As a kid on a party boat charter off the coast of Galveston more than 40 years ago, I learned first-hand that having a banana on board a fishing vessel is a more egregious sin than letting the engine oil run dry, hoisting the Jolly Roger, or even throwing the captain overboard. Much of my first taste of this maritime wives tale was theater, but even initiating a seance and conjuring up the ghost of Fletcher Christian, I was told, would be more forgivable than pulling a banana out of your lunch bag while out at sea.

My parents and my two brothers and I joined a ragtag charter one spring break for some just-barely-offshore fishing—you know, one of those fishing charters where tourists-turned-anglers line the railing and dunk a hook adorned with a hunk of shrimp or squid into the blue water and yank up anything and everything that’ll take a bite—when, during the “safety” discussion, the boat’s first mate mentioned the evils of the yellow fruit. Bad luck, he explained. The worst. And bringing a banana on board? A cardinal sin among fishermen.

“If any of you land-lubbers have a banana in your lunch bucket,” he said with a touch of salty, maritime English in his accent, “you better tell me now. We won’t be leavin’ the dock with no bananas on the boat.”

Then, a fellow dressed seemingly as a clueless tourist—matching belt and shoes, or a “condo commando” as Jimmy Buffett would put it—hollered from behind the first mate.

“What? Like this one?” he said, holding up a ripe banana and sporting a goofy grin.

The first mate wasted no time. He walked over to the tourist, grabbed the banana and tossed it into the bay. Then, for emphasis, he grabbed the tourist, spun him around, seized his belt and marched him to rail, where he proceeded to throw the guy off the boat and into the drink.

“Anybody else?” the first mate asked menacingly, to a boat full of suddenly silent “anglers.” “I won’t ask again, so now’s your chance.”

Nobody owned up, and I was fairly certain my mom hadn’t packed any bananas for that afternoon fishing charter. But I was downright terrified. If this first mate was going to just throw people overboard for the unforgivable sin of toting around a banana, I thought maybe we were on the wrong boat. My mother agreed.

“Jesus, Steve,” she said under her breath to my father. “I think we ought to get off this boat.”

Of course, it turned out to be a very well-executed act. And the tourist with the banana? He turned out to be the boat’s captain, who climbed back up the stern ladder to a host of sheepish laughter. He then explained the age-old superstition and how, regardless of how silly it might seem, he was very serious about the banana thing. They were strictly not allowed.

The wives tale

The “bad luck banana” isn’t some random superstition. It’s actually born of real-world causes, the most obvious of which should be easy to grasp for anyone who’s watched a bunch of pale, light-green bananas turn jet black on the kitchen counter in just a few days’ time. Bananas ripen quickly. They are a “climacteric” fruit that produces ethylene gas as they ripen. Ethylene gas is a natural plant hormone that initiates the fruit’s conversion of starches to sugar (ripening), and, in bananas, that gas concentrates at the stem end of the fruit, which speeds up the process.

Couple that with the fact that the concentration of ethylene gas created by rapidly ripening bananas could also speed the ripening of other fruit, like pears or avocados, and it becomes fairly easy to see why bananas have earned their villainous role among fruits—they’re the first to go bad.

Think back to the 1700s when bananas were loaded onto sailing cargo vessels and transported to distant markets. The need to arrive quickly to salvage the fruit before it ripened was tantamount. That, of course, meant that there was no time for the crew to dally — and absolutely no time for fishing. The general consensus among ship hands back in the day was that joining a ship with bananas as cargo meant all work and no play on the voyage. It also meant that, should the wind not cooperate and the bananas start to ripen, the ethylene gas the spoiling fruit emitted would soon cause other fruits and food on board to spoil and rot at a more rapid pace. A bit of meteorological bad luck is all that stood between getting paid at the dock … or offloading a hull full of rotten mush. It soon became the general school of thought that bananas were just plain, old bad luck on a boat.

But there’s more, of course.

In addition to its tendency to ripen, bananas were (and still are) harvested from tropical environments. Loaded by the bunch onto cargo vessels, the fruits were prone to host other pests, from rats to venomous spiders, snakes, and the like. The fruity cargo would often result in insect bites or fleas from rodents. This just added to the general maritime disdain for the delicious fruit.

But, perhaps the most telling of all the reasons for bananas earning their bad rap has to do with the tendency of merchant boats overloading their holds with the fruit, which commanded premium prices at market because of their general fragility. If an overloaded cargo vessel hit inclement weather and sank, often, the only thing rescuers could find would be bunches of floating bananas.

The superstition evolved and endured

Today, the superstition continues. Bananas, in general, are banned on most fishing boats, from flats skiffs to drift boats. Their centuries-old reputation as the source of all maritime calamities is now ingrained among boat captains the world over, and bananas are blamed for everything from engine problems to broken fly rods, and from crappy weather to just plain, old bad fishing. To this day, some boat captains will mix in a touch of science to back up the bad-luck banana wives tale and claim that ethylene gas is a fish repellent (it’s not).

Regardless, among the angling community, bananas are not welcome on most boats, and I’ve seen some guides and charter captains get really bent out of shape when one of the elongated fruits makes it on board. Once, after chartering a panga for a flats fishing trip in Chetumal Bay several years back, I had a guide go through my backpack and inspect my sunscreen — just in case it was banana scented or if my 50 SPF was of the Banana Boat brand. He even asked if I’d eaten bananas or plantains for breakfast.

It might seem silly, but, like most enduring superstitions, there is a hint of common sense at the banana’s bad–luck origin, even if it's moot in a world where cargo can make it from the tropics to a distant port about a transport plane in just a few hours. But superstitions tend to endure. The bad-luck banana is proof of that.