Sharkbait

The next morning, everything was back to normal except Brian wasn’t around. Doc had us deploying the baited barrels in deep water off the southern tip of Cape Cod, hoping to get the Great Whites during the heat of the day. The big sharks were more successful hunting seals in the morning and evening when the low light helped hide their shapes in the depths.

We’d tagged one ten-foot male, releasing him into the ocean again. “Vicki, the Captain needs you on the bridge,” Leonard told me as I stowed the hose and pipe.

“On my way,” I said. Today was warm and overcast, and I’d ditched the long-sleeve diving shirt for a logo tank top over my modest bikini. I wasn’t the only one; the crew may not get paid a lot, but they didn’t turn down free clothes and diving gear from Bodyglove. Theresa was rocking a tiger-shark-pattern one-piece, while Sally went with the bikini and long T-shirt. I smiled as I looked back at them; their dating prospects would not be hurt by how they looked in this documentary.

I got up to the bridge and looked around; the Captain was alone. “You needed to see me, Captain?”

“I need you to stay here during the transfer. I don’t want any more drama.” I could see a boat, a thirty-foot offshore fishing vessel with a Woods Hole logo, approaching from our starboard quarter. “I spent a lot of time last night and this morning on the phone, and the President and Provost reviewed the evidence I’ve collected. They agreed there was sufficient evidence of harassment to bring him before a student tribunal.”

I looked out from the bridge wing, and I could see Brian walking out with his gear bag to the stern. The crew and staff were ignoring him as the boat approached. “I had it handled.”

“Quite well on a personal level, but this isn’t about just you. The harassment occurred on school property, in front of students and staff. It will be handled by the school, with or without your continued involvement.” He didn’t say anything as he pointed the big vessel cross to the wind, creating a calmer area for the smaller boat to approach. I could see a woman in her early twenties standing with her bags on the bow. She was wearing a floppy hat, sunglasses, shorts, and a Bodyglove T-shirt. The smaller boat bumped into us, lines held us together, and the woman came on board. A minute later, Brian was gone. “Go introduce yourself. There’s a shark on, and we have work to do.”

I went back down to the main deck and introduced myself to Bonnie, a tall redhead who was a first-year graduate studies student. To my surprise, she hugged me and thanked me. “For what?”

“Are you kidding? Theresa sent me the cellphone video she took and told me to call Doc and volunteer. I didn’t make the cut weeks ago, but I was the first to ask. Ten minutes after I get the gig, an executive from Bodyglove is asking me my sizes. Now I’m here, and you’ve got another friend, and I’ve got a bag of free clothes to wear!”

“Fringe benefits,” I said excitedly.

Doc came over and welcomed her to the crew. “Get into swimwear because you’re going to get wet. You’re taking over the shark hose. Vicki, you’re taking the Shark Cam.”

“And lots of sunblock,” I said. Bonnie’s fair skin would be burning quickly, even in the cloudy skies.

“Yes, Mom,” she said as she went below decks to change.

I went back to talk to Theresa, who had taken over the camera spot for Brian this morning and would be returning to her job writing down the measurements. She assured me this was fine, as she was nervous around the big animals. She walked me through the process, which wasn’t as simple as I thought. “You’ve got one shot to get it right,” she said. “The camera activates when the mechanism closes, and it latches itself onto the fin, like a zip-tie. If you put it on wrong, it could fall off, or the camera shot won’t show what we want. Place it a third of the way up the dorsal fin and as close to horizontal as you can get. Squeeze it tight and get clear. If you mess it up, hit this button to release it and wait for it to drop off, then try again.”

I ran through everything in my head. “I’ve got it,” I said.

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Better to take ten more seconds on board than to lose the camera.” We relaxed with the crew as we waited for the shark on the line to tire itself out. Bonnie was well-liked by the other students, and no one was looking at me like I did anything wrong.

The shark was a small female, ten feet long. As the davit swung the cradle onboard, I waited nervously with the camera in my left hand. I let the tagging guys get into place, since their job took longer, and leaned over the shark just forward of her dorsal fin. Keeping everything I learned in mind, I positioned the camera but didn’t make the final squeeze just yet. “Theresa, this good?”

“Perfect,” she said.

