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

CHAPTER SIX

It was high morning as they moved north along the inner shore of the Hook. The sky was clear, and a west wind put a chop on Sandy Hook Bay. Kent knew that wind would flatten the sea when they turned the point and headed out into it. He could see forever. Across New York's Lower Bay into the Narrows, the Verrazano Bridge vaulted in one lovely reach of steel. He could see the Statue of Liberty. He could see the skyline of New York, and without its normal, muggy robe of haze and smog. He could spot thickets of channel-marking buoys. He grinned, unusually enough for him, at Leo.

Leo was frowning at the Hudson, just as if it were no day at all, and he weren't on blue water in a west wind.

"That river is the enemy," said Leo. "That river is a disgrace. That river, right now, carries the poison sewage wastes of ten million people plus the gunk from a hundred factories, oil, dyes, paper fibers, chemicals from drug-makers, garbage from meat packers, acids from metal plants. The river kills fish by the ton."

"Come on," said Kent. "It's too nice a day, and we're going fishing."

"That river is polluted so thick you could walk on it," continued Leo. "It is septic. It has oxygen sag. Its bottom is sludge."

"You can explain all of that later," said Kent.

"What's more," said Leo without stopping to listen, "your albino blue could be right in it. Blues like tainted water, gunky water."

"Will you cut it out?"

"No!" shouted Leo. "Men who study fresh water; they call them limnologists. They say that rivers can clean themselves. But that one will have to work a long time. It is crum, crum, crummy and ick!"

The wind snatched David Dart's voice and tossed it back to them from where he sat at the wheel of the boat.

"What are you kids blatting about?"

They scrambled to join him.

"Leo is mad at the Hudson River for being dirty. He says that bluefish like tainted water," explained Kent with a question in his eyes.

"Everybody should be mad at dirty rivers, and the men who make them dirty," said Dart firmly. "And Leo's right about blues, too, from what we've seen. Our biologist-divers often report that they've seen the fish leave clean water for the murky stuff just as if they liked it better. You know the Acid Waters?"

Kent nodded. David Dart meant a section of the sea once used as a dumping place for acid wastes. Kent had fished it often with his father, just as he had fished The Farm, which is part of the Mudhole, and all of the many-named areas of the North Jersey coast, which had their own identification for thousands of fishermen and coastal-map readers.

"I've seen big schools of blues leave clean, wonderful water to spend a day in those Acid Waters," said Dart. "Ever notice how the stuff cleans and changes the color of their scales? Anyhow, fish sort of like differences in the ocean, rough bottom for smooth, sandy bottom, or rocks, or wrecks, or reefs-differences. I've got a notion that anything unusual spells food to a blue, even polluted water. But then, I've got a lot to learn, too, you know."

"Look at the birds," yelled Leo suddenly.

Kent looked toward the shore. He looked for gulls, terns, ducks or even a lazy flock of crows patrolling the Hook. But Leo did not mean birds as in birds. He meant birds as in guided missiles, Fort Hancock's Nike-Hercules missiles. Sure enough, there were four gray-and-white missiles standing erect, frighteningly tall, and visibly free from their hidden ground silos as if taking a sun bath. From a mile out to sea on the Bluefish, they looked like a picket fence, a very dangerous fence defending the Hook, New York and the United States.

"I've never seen that before," said Kent.

"Neither have I," added David Dart.

"Leo squinted his green eyes. He looked at the missiles as though they were as dirty as the Hudson River.

David Dart cut the motor. He kept just enough power to move gently forward.

"Take the wheel, Kent," he said. "I'm going to drop my net about here. We're in a ridge of shallow water about twenty-seven feet deep, and we might find some cousins of those snappers you took in the Bay this morning. Leo, stick your head over the side and see if anything looks like small baitfish. There won't be much or there would be birds diving in and out of the water. Then dump my thermometer overboard. I want a temperature reading. Temperature is mighty important to bluefish, Kent. Any fish, for that matter."

The boat rocked in a lazy ground swell, and Leo did a little toe dance for balance as he dropped the thermometer. Kent watched David Dart put out his monofilament net and check his tag box and make a record of ocean temperature.

"When can we eat?" asked Leo.

"As soon as I put out a small anchor," answered David Dart.

"Oh sailor's joy!" screeched Leo.

Despite himself, Kent chuckled. Leo might be the brain of all brains, he thought but he was also one fun kid.

