day before the cyclone hit Fiji, it formed on me in the Solomons, and I flew into it and rode it out here. It was a category five — Cyclone Harold, last year — and we rode that out.
Tom Rowland: Would that be like a category-five hurricane — is the scale kind of similar?
Cole Harrison: Yeah. I've been in every hurricane that's hit Key West since I've been alive, so I get it, you have to respect them. Some people didn't really respect the last hurricane because it was right as the lockdown started — I was locked down in my town, couldn't even get out if I wanted to, they weren't letting people in or out of the airport. It was a wild ride, but at the same time they kind of slept on the hurricane, and the south side got hammered in a few spots, just because people's minds were on other things.
Tom Rowland: That's interesting — on an island out in the middle of the Pacific like that, how did they handle the coronavirus? Did they not allow anyone in or out?
Cole Harrison: Borders got closed, then they were doing repatriation flights, people flying home to their origins. I was stuck in the area with the first cases, so they shut that whole province down — no one in, no one out. They were arresting police officers who crossed the border; they were not messing around.
Tom Rowland: Did you get it?
Cole Harrison: No — canceled, no. Last time I checked we had up to 18 cases. They just locked it down and put up a strict curfew, and they were arresting a hundred people a night — didn't matter if you were a police officer or just walking home late, they'd throw you in jail for breaking curfew. I'm very proud of how they handled it, because there hasn't been much crime, and there's still a curfew in effect. I think people feel safe, and they really just isolated it. Now there is tourism allowed, but you have to do a mandatory fourteen-day quarantine in a hotel that they pick, and they assign military to watch over people — not in a bad way, apparently it's not that bad, you can go on walks, you have food, you're at a resort but quarantined until you get another test. I think we're still well under fifty cases.
Tom Rowland: Wow. So fifty cases in the area you're talking about — what's the population there?
Cole Harrison: There's just under a million people here in Fiji, and the most cases we got up to was twenty-six, and most of those were cured by the time — there might not be any active cases right now.
Tom Rowland: Seems like the ultimate bubble — like they're putting athletes in a bubble where you're just with your team and can't go out, they contain everything, and hopefully they can have a healthy team. But that's the ultimate bubble — you're out in the middle of the ocean.
Cole Harrison: They call it the bula bubble. That's what you say to people here in Fiji — you see someone, you say 'bula,' and that means you're wishing them life and happiness. So the culture is unreal — you don't walk past someone in the street without saying 'bula' or 'yadra,' which means morning. The culture is really, really incredible here, and it's been interesting meeting all these incredible people who are normally busy — people who are normally up to their necks in tourists now really don't have much to do, so you're catching up with all these eccentric people out at the surf breaks or sneaking out fishing with them. It's been a really unique experience, because I don't know if I'd enjoy Fiji as much if there were a ton of tourists running around and crowded surf breaks — I wouldn't be able to learn, I'd be nervous.
There's a sailboat going by, family of six, sailing — give them a follow, they're incredible, a lot of little kids out there surfing and kiteboarding together. They came in through what's called the Blue Lane — I believe they're from New Zealand. Sailors actually have something prepared for this, it's called the Q flag, and you quarantine — this isn't anything new for sailors, you fly the Q flag, you wait, someone checks you out to make sure you're not sick or bringing anything in. Now there are people stuck here who can't run from the cyclones — I think 70-something sailboats came in, and some of them want to go back to New Zealand for cyclone season, but New Zealand's being very picky about who they let in, mostly superyachts or someone who can contribute to their economy. I think it's like sixty thousand dollars or something like that if you're doing yard work or you need to buy something, or if you sell your sailboat they'll tax you 20% or more if it's imported. It's wild times — I understand where New Zealand's coming from, they have the ultimate bubble down there, and Fiji basically follows New Zealand's lead on these decisions.
Tom Rowland: So, judging by your Instagram — Jake Perry told me you were doing some really cool stuff, so I started following you a while back, we made contact on Instagram, and it's really good. It's spelled C-C-C, Triple C, dot Cole — that's his Instagram if you want to check it out. The pictures and underwater photography on there are incredible — the underwater looks like above water, the water is so clear. Is it always like that?
