Copyright 1968 by Carl L. Biemiller
Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-25597

CHAPTER THREE

There may be older sandspits in the world than the thirteen-mile length of Sandy Hook, which pokes a finger of New Jersey into New York's Lower Bay. They are not in the United States. The Hook was there four hundred years ago when an Italian named Giovanni de Verrazano, who was working for a French king, first discovered it. Today's bridge across the Narrows leading into New York Harbor is his monument.

There sat the Hook, bristling with bayberry bushes, black holly, beach plum, sea grapes, locust trees, gums and scrub oak, and a beard of tall swamp grasses, when Henry Hudson discovered his river and took fresh water for his ship, The Half Moon, from the Highlands across Sandy Hook Bay.

The oldest lighthouse still in use in the Western Hemisphere stands there and beams at the sea with the power of forty-five thousand candles. It was darkened twice. The first time was during our Revolutionary War when the British controlled Sandy Hook. The second time was during World War Two when the Nazi submarines were practically living in the Jersey surf.

Oddly enough, although the octagonal tower of the light was erected in 1763, the structure seems to be the most youthful-looking one on the Hook, although not many people ever see it. That's because the north end of Sandy Hook holds the Army's Fort Hancock, today a Nike-Hercules missile base. And maybe because Fort Hancock, which also shares Federal Government room with the Coast Guard base and the Marine Laboratory isn't pretty enough for taxpaying tourists. The tourists can use the 460 southern acres of the Hook, which is a State park.

The buildings of Fort Hancock for the most part are homely and sprawling. Painted a sorrowful yellow, they look like old boarding houses in a seaside resort that nobody has visited since great-granddad was a boy. All the bright, modern science the buildings contain is hidden underground, except for the knowledge housed in the Marine Lab.

The paint on the building seems to be the only thing, which glues all the bricks together, but nobody ever minds. The Marine Lab is an informal place. Scientists with impressive college degrees walk about in shorts and dirty sweatshirts, and no matter how old they are, they have young faces as if nature had given them all a token of favor for their interest in her affairs.

Kent felt somehow much easier when he and Dad entered the old building's reception corridor to wait for the Lab official Dad had talked to on the phone. He looked at some sea-life exhibits, dusty as carved cement, in a cross-corridor. He looked at a wall portrait of Professor Spencer Fullerton Baird, the first head of the old U. S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries, all whiskers and frock coat. And he began to feel nervous despite the sense of rickety comfort around him.

"I think you've met John Colin," said Dad softly. "He's the deputy to the Lab director, a pretty fancy marine biologist. That's his job. He is also president of the Littoral Society, which has its office here too. You met him, I think, when we came out here to listen to some shark lecture last winter. Remember?"

"Not really," said Kent.

"Well, here he is," said Dad.

The man who approached them was short and slight. He was easy moving and trim in forest-green Bermuda shorts and a moss-dark, pullover shirt with short sleeves. A thatch of black hair rode mussed over his broad, wide forehead. He peered at them through a pair of big, black, horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He did not look like a television scientist. He didn't look like any of those stiff, white-jacket kooks punching computer buttons in the magazine advertisements either, thought Kent. He looked like a brunet owl. A short, stubby pipe with a chewed stem hung, bowl up, in a holster on his belt. He saw Kent's glance flick past it.

"Fastest pipe in the East," he said, and his voice was soft.

"Glad you could come right out, John. Hello, Kent."

"Hello, sir," said Kent, and shook hands politely.

"Hi, John," said John Palmer.

"Were going up to the director's office," said John Colin. "He wants to hear this from the beginning. I spoke to him right after your telephone call, and I filled him in on who you were, and what I knew about both your legal and fishing reputations, as well as your Littoral Society activities."

"You mean you established our credit as witnesses," said John Palmer.

"Not yours," smiled John Colin and winked at Kent, "your son's."

The director's office was located at the top of a wide, foot-worn flight of steps, on the second floor of the Lab building. He was waiting for them in it as they walked through a small, separate, secretary's office, and joined him.