I squeezed the last couple clicks to make sure it was firmly in place, verified the camera light showed it was running, then stepped back. “Camera on,” I said. Fifteen seconds later, the davit was moving again to return the shark to the water. I went to the rail to watch her slowly swim away.

We tagged four more sharks that day, but only two the next. I was up on the bridge the third night for my on-camera talks with the Captain and the Doctor, and they didn’t like the forecast for the next two days. A storm moving up the coast would bring heavy seas; bringing sharks on board would be much more dangerous as the ship rolled in the waves. “We need to move inside the Cape; the question is whether to keep tagging Great Whites or shift to smaller sharks.”

“Are we seeing or tracking Great Whites there?”

“Not often,” Doctor Holliday said.

“They like having deep water nearby,” I said as he nodded.

“Yes, and these wide, sandy expanses are better suited to other sharks. There are harbor seal colonies in these places that might attract some.”

“Or we take a few days to go after smaller sharks with the cell trackers,” I said.

The Captain agreed with me. “That would be my preference. We’re having success out here, and the change would do everyone good. It’s too rough to switch to the cages.”

“Shallows it is,” Doc said. “Let everyone know we’re diving tomorrow, Vicki.”

I almost ran downstairs, excitedly telling everyone hanging out in the crew’s mess about the change in plans due to the storms. We’d all learned to ignore the cameras that were always in the background. Doc joined us a few minutes later, and I took the time to brief everyone on the shark trackers I’d brought and how they worked. “I prefer to use them on a pole while I free-dive,” I told them. “I pick out sharks underneath, swim down from behind them, and push the tracker onto the rear of the dorsal fin. It won’t close unless the edge hits the middle of the V-shape, so you’ve got an eight-inch window when you push it forward. It snaps into place, which releases it from the pole, and you both swim away.”

“Why not scuba gear,” Bonnie asked.

“You’re in shallow water, and you are faster swimming without the tanks, and less likely to spook the sharks. The only good scuba strategy I know is to sit on the bottom with a bait box to bring them in, and try and tag them when they approach. You have to get them straight on or straight away to make it work, though. If they circle you, there’s no chance to attach it.”

“The transmitters are coded?”

“They are numbered. You need to record the tag number and the length and species or any other detail so we can send it to the University of Miami registry at the end of the day. Here is what the tracking data looks like.” I used the computer to go to the site, pulling up the map showing the Cape Cod area. “So far, there are over twelve-thousand trackers that have gone live. Two-thirds of the tagging activity in this area is coming from sport fishing, the rest bycatch from commercial fishing.” The screen showed a mass of dots and tracks. “On the right, you can set it to display only the most recent locations or only a single species,” I said. I selected the most recent Porbeagle hits; a dozen dots appeared, all located in the Billingagate Shoals. “Going after shortfin mako would be extremely difficult while diving. Here are the spiny dogfish.”

“You’ve convinced me,” Doc said. “I’ll have the Captain head for the Shoals. If you are comfortable free-diving, pairs can try that. The rest of you will work off the Zodiaks or this ship, using scuba gear and bait boxes. Get some sleep, as there’s going to be a lot of water time tomorrow,” he said.

It turned out that only Bonnie had the gear and experience to free-dive with me, so the next morning, we took a Zodiak with a cameraman to water that was about twenty feet deep. We dumped a bait box over, basically a metal box with holes and chum in it to attract the sharks. The cameraman stayed down with us for thirty minutes, getting his underwater shots of us with the sharks. The rest of the time he stayed in the boat. He was leaving the rest to the fixed cameras he had on top of the bait box and the small cameras attached to our poles. For the next three hours, Bonnie and I dove the site repeatedly, tagging fourteen Porbeagle sharks, two spiny dogfish, and one Great White male that was about eight feet long. The cameraman pulled the bait box up, and we motored back to the Ocean Explorer for lunch.

The other three teams had much less success. With the need to change air bottles and rest between dives, their bottom time was limited. It was also more difficult for a stationary diver to see and tag the sharks. They had tagged fifteen Porbeagles, three Spiny Dogfish, and one ten-foot Blue Shark. The latter was a pleasant surprise to the divers operating off the main ship.

After lunch, all the divers headed to shallower waters, like we had been diving in. By five, we had run out of tags, and the Porbeagle population had more tags tracking it than ever before.