Cole Harrison: That's kind of the allure of the South Pacific — you have Bahamas-clear water, and then the South Pacific where it can go up to close to 200 feet of visibility. It's rare — we're coming up on rainy season, so as it rains you get runoff from the hills that can cloud the water up. It's not always like that, but there are certainly magical days out here where it all comes together. The further out you go, the more remote, the better — I actually have a big trip coming up, leaving Wednesday your time, heading up north to Savusavu with some local spearfishers. We're gonna spend two weeks up there hunting some big Spanish mackerel and some dogtooth tuna.
Tom Rowland: That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about — that fish, the dogtooth tuna, has to be one of the most badass fish in the ocean. I'd like to hear your perspective, coming from Key West blackfin, maybe an occasional yellowfin. Tell me about the dogtooth tuna.
Cole Harrison: They're an incredible fish — you've got to be in the right spot at the right time with the right current. Over in Tonga, where I was introduced to them, it was really something else. You see them sometimes swimming in a daisy chain, in a line, and you just see these white frosted tips first — they're gray, and then you see this white little dot moving. They're really not shy, they don't have predators in the water besides spearfishermen. I was fortunate to jump right into a guiding role, and my first charter in the South Pacific was with an all-star crew, so I learned a lot of things really fast. You have to have the right gear — I'm shooting all cable, straight line, no bungee, and you need the right float or they'll take your gear and destroy it. The best technique is to have your buddy actually holding onto the line, so right as you put the spear in, you're putting as much tension on as possible, and then you just have to let go, because it's the strongest fish in the ocean I've tangled with. I'm sure they run like a yellowfin tuna, but they'll also swim you into a cave like a grouper — Chris Mendola's first dogtooth tuna in Tonga, he didn't grab the float line, and a small fish, maybe a twenty-pounder, swam into a hole about this big, a hundred feet down, and there was only one rock, and he found that one rock.
Tom Rowland: That's crazy — I haven't heard that about the dogtooth tuna. I had Cameron Kirkconnell on the show, he's shot those things before, but he didn't tell me they ran into rocks like that.
Cole Harrison: Oh yeah, that's the first thing they'll try to do, try to scrape you off.
Tom Rowland: So what depth are you shooting them?
Cole Harrison: If done properly, you can get them up thirty feet, maybe even higher. They catch them two hundred meters down — they're like a submarine, they can go any depth, they're living on pinnacles where waves are breaking on the reef, and then there's just a wall, and they live on that wall. You don't really know everything — some people have it dialed in, but it's part of the chase, part of the hunt, and you're fortunate to get some really quality fish. Adam got the fish of our trip, which was about a hundred pounds — I took the photos of that on our ten-foot dinghy, our first day in the Koro Sea. That fish followed Alex up — he was swimming up and the fish just followed him, curious, and came up.
Tom Rowland: So with all these new fish, when you jump into an ocean and see new fish — I don't have a lot of experience with that. I went to Australia, and every fish I caught there, except for the cobia, was something I'd never fished for before. Like the permit was a little different, and there were fish that were even called something different — but I'd say, oh, that's kind of like the barramundi, I thought it was kind of like a snook, and they had that Spanish mackerel you're talking about, which was more like a wahoo really. Are you seeing similarities across all these fish?
Cole Harrison: There is, for sure. You have the trevally, which has a similar anatomy to Jack Crevalle, they just don't get as big — these are just supersized. I caught my first tarpon out here in the bay, right outside the marina — they have tarpon here.
Tom Rowland: Is it a tarpon just like we have?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, very similar, very small differences.
Tom Rowland: How big did it get? The ones in Australia were called oxeye herring, and they were tiny, like baby tarpon, about two feet long — but the difference was you could get into a school and catch them one after another, they never spooked, whereas with baby tarpon here you catch one or two and it's over. These things in Australia kept biting and biting, I'd never seen anything like it, but they didn't get much bigger than what we were catching. And then I saw you had a milkfish, it looked like a milkfish — what do they do with a milkfish, is that one you spear or catch?