"This is Dr. Bert Vernon," said John Colin, "and Dr. Vernon, these men are John Palmer and his son, Kent."

"Sit down, gentlemen," said Dr. Vernon, waving a big hand at a leather davenport, and rising simultaneously to greet them.

He was a big man who rose from behind his desk one hinge at a time, slowly and seemingly in sections. He wore thick glasses, which made his eyes behind them dark-brown blobs. His brow was lined and ran to meet a thin and retreating fuzz of hair. His face was too short to be craggy, but it tried. It was serious, but a nose almost snubbed and dimples at the corner of his mouth promised instant laughter.

Dr. Vernon was a famous biologist, and he had been director of the Marine Laboratory since Congress allowed the Department of the Interior to found it in 1960. His voice was deep. Even when he said hello it sounded important, and, perhaps as though he was about to recite something like a great actor.

Kent and his father sank into the davenport, and John Colin found a chair.

"Tell me about an albino bluefish," asked Dr. Vernon quietly. "You first, Mr. Palmer."

Kent didn't move a muscle. Neither did the officials of the Lab as Dad described, very simply and clearly, and with all a good lawyer's respect for small facts, the event of the early morning. He gave the size, weight, color of the fish, and the time it was caught. He described the condition of the sea and the surf and the direction of the wind. He spoke of his long experience in fishing for, and catching, bluefish in the surf, trolling for them from a boat, and taking them by using ground-up menhaden, a small, oily bait fish as chum. He told them how he knew that the albino was a bluefish from its shape, fins, tail, gillcovers, scales, jaw, and teeth.

"But it was Kent's fish," he said as he finished.

"Your turn, Kent," said Dr. Vernon.

Kent's voice was shaky as he began, but it steadied and then raced s he felt the excitement bubble again.

He tried to be as calm and as plain spoken as Dad, but a fever of remembering danced in his eyes. It made the room electric and somehow sparkly.

Kent told them about his change of lures and the sodden heavy strike that he knew so well. He described the creamy force of the surf against his legs and the look of the sea. He mentioned the swing of the wind and the sudden rise in temperature of the water. Then he spoke of the sudden, chilling mystery of not seeing a fish where a fish should be and then the red eyes blazing from the white-and-rose form.

Then he spoke of the tagging, and ran out of words as he did so. He could never really explain his feelings about tagging that fish, not really for sure.

Dr. Vernon's deep, important voice bored into that thought as he thought it.

"Why did you tag and release that fish, Kent, instead of bringing it here for study?"

There was a long silence in the office.

"I can tell you now," continued Dr. Vernon, "that there is no record or scientific knowledge of any albino bluefish in nature. At least, not until now. You had a chance to show us one, the very first of its kind. Why let a museum example go?"

Kent felt the hard stubborn anger. He tried. They had to understand. He spoke with a lump in his throat.

"That fish was too beautiful to die. If it is the only one nature ever made, it has a right to live. It has a tag in it. You'll find it again. And, anyhow, I know I did the right thing."

There was a strange light on Dr. Vernon's face, and his dimples deepened.

"I agree," he said.

Kent felt Dad's hand reach for, and squeeze his knee.

"Then you believe us?" he asked simply.

"Never doubted," said Dr. Vernon, and sadly he added, "we really know so little about the sea compared to what there is to learn, and the short life we have to learn even that little is not enough." His voice boomed. "But, young man, we are going to look for your fish, and use all we know to find it. And before we start, there are a few things I'd like to explain."

"Such as?" queried Dad calmly.

"Such as we keep this matter to ourselves," said Dr. Vernon. "The work we do here is important. What we learn about fish and sea life will someday help our Federal Government and our states make laws which will protect and preserve life in the ocean and our fresh-water lakes and rivers. It is work, which will make sure that sports fishermen, the seven million of them who fish in the sea, and the forty million who take out fresh-water licenses each year find fish in the future. It is work, which will help the sea feed populations that the land can no linger support. It is work that can't stand crazy publicity and cheap talk. Taxpayers and my bosses in government can't abide clowns."

"I don't understand," said Kent.

