Sharks At Sea

Rowing from Samoa to Vanuatu

Blood erupted near the boat. The tuna fish was being eater alive by the brown shark as Curt pulled it in. He got mad and puller harder. The tuna practically flew out of the water and I put up my arms to protect myself. The 60 pound tuna that landed on deck had been eaten like an apple around its core. The shark raced up to the gunwales and then disappeared. A minute later the boat started rocking violently. The boat’s rudder was being banged around by the shark.

“Jesus Christ. The bastard.  Let’s play tag with it. Like John Fairfax.”

“I don’t know,” I said. It sounded like a dangerous idea. Our boat was only 25 feet long and the shark was about five feet. The area we would be “playing” from was only nine feet of crowded deck space. An imaged of Fairfax’s bitten arm also flashed to mind. A miscalculated grab at the shark with his grappling hook left him with a forearm that looked a lot like our tuna.

I crouched by the bow cabin door while Curt leaned against the stern cabin, looking off the port gunwale. The shark had reappeared beside the boat. He wasn’t going away.

Curt looked over me and I barely nodded my head. It was tempting to see what would happen if we dangled a little bit of the tuna over the side.  We started with the innards which were splayed out on the deck. The tuna was a sorry sight though no longer alive. The shark gobbled up the offering.

“Let’s see the knife,” and Curt cut its head off and threaded a one inch braided rope through its gills and mouth. He wiped his bloody hands on his shorts and got ready to swing the head over the gunwale.

“Hold it,” I yelled and dove in the bow cabin searching for the camera. Curt paused and braced himself. Right foot on the edge of the gunwale and left foot wedged under the lip of the deck water pump. I leaned against the bow cabin with the Nikon SLR around my neck, hands at the ready. Ready to take photographs and ready to grab Curt if the shark tugged a little too hard.

In one fluid motion, he lifted his right arm with the tuna head daggling off the end and flung it with a sharp snap of his wrist. Like an old mangled softball. Before the tuna even landed in the water, the shark was reaching for it. Bam! It was a strike and Curt had to grab the rope with both hands to stop it from disappearing over board. The head was tied to a ten-foot piece of rope that we needed to keep.

I started photographing and got caught up with the excitement. “This is crazy. It’s like playing tag with an out of controlled dog,” Curt managed. His arm muscles were straining with the violence of the shark’s reaction. The port gunwale dipped precariously as Curt pushed against it with his foot. He tugged hard on the rope while the shark kept up the pressure. “You wanna try it?”  I was tempted. I couldn’t imagine when I would ever have such a chance again. But then, I realized how dangerous this game was.

We were admittedly bored after endless days at sea in the rowboat and looking for something to revive us. The days could be monotonous:  Sunrise. Row for 6 hours. Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sunset. Do the star sights. Write in our logs. Sleep. The next day, do it all over again.  There was a distinct quality of sameness about our existence on the rowboat that made us feel bored at times. Tuna tag was the perfect anecdote. But it was very dangerous.

The shark was still up for the game and Curt was looking at me. I said no. But then I said, “How are we going to get rid of it? That shark’s going to follow us from now on.” I could imagine it just below the surface when I washed dishes or even worse whenever I hung my bottom over the side to pee. Though our last encounter with aggressive sharks was seven months earlier off the South American coast, the memory was still fresh.   The fear from the nightly bumping of the hull was still there. I didn’t want to go through that again.

“We have to shoot it,” I said. “It’s not going to go away otherwise.” We both looked at the dark shape swimming just below the surface. The rope was now trailing limply in the water. The tuna head was completely gone. Frayed ends of the rope floated gently beside the boat. And there was blood in the water.

The headless tuna was lying crosswise on the deck and its’ blood dipping slowly into the ocean through the drain hole in the stern rowing station.  There was no way we could clean up the deck without dipping a bucket in the sea.  But neither of us was particularly anxious to dip anything in the ocean now.

I turned to crawl int the bow cabin, put the camera on the pad by my side and reached around the radio set on the shelf in the bow. At the very bow of the cabin, set in the wall, was a round hatch with a covering. With my arm extended blindly towards the hatch, I hooked my fingers in the depressions and turned it until it opened. I scrounged around, feeling for the plastic bag.  The bag with the handgun was wrapped in one of Curt’s old faded bandanas. I pulled it out and unwrapped it carefully. I had only practiced with it once on land. Out here, on the ocean, Curt was the shooter.

Again, he braced himself on the deck while I stood by the bow hatch watching. The shark was still there. Curt reached down and fired a couple of shots. They didn’t appear to have any affect. He shot again and the shark faltered and after another two shots, it pointed downward and sank slowly out of sight. Like a submarine going to depth.

Summer 1985