Cole Harrison: That was my thirtieth birthday, nasty conditions, the water was milky, we were in a spot where we've gotten over forty-pound walu before — they call the Spanish mackerel a walu here, it's our king mackerel, exact same anatomy, maybe a little taller and fatter, with tiger stripes, and it is the most delicious fish. I know mackerel turns some people off, but it's the whitest, has nice fat on it, and it's pink — sashimi-wise and cooking-wise, I'd say it's one of my top five favorite fish, hands down. But back to the milkfish — it was just a reaction shot, I thought it was a walu, saw the shape, reached out, and almost fouled my gun. I've never fought harder than that, threw it on board, and then realized, no, it's my biggest mullet ever. It had a strainer in its gills, sand in its gills, so it's eating sand, probably like a mullet, really crazy anatomy — we gave that fish away to a big Fijian family, because no fish goes to waste here in Fiji, Tonga, or anywhere in the South Pacific, even if they don't feel like dealing with the scraps, it goes to the animals, or they know how to cook it.
Tom Rowland: It's interesting — you said the walu made your top five list. Now that you've spent all this time in the South Pacific, what would your top five be? Any Key West fish make it in there?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, absolutely — my family's favorite eating fish is the mutton snapper. There's snapper all over the world, similar anatomy, you find those red snappers worldwide and they're generally really good to eat. Then you have the black grouper, which is basically the same as the coral trout, just a different color — that's another one. Then you have the walu, wahoo, and the last spot probably changes weekly.
Tom Rowland: Are the dogtooth good?
Cole Harrison: Oh yeah — the dogtooth is actually part of the mackerel family, not actually a tuna. Cam Kirkconnell likes to mess with me, calling them bonito. They have really nice, beautiful pink meat — not red like tuna, not white like wahoo, it's pink. Really good cooked, tastes like chicken if you overcook it, and if you eat it raw, I like to let it sit a day in the fridge and then it just melts in your mouth, really good sashimi.
Tom Rowland: Really — one day in the refrigerator and it's perfect?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, it can be a little chewy if you eat it the day of, but if you wait a day, something happens and the texture just changes.
Tom Rowland: That's awesome — man, you're doing so much cool stuff over there. Fiji looks like paradise, mountains, waterfalls, rivers, surf breaks — what does it not have?
Cole Harrison: It's a water sport mecca, really. I've picked up two new sports since I've been here — I started kiteboarding, and really been able to dial in my surfing, had my best session last week. And they have the spearfishing, the fishing — the yellowfin tuna bite is the best I've seen here, caught a wahoo, caught a marlin here. It can be hard to get out on the water, but once you get plugged in, it's fun to get out to the surf breaks.
Tom Rowland: So when you say it's hard to get out on the water, are you finding your way in with this group going on the two-week spearfishing trip next week — is that a commercial deal, like charter captains here in the Keys?
Cole Harrison: One of my friends, Jesse Lee, is a PG Airways pilot who just likes spearfishing, so we go out and have a good time, get fish for us to eat. And then there's my friend Dan Gray, up north, who lives in Vanua Levu — he does commercial spearfishing along with other ventures, he's a charter captain, dive-instructor type guy, and he'll charter his boat and sell his fish, vacuum-seal it and do it all properly. Nothing goes to waste here in Fiji if you do it right, seal it, freeze it, and ice it. When we go up there we're going to be crossing some big fish, and generally you have to do a sevusevu, an offering to the village — they make you bring a kava root, which they crush up, grind, mix in water, and drink. It has a relaxing effect, makes your mouth go numb, makes you a little wobbly. That's one of the things we can do, give fish to the villages, and it makes their day, because a lot of incomes have stopped here, so most people have turned to farming and fishing.
Tom Rowland: And before, it was mostly tourism, set up kind of like Key West?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, mass tourism was their operation — they probably have 200,000 people in the hospitality industry here, and probably over half of them lost their jobs during this COVID thing. All these resorts are all shut down.
Tom Rowland: So what's the vibe surrounding that? In the U.S. there are a lot of bailouts going on, but in other places like the Bahamas, friends with houses there say it's a certainly different vibe, no bailouts. What's Fiji like?