"I do," said Dad.

"Let me illustrate," said Dr. Vernon. "A few years ago one of our research vessels, the Challenger, was at sea on a mission. The scientists and crew saw a rare sight. They saw a fish, which lives, as far as we know, in ocean depths man has never explored, a loner of its type, and one seldom seen in shallow water. It was an oarfish. In case you care, its scientific name is Regalecus glesne. The oarfish is one long ribbon of flesh along a long length of spine. This ribbon is as wide at the head as at the tail, and it swims like a snake. This particular oarfish was about thirty-five feet long. That's a lot of feet. Our scientists and crew were amazed, and they talked about it.

"The next day, forty newspaper, magazine and television reporters from New York and New Jersey were down here turning this place into a mess, looking for a sea monster. Two reporters came from a London newspaper. They wanted to find out if Scotland's famous Loch Ness monster had moved to this country.

"It did no good to explain about oarfish. People would rather think and read about monsters. What's worse, they got the idea that the Federal Government was running some branch office of Barnum and Bailey's Circus with taxpayer's money. That kind of news does not help."

Kent nodded. He had the idea.

"My albino blue would be worse?" he suggested.

John Colin made a smooth, swift draw and bit his pipe stem.

"Much worse," he said in a marshmallow voice.

"Tell why," said Kent firmly. He was too fascinated to be disrespectful.

Dr. Vernon moved his face around, changing lines and dimples. He nodded approvingly. He approved of curiosity, respected interest, and knew real enchantment when he saw it.

"The bluefish to every sports fisherman who ever fished on our eastern coast is the greatest game and food fish of them all," he said. "Everybody has a bluefish story. Everybody thinks he knows something about bluefish. The blue is a colorful fish. He is a swimming headline. And unless he is on your table at mealtime, he is all bad. He is a killer, pirate, and he is always bloodthirsty. He leaves a trail of dead when he preys--dead mackerel, dead menhaden, dead herring, dead alewives, dead everything he strikes. The largest bluefish ever taken weighed twenty-seven pounds. If they came any larger, they would leave dead whales and maybe dead men."

Dr. Vernon paused and counted the heads shaking in agreement.

"The bluefish," he continued, "is also a world-wide character. He is found off the East Coast of South America, off southern Africa, the Malay Peninsula, Madagascar and southern Australia. He is in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and off the Azores. The biggest blues in the world are off the coast of Morocco.

"But guess where the most blues are? Don't, I'll tell you. They are in our own Atlantic waters from Cape May, New Jersey, to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Our sports fishermen take fifty million pounds of them each year. Millions, millions and millions of blues. Why we had a commercial-fishing captain report one school of them that was thirty miles wide!"

Dr. Vernon paused for breath.

"The blues support most of those fishing boats, the party boats, you see off this coast, the owners who take fishermen out for pay. That's a big business," added John Colin in his pudding voice. "The outdoor writers who work for newspapers wouldn't have much to write about if it weren't for bluefish."

"That's why everybody knows something about them, why everybody is a flaming expert," added Dr. Vernon.

"Except maybe us who only study them every day of our lives in the Lab."

Yikes," said Kent softly.

"So you see, son, your albino, your white-rose fish is real news. And if it got around in the wrong way, that news could cause more trouble than any of us think."

John Palmer pursed his lips, and made a lawyer's face.

"So we keep very silent about this, and about the search."

"Right," snapped Dr. Vernon. He made a tent of his fingers. "A few people around here will have to know, but we'll hope for the best." He stared directly into Kent's eyes. His voice trailed off. "I'd give almost anything to see an albino bluefish," he whispered.

"Do you think there's a chance you will?" asked Kent eagerly.

"Nobody but you and your father ever has," said Dr. Vernon. "And nobody knows how many bluefish there are. No computer ever built could count them." He shrugged. "Thanks for coming in," he said. "We'll stay in touch."

"I'll take you down," offered John Colin, flipping his pipe with the gun-fighter's roll.

"And we'll stay in touch, too," said Dad.

"Goodbye," said Kent. He was too full of things to think about to say more.