It’s Almost All Good
On Sunday, Mary Lee’s dorsal fin broke the surface a few miles off the eastern shore of Virginia at 10:29 a.m., prompting a ping to sail aloft, bounce off a satellite, and report to the OCEARCH organization, whose website transmits the information in very close to real time.
Earlier this spring, on April 12 at 8:37 a.m., she had pinged within 10 miles of New Jersey and just off Jones Beach.
Like a growing number of sharks, this 3,500-pound great white’s dorsal had been fitted with a small antenna capable of transmitting fascination as well as deep concern. Mary Lee represents a paradox in our efforts to re-green the earth, at getting “back to the garden,” as Joni Mitchell put it.
The East End’s community preservation fund is claiming open space to fend off development, rivers and marshlands are returning to their natural fecund states. The word “organic” is giving synthetic fertilizer and pesticide pushers fits. Wolves have been reintroduced to national parks out west. Two years ago, the Montauk Marine Basin hosted the first no-kill shark tournament as an alternative to our annual shark slaughter. All good . . . er . . . ah . . . well . . . almost all good.
I’ve thought hard about this, and you could stretch an inclusive point, but I believe surfing, diving, and perhaps the Iditarod (bears can outrun dog sleds) are the only sports where practitioners are in danger of being eaten alive on any given day.
The nearly worldwide ban on the killing of great whites appears to be working in their favor. To a lesser extent the practice of finning (cutting the fins off live sharks to satisfy the Asian hunger for shark-fin soup) has begun to limit the wholesale killing of other shark species. The downsides have been an increase in the number of species that pose a danger to humans who share the shark’s environment, and, due to cyber tracking, an exaggerated fear of shark death. Did I say exaggerated?
The surfers of western Australia have literally been chased from the surf. The Surfers Journal recently reported the deaths of three surfers from Perth, two bitten in half and eaten, with no trace left behind, and one who was bitten in half with a few remnants rescued by a boater before they too disappeared. A 20-foot white was thought to have been responsible. Surfers want the man-eaters hunted and killed. The government and environmental community do not.
“Surfers are checking their phones, not for tide charts or swell reports, but for the latest shark update,” Ray Bergman observed in Surfer magazine. Imagine watching some of the best waves in the world peeling perfectly and yet knowing that paddling out into them is the equivalent of entering a cage inhabited by a couple of hungry, yet unseen tigers. I say cage because the ocean is not our native element. It would be like the idiotic running of the bulls in Pamplona, but with no chance of out-paddling the beasts.
The whole 21st-century satellite-tagging phenomenon juxtaposed with the primordial fear of being eaten alive presents a “Jurassic Park” sort of scenario. It would be wonderful to see T-rex in the flesh. The Jurassic was a garden, but a hungry one. If we were able to return to it, should we? Or, should we be careful of what we wish for?
The “Jaws” story was reenacted for real on Cape Cod last year, and I believe the summer before that, complete with beaches closed because of cruising white sharks. They were probably in search of seals, but unfortunately wetsuited surfers can be mistaken for seals. Are we being mistaken for them? Or are we being added to the menu?
Capt. Frank Mundus, Montauk’s own “Monster Man,” and Peter Benchley’s model for the vengeful charter captain Quint in “Jaws,” once told me that the danger to humans around here was limited because white sharks preferred fish, and, at the time, the young and old whales they picked from pods migrating relatively far from shore limited the danger to humans in this area.
But species, including sharks, change their behaviors in response to changes in their food supply. Nancy Kohler, a biologist with the shark laboratory in Narragansett, R.I., said the dramatic increase in the number of seals in our area in recent years — due to protections under the Marine Mammal Act and changes in their environment and feeding patterns — virtually guaranteed the eventual notice of great whites, as is the case in South Africa, Australia, Hawaii, and Northern California.
If every apex predator with large teeth were fitted with a dorsal tag at birth, we could simply check the satellite receiver-equipped surfboards to know when to get the hell out of the water. But they are not.
Certainly it’s a good thing to bring a species back from the brink of extinction. And it’s probably healthy to re-instill that nearly extinct fear of being part of the food chain. But that’s an intellectual “healthy,” which evaporates when you see a dorsal fin, with or without its satellite antennae, fast approaching. Food for thought becomes just food.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to live in a world with no great whites, or any other nonhuman species that happens, in all innocence, to be a threat to my life. Our own species is far less innocent and far scarier.
Dan Callahan, a visitor to the OCEARCH site from Virginia, posted a message to Mary Lee: “Too close for comfort. Go back to the deep, Mary, is all I have to say. Try the North Canyon. I hear it’s beautiful this time of year.”
And I will add that there is a lot for Mary to eat out there. John Nolan Jr., captain of the Seacapture tilefish longliner, returned to Montauk a few days ago with a trip of very large tiles, most in the 35 to 45-pound range.
And, closer to shore, the charter boat Elizabeth II returned to the Montauk Marine Basin during a morning half-day trip with customers high-fiving after having angled some very large striped bass. Big fluke around too. Fishermen were saying the extra cold winter confused arriving prey species. Sounds like we’re getting back to our bountiful normal.