Cole Harrison: They're certainly doing a struggle — there are going to be resorts that fail, the strong will survive, I guess. No one's gonna starve in Fiji though, that's a beautiful thing — there's clean water, no shortage of food, so no one's starving. It's just these people who built multimillion, possibly billion-dollar resorts — they're gonna be hurting for quite some time unless they have the financial backing to keep running for another five years while, hopefully, tourism picks up. Who knows what the future is.
Tom Rowland: I'll tell you, the closest I've made it to where you are is Christmas Island, and Australia, really — that's my experience with that part of the world. I found it unbelievable, I just loved it — the red crabs were so thick. I was training for a marathon and went running and didn't know what was going on, but the crazy thing is those crabs will move out of your way if you run, but they don't move much if you just walk, and they don't get out of the cars' way. The guides thought it was hilarious to smash them, but I guess they get tired of it after a while. I saw them the first time, took my two boys there the second time and told them how awesome it'd be, and we didn't see one — missed the crabs that time. I went the first time with a whole group from Key West, Fitz Coker and John Dickinson and a couple others — that was awesome. I've always looked at Fiji and Bora Bora, those places are just so beautiful — Fiji seems like Hawaii almost, with the mountains and rivers, it just looks like paradise.
Cole Harrison: It has that lure around it — I don't know where it stemmed from, but even the name is just kind of cool in itself. I don't think it's ever really what you expect until you get here. I recommend, if anyone wants to come here, give yourself some time, because it's so big — explore around a little bit. My favorite place, where I spent my birthday, was up in Buca Bay — very quiet, very beautiful, very fishy area, you can kite surf there, really relax. And if you go down to the Coral Coast, you have Beach House, which has that backpacker vibe, some parties going on, you can surf, paddle surf, kiteboard, go offshore fishing — my first thirty minutes there, the owner threw me on a fishing boat at noon and we caught sixteen yellowfin tuna up to a hundred pounds. The fishing can be unreal. And once you start going to the remote islands, it only gets a little trickier getting there, but that's where you really get to see the real Fiji, the bula spirit, and how pure some of these places still are.
Tom Rowland: So how does the Key West pedigree hold up in your spearfishing and above-the-water fishing, being on a boat with people who are fishing all the time?
Cole Harrison: It helps to have a background, for sure — it was my profession for five years to put people on fish and catch fish, so I consider myself kind of a fishing coach. It helps that I travel with my own gear — I brought one spear gun and two fishing rods, my Esky rod and my custom Azores lures, so I come with gear, and it always helps to have one stick where you can catch anything. It's like fishing anywhere, you just try to learn from each other — I never go in trying to run the show, just talk with the captains and try to figure things out, see how they do things. There's a method they have — these guys can spot birds like no other and find the tuna with no radar, no GPS, no bottom finder. You just go back to basics in most cases, go along for the ride, and try to figure it out.
Tom Rowland: It's interesting when you go to these different places, fish with different people, and see what they do — very effective, but often very different — and you can take those little things back to Key West. Now, you went to Tonga and then back to Key West after a while, right?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, I worked as a guide there, came back to Key West, worked a season, and talked my friends from Key West into following me out to Tonga — Chris Mendola came, and then Josh Hoogerhyde followed as well, both fishing guides. They took the leap of faith and we went out there — Chris came out for about three weeks just to make sure to get a weather window, and it's nothing like they'd really seen before, we still talk about that trip. Chris is dying to get out here to Fiji — once you see the South Pacific, it really holds onto you, getting to see that live coral, places that are just pristine. It's getting less and less now, so this kind of feels like the last frontier, really.
Tom Rowland: I can see that — and you've got this underlying theme in your Instagram and YouTube of documenting and telling that story. Is that something you're working on?
Cole Harrison: Yeah — it's interesting for me because I'm a fisherman, I harvest fish, and at the same time I want to protect fish, so I think there's a way to do it sustainably. That's really the direction I want to move into — just because you can take the fish doesn't mean you necessarily should; take what you need, a few fish, and leave the rest for another day. Try to respect the ocean, teach people not to litter or throw plastic — you can yell at people on social media, but that doesn't always come off well. The best thing you can do is try to live by it and talk to people face to face — like walking by a shop and seeing someone throw a plastic bottle out, grabbing the bottle and saying, come on, let's talk through what the issues really are. There's this underlying issue — the older fishermen say it's not as good as it used to be, the waters are getting hotter, there's more algae, coral bleaching — it's the same conversation we're having in Key West about mainland runoff. We all have the same common issue from Australia to New Zealand to Florida, and we just need to do a better job taking care of our waters if we want future generations to enjoy it. That's where I'm happiest, so I'd hate to see it get to a bad shape.
Tom Rowland: It must change your perspective to go to these last-frontier places and then come from a place like Key West, which is still really good, but fast-forward Fiji a hundred years and maybe it's in the same condition Key West is today. Has that changed your perspective, seeing these pristine areas?
Cole Harrison: Yeah — you hear the stories in Key West from the older captains, and I'll start by saying fishing here doesn't always come easy, and the fishery we have in Key West is unreal, so please don't take that for granted. I don't understand how our fishery continues to produce with the pressure we have, compared to the South Pacific, where some spots get cleaned up and don't come back and don't reproduce. I think the Keys are kind of at a fork in the road — we're right on the highway, so we get this rejuvenation of fish and lobsters from the Gulf of Mexico and through the Atlantic, fish eggs coming in. I think we're in a real lucky spot, and it makes me wonder how we just continue to take and take and it keeps producing. But you also see things where it's not as good, hammered by night divers and nets, and you see long-liners in places they're not supposed to be, overseas — it hurts to see what's going on. Best thing to do is talk about it, maybe take a little less, take some garbage out of the water when you can, cut your plastic pollution from the grocery store, drink water out of reusable bottles — just the little things, small steps that change the whole world.
Tom Rowland: Those small steps, like plastic water bottles — if you just didn't drink out of a plastic bottle for the rest of your life, that's an amazing amount of plastic you wouldn't be using, and if ten people, a hundred people, five hundred people do that, it really adds up. Balloons, birthday balloons, trash — it ends up in the ocean, you see it all the time.
Cole Harrison: Yeah, there's a holiday going on, fireworks — as you get older and wiser you see things that don't always make sense, balloons, fireworks, it's just pollution going straight in the ocean. Small adjustments, that's what we've got to try to do. I kind of have that hunter mentality, but I try to respect the ocean and give back what I take — it's given me so much, so I try to respect it, try to get the right thoughts in people's minds, in person, and I try to do it through social media a little bit as well.
Tom Rowland: Well, it's coming through for sure — the photos you're taking are unbelievable, these underwater photos, it looks like there's no water there, like you're in a studio.
Cole Harrison: That's a walu.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's a walu, right? So how many of these trips — you're about to take this two-week trip to a pristine area — how many of these spearfishing or fishing trips have you been able to get on?
Cole Harrison: It's not always easy to get out there, but I've had a few trips — got out to the Lau Group, been able to jump on a few boats where we've gotten to see some cool stuff. It goes back to the cyclone story, really — I started my first business building Triple C spearguns, and I enjoyed it, built 88 spearguns thus far, but Hurricane Irma came through and knocked my speargun shop down, and that's what really pushed me over to underwater photography. Being able to switch to that has been really nice — you don't always have to get the fish, you can still capture it, enjoy it, and let it swim away. Long term, I'll probably be moving more toward that, try to paint these pictures of these beautiful spots, just to share that they still exist out there, so we should try to protect them, because all is not lost, really. A lot of things can be doom and gloom, especially in 2020, but there are still some amazing spots worth protecting, and I'll be sharing some of that as we go up north, hopefully with some more good photos to come.
Tom Rowland: I had Robert Trossett on, and we were talking about early in the pandemic, during the lockdown, how the pressure in the Keys went from what it normally is to virtually no pressure, and he mentioned it felt like nature's reset — these tarpon and mutton snappers that would normally have all these anglers fishing for them just didn't, there weren't boats out there. He thought that was pretty good, giving nature a reset, giving the fishery a year off. Did you see the same kind of thing in Fiji, with no tourism — did the pressure relieve because of COVID?