A New Jersey Marine Patrol helicopter squatted over them as they dug out sandwiches and the pilot waved. Two sea gulls spotted their sandwich wrappers and wing-wagged a message that brought in a handful of other gulls. The rockabye swell and the sun announced naptime as they talked.

"What would you do if my albino came up with your first drag?" asked Kent.

"Check the tag," said David Dart. "Then faint, I guess." He knotted his face. "Finding that fish again is one big hope, but that's the one thing that anybody working in natural science and conservation has plenty of. I hope like anything every time I tag a fish and mostly that we learn something new. And we are learning a few things about the comings and goings of bluefish."

Leo tossed a crust of bread into the air above the stern of the boat and laughed as four gulls collided in a greedy rush for the food.

"We started our tagging program as part of our studies of bluefish migrations here in 1962. Dr. John Colin began the work."

Kent nodded.

"I've taken it over for him," continued Dart. "So far, about sixteen thousand blues have been tagged. Some here, some off the Carolinas, some in Florida waters. We've had about an eight- percent return of our tags. That's some twelve hundred comebacks, and it's pretty good. It'll get better as more and more sports fishermen catch tagged fish."

"I've always wondered where the Jersey blues went in the winter," said Kent. He was paying attention. So was Leo, his thin face aglow with interest.

"Well, Florida would be an easy answer," said David Dart, "but it might not be altogether right. You heard Leo tell us that there might be different races of blues this morning. We think now that there are also some different populations of blues that favor local areas of the coast. One of them made up of fish that like cold water, say temperatures from fifty to fifty-five degrees, might stay in northern waters all year 'round. Another population, and probably the big one that spends summers off the New Jersey and New York coasts, could stay all winter in water fifty-nine to sixty-four degrees, a narrow range of water that runs from Cape Hatteras south to Florida. At least, a lot of blues get caught in that section of the ocean in winter."

"The albino could be anywhere most anytime, then?" asked Kent.

David Dart nodded.

"My guess is that your fish, like about a zillion blues, goes to Florida for the winter and comes north again with warm water and to spawn maybe off North Carolina or New Jersey at various times."

"How do you know they leave Florida at all?" asked Kent.

"Tag returns and long study," smiled Dart.

"Does it take them long to make the trip?"

"The answer to that is food. Schools could move as much as thirty-five miles a day, but ten to thirteen is more like it. If the phytoplankton are blooming and the food, either plankton or baitfish, is plentiful, the schools are in no hurry. They'll also move at the speed of whatever it is they are eating, fat herring, tinker mackerel…. Fish migration is largely a matter of food as well as water temperatures. We don't know why blues behave as they do anymore than I know why Leo Lipsky wants to play football for the New York Giants."

I want to bash somebody," explained Leo.

"But we have a man who's trying to find out," continued Dart. "He is a marine biologist studying bluefish behavior. He has his own school of blues in his own special tank at the Lab. You'll meet him. He might figure out how your albino behaves and where to look for him."

"Ask him how your albino behaves with a shark or a swordfish right behind him," laughed Leo.

Kent looked at him with his stern, Indian face.

"So I'd swim faster," said Leo.

"Let's go to work," ordered Dart.

There were no blues in the net during the next two hours. There were a few fluke, flat founder cousins, and a sea robin or two, otherwise, nothing.

"I'll call in and we'll loaf back trolling," said David Dart, making his way to the radio, which had been spluttering and honking with voices from fishing boats, so many of them that they went largely unnoticed. He raised the Lab and spoke into his microphone.

"What do you know? Something's up at the Lab," he said when he finished. "Kent, your dad's coming out to the shop at four and we have to be back by then."

"Anything wrong?" asked Kent.

"Well, nobody said rush, but we'd better move. Show Leo how to get a line off the stern and how a reel works while I stow the net and put the tag box away. I don't think he's ever had a fishing rod in his hand."

"Have you?" Kent asked Leo.

"In my hand, yes. Fishing, never," said Leo. "I told you I was an inside man."

"You mean I can teach you something?" asked Kent woodenly.

"Cut it out. Cut it out. Cut it out!"

Out on the horizon in the shipping lanes, there were tankers walking the water and freighters pointing their noses toward the channels into New York Harbor. A stately, white cruise ship swam south with a cargo of people on vacation. And Kent showed Leo how the brake worked on the spinning reel, how the action of the metal lure trolled in the wake of the boat was suppose to fool a fish, and what to do if a fish took the lure.

The Bluefish swung in a rocking arc and headed north along the seaside of the Hook for home, coasting easily, with her exhaust pipe gargling like granddad in the bathroom behind her.

"Just let out more line," cautioned Kent. Get out about a hundred feet, then lock your reel. Not much to this kind of fishing except keeping an eye on the job. I doubt if we raise anything."

How about a striped bass?" asked Leo hopefully.

"Could be," said Kent. "But hold that rod tight enough to keep it in the boat."

"I want an eating fish, a dinner fish with fried potatoes to go with apple pie and ice cream. I do not want a bluefish to tag and release."

Kent squinted along the wake. Somewhere out there, out there somewhere was a snowy, cream-white, ruby-eyed, wondrous fish, a dream fish, a very special creation and one of the mysteries of nature.

Leo's screech broke his dream into a thousand pieces.

Leo's line was whining off his reel. Leo's rod tip was flat out level. It dipped into the sea.

"Get it up. Get it up," commanded Kent.

Leo leaned back on his rod; his wiry body arced.

"Don't reel. Let it run, but keep the rod up."

"I got something!" yiped Leo.

"Wrong! It's got you!"

Leo's line stopped its rush for New York Harbor, curled around and headed back toward the boat, spinning Leo himself as it did so.

"Now reel! Grind! Reel! Get it in!"

Leo cranked gamely, but the line floated loosely. Suddenly it snapped straight again and the rod strained.

"Want help?"

Naahhggahh. Ugh!"

Leo pumped and ground his reel handle when he could. He puffed. Behind him David Dart grinned. At his side Kent watched anxiously. He wanted so much to help. He knew Leo would hate him if he tried to take the rod away from him. He knew it for sure. Better lose a fight than run away from one.

Leo's face seemed pinched. He worked. And foot by foot a sleek, gray shape took form in the water behind the boat. Such a graceful form, such a forceful form. There was only one shape in the sea like that one.

"Grab a gaff," cried David Dart, reaching for one himself as he spoke.

Leo heaved and his line twanged. Dart leaned over the side and lunged with the gaff. Its sharp, curved hook bit into the fish. He humped his back and flipped the fish into the boat. Kent scrambled out of the way. And there in a tangle of line was a dogfish shark about three feet long and wiggling. David Dart put his foot on its head, leaned over and took the hook and lure from its gaping mouth.

"We don't' have any shark tags," he said. "Castle, our shark man, will be upset. Maybe he'd want this one for some experiment? Who needs a shark?"

Leo sobbed for breath. He gulped air and shivered from his violent exercise and excitement. He honked and spoke.

"I don't. Maybe his mother?"

"Hand me a bluefish tag, Kent," said David Dart. "Silly, but I'll do it and tell Castle when I give him the card."

They tagged the shark through its rear dorsal fin and lifted it over the side where it drifted, flipped once and vanished strongly from their right.

Kent punched Leo in the shoulder.

"Great," he said.

David Dart hunched suddenly, looked more like a squirrel than ever, and grinned. He ducked back to the wheel and reached for the radiophone. He looked over his shoulder from the cabin and winked. Then he talked busily into his mike.

Kent and Leo sat on the tag box in the stern and let the sun flood over them.

"You want me to tell you how to catch sharks?" asked Leo.

"Some other time," grunted Kent.

They rounded the point and ran for home trailing a lacy fan of foam behind them.

There was a small crowd on the catwalk as David Dart nosed the Bluefish into the dock. There was a handful of the college men from the dormitory, some soldiers from the Fort including the mess sergeant, three enlisted men from the Coast Guard, some of the crew from the Lab's experimental boat, the Dolphin, a clutch of children from some of the soldier families on the post, and Dr. John Colin. The college boys were banging on buckets. They were yelling. Everybody was yelling. And there was a banner made out of an old bed sheet and painted with black paint. "Leo, the Hero," it said. There was a sign made out of the bottom of a cardboard carton scrawled with a black crayon. "Shark killer," it said. The noise kept the gulls in the air. The cheers boomed and the laughter was warm.

"Best we could do at a moment's notice," said David Dart. "Leo is a man, a man, a man," cried the mess sergeant. "Tomorrow he gets coffee with milk!" Leo did not know whether to laugh or cry. He just stood there with his face hanging out looking, his green eyes shining and wide.

"Crazy," he said. "Kooky nuts. Crazy!"

"Tell me how to catch sharks," said Kent. He felt very fine. He thought Mr. Dart was quite a smart man. He had a startling notion of the real size of his small roommate at the Lab. He felt fine indeