Armacord

ARMACORD  Mario Bertora  

After competing in the 1978 National spearfishing championships it became clear to me that New Zealand had three world-class athletes; Russell George, Bob Rosemergy and Graham Byers. A year later a dreadful underwater accident would deprive the community of a diver who in the minds of many would have won one, if not two, World Spearfishing Titles. But fate dictated that it was not to be.

I had the privilege of meeting Graham Byers twice. The first time was after he won the title in 1978. We had another swim off contest to determine the NZ team to compete overseas. The first day, March 27th, we all fished hard and I was totally buggered. Over a quick a quick dinner I had a chat with Graham. The next morning the alarm went off at 5:00am. I felt and looked like a public toilet badly in need of repair. I just could not focus on the task ahead. I found my wetsuit to be very wet and very cold. Graham came by: He must have thought “my god – this guy looks like a public toilet badly in need of repair!” because he took off and came back with two cups of coffee, one for me and one for my wife. We chatted a bit. Graham looked fantastic, full of energy and full of passion for his chosen sport. Ten minutes later I was charged, his words of encouragement and advice for the task ahead made the operation of putting on my wetsuit not so bad.

We met six hours later half-way through the competition. He already had a winning number of species. I was struggling but I decided to follow Graham. He put me on a pinnacle, probably half a mile of the Mercury Islands. There, after watching him dive for ten minutes, and learning something, we parted company. I finished with a respectable number of species and shot the largest snapper of the competition. Graham Byers won the competition with practically twice the number of species as the second place getter. I started to really like this guy!

Several months later there was a competition at Kapiti Island. The contest was between three teams; one from Auckland, one from Wellington and one from the South Island. I met Graham the day before the swim off. After our initial greetings I expressed to him my concern on my poor knowledge of the area and the fear that I would let my team down. Like magic, the angel Graham came to my aid and without hesitation told me of a certain area (now forgotten) a certain distance from the rocks and there I should find a quite rare species of southern area fish, a kind of huge fat mullet – warehou. This I did and it turned out that, aside from the two that I caught, this kind of fish was only caught by the Wellington team, five by Graham himself (we were allowed five warehou in this competition). Thanks to superlative fishing by Trevor Bodger, Jim Bache and Alan Warner, the Auckland team came second but nobody could come even near the points scored by Graham. Not even Stefano Bellani or Maurizio Ramacciotti could worry Graham Byers in his Kapiti Island home ground!

But there is more: Towards the conclusion of the six hours of the above competition my float became unstuck so that when I retrieved line to put a dory on it I discovered, to my horror, that my float, fish carrier and fish had all disappeared! I felt sick. Half an hour later a boat passed and the attendant said that he had collected all my fish scattered across the Northern end of the island. I could not believe my luck. I grabbed my fish carrier and concentrated on the competition. Time for one more red mullet and all was over. I asked several people, I wanted to thank my saviour, but nobody seemed to know. I asked Graham, Russell, Jim, Trevor, Bob, David…all said “no mate, it wasn’t me”. I swear that the boat that passed the float to me looked a lot like Graham’s… And so we come to the end of the story.

Three months later Graham Byers won the Three Nations International Spearfishing Competition [Interpacifics] in New Caledonia. But tragically, in this contest, while representing his country, Graham lost his life. I only knew Graham briefly but he had a huge impact on me. I am sure that those closer to him could have written this article better. Graham Byers was a great athlete and a great guy. Farewell Graham from all of us spearos, thank you for everything, we remember you well.

“Amarcord” in Italian means “I remember”. Fellini used this verb as the title of one of his films.