Cole Harrison: The tuna season we had was probably the best in over five years, and we just went out — now it's mahi season and there's no shortage of fish, it's been a really fishy year. I think the pressure does help — there shouldn't be long-liners here in Fiji, there are probably still a few pirates out there, but you're not seeing them light up the south coast at night anymore. It definitely has helped a little bit — I think it's kind of a wake-up call for what it could be if we give it some rest, give it a break, it can come back and try to make it sustainable, that's the key. There's a really good David Attenborough movie that came out on Netflix, a good starting point — he talks about how wild the world was and how it's getting less and less wild, and he actually talks about how we can make things better, rewild the world, make it diverse instead of taking and taking.
Tom Rowland: That could certainly be accomplished if there's not much travel, like this year — I don't know how long this is gonna last, but if Fiji has virtually no tourists for a while, that's gonna have an effect on how much is being harvested out of the ocean. If you don't need to harvest it, you probably won't, so I'd imagine that would really relieve the pressure a lot. It's a weird time — 2020 is definitely the strangest year of my life, and on the one hand you're happy there's a lack of pressure in certain areas, and on the other hand, I'd kind of like to go there, and I don't know how long we're gonna be locked in. Speaking of that, what's your forecast for the future — are you planning on staying there, could you even leave right now if you wanted to?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, I could leave — I've been fortunate, so lucky to be in a place like this during this crazy time. I don't think anyone's really accounting for this; I just went on a sailing trip and managed to have good timing to be in a good spot. I was fortunate to find a girlfriend here, so I'm thinking for two now, and probably right out the New Year — 2020 can get out the door, and hopefully some new travel guidelines pop up in 2021, they'll have a little time to compensate and maybe travel will be a bit more smooth. My goal was to keep heading west, and I think I might stick to that, probably shoot for Europe, have some unfinished business — truth be told, I think I have the Azores Islands calling me.
Tom Rowland: Is that right, is that the unfinished business?
Cole Harrison: It's just an island group — the island life is the best life in my opinion, and the Azores really had a lasting effect on me, and after three, four years I really can't stop thinking about it. So I'm gonna try to get back there and eventually back home to Key West, but no real timetable.
Tom Rowland: Nice — well, we've got a lot of people who listen to this show in Key West, so you can say hi to all of them.
Cole Harrison: Yes, miss you all, hope the island's doing well — seems like we're surviving down there.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I know everybody from Key West will be happy to know you're in a great spot, you seem like you're thriving — it's a weird time, but you certainly landed in a really cool place. And I really can't say enough about your Instagram, it's really high quality, the photos and videos are amazing. If you want to follow, it's C-C-C, Triple C, dot Cole — that's his Instagram. What else — how else could people follow you, what's the YouTube, any other social media?
Cole Harrison: Yeah, I have a YouTube and Instagram, those are really my main two — you can always just search my name, Cole Harrison, and I should pop up on Instagram or YouTube, there's some videos on there. I've got a few things I need to put out, really depends on the time, and yeah, got another adventure coming up, should hopefully be some amazing things happening — these guys grew up where we're going, so they know what they're doing, and my girlfriend's gonna be doing a free-diving class there. We'll see what the future brings — I think we're gonna be alright, COVID and everything, we'll make it through.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, we're gonna make it through, it's just gonna take a little bit of patience, probably longer than any of us hope or want it to, but we'll all make it through — I feel very confident about that. But man, it's been great to meet you and catch up with you — I don't think we ever crossed paths in Key West, strangely, but it's nice to put a name to a face. Anybody that Jake Perry is impressed with, I figured I wanted to check that guy out, and he was right, man — you're doing some awesome stuff, it's really cool. So everybody go follow Cole and reach out, tell him you listened and say hi.
Cole Harrison: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, man — after your next trip, let's hook up again, I'd like to hear how that deal went.
Cole Harrison: Sounds good, thanks for having me, enjoy your evening — I want to get my morning started and throw these chains, get the sailboat cyclone-ready. Hopefully it's not a bad season like you all had.
Tom Rowland: I hope so — good luck, Cole, thanks for filling us in, it was great having you.
Cole Harrison: Oh, it was a pleasure. Alright, take care.
Tom Rowland: See you.
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