Alone in his boat, in the dark of early morning, Santiago rows out to sea. He hears the other fishermen leaving in their boats but cannot see them in the dark. He passes the phosphorescence of some Gulf weed and one of the deep wells where many fish and other sea creatures congregate. He has fished such deep wells without success on previous days of this long stretch without a catch. So this day, he plans to row far out to sea, in search of a really big fish.
As he rows, Santiago hears the flying fish he regards as friends and feels sympathy for the delicate sea birds that must fish to survive and must cope with an ocean that can be beautiful yet cruel. He also thinks about the differences between himself and the younger fishermen who float their lines on buoys and use motorboats bought with money they earned selling shark livers. Whereas Santiago affectionately refers to the sea as la mar (using the Spanish feminine), they say el mar (using the Spanish masculine).
Santiago rows effortlessly, not disturbing the ocean’s surface but working with the current, letting it do a third of the work. He sets his baits at precise depths and ties and sews them so that all the hook is concealed and sweet smelling and good tasting to a fish. He uses the albacores Manolin bought for him and a big blue runner and a yellow jack he had from before, using the sardines to give them scent and attractiveness. He loops each line onto a green-sapped stick, so that even a touch on the bait will make the stick dip, and connects the coils of line so that a fish can run out more than 300 fathoms if necessary.
As he fishes, Santiago takes pride in keeping his lines straighter than anyone, even though he knows that other fishermen sometimes let their lines drift with the current. For a moment, he reluctantly admits that, despite his precision, he has no luck anymore. But he quickly reminds himself that each day is a new day and that, while it is better to be lucky, he prefers to be exact so that he will be ready when the luck finally comes. Santiago briefly reflects that all his life the early morning sun has hurt his eyes, yet again catches himself, keeping in mind that his eyes are still good and in the evening he can look into the sun without getting the blackness.
Santiago sees a man-of-war bird circling in the sky ahead of him. Through his experience and his fisherman’s skill, he recognizes that the bird is following a school of flying fish, themselves pursued by a school of big dolphin. Santiago works with nature, fishing where the bird leads, but neither he nor the bird have any luck. As the flying fish (which have little chance against the dolphin) move too fast for the bird, the school of dolphin move too fast and too far for Santiago. Santiago clings to the hope that perhaps he will catch a stray, but the dolphin get away.
Santiago studies a Portuguese man-of-war (agua mala he calls it in Spanish) floating in the water. He notices the tiny fish swimming in its filaments and notes that while these fish are immune to its poisons, men are not. While working on a fish, he has many times suffered welts and sores from the poisons. He considers the man-of-war’s iridescent beauty the falsest thing in the sea, and he thinks how much he loves to watch sea turtles eat them or to step on them himself on the beach after a storm.
Santiago recalls his days turtling and thinks that “people are heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered.” He muses that his heart is like the turtle’s, as are his hands and feet, and that he eats turtle eggs to be strong in the fall when the big fish come, the same reason he drinks the shark liver oil available in the shack where the fishermen store their equipment. Although the oil is there for anyone who wants it, most of the fishermen don’t like it. But Santiago considers it no worse than the early hours fishermen keep, and he drinks it because it gives him strength, is good for the eyes, and protects against colds and grippes.
The second time Santiago sees the bird circling above him, he sees tuna jumping into the air. Santiago successfully catches a ten-pound albacore and hauls it into the boat, where it flops around until he kills it out of kindness. Santiago says aloud that the fish will make a good bait, which prompts him to begin thinking about his habit of talking aloud to himself at sea, a habit that he began after Manolin stopped fishing with him. He remembers that he and Manolin talked only when necessary or at night when bad weather had them storm-bound. Most fishermen consider talking only when necessary at sea a virtue, and Santiago has always respected that belief. Now, however, he grants himself this minor indiscretion because it bothers no one. He knows that if the others hear him, they will consider him crazy, but he decides that if he is crazy, this habit doesn’t matter and that the rich take along their radios to listen to baseball games.
Santiago upbraids himself for thinking of baseball when he should be focusing his attention on what he describes as “[t]hat which I was born for.” He shifts his thoughts to something he has observed this day—all the fish he has seen are moving fast, travelling to the northeast. Although he is not sure whether that is a sign of bad weather or something else, he has noticed. He also notices that he is now so far out into the ocean that he can barely see the tops of the tallest hills, which look white in the distance. With the sun hot on his back, Santiago briefly is tempted to nap, with a line around his toe to wake him if a fish bites. But he remembers that he has been trying to catch a fish for 85 days now and so “must fish the day well.” At that moment, one of the green sticks take a sharp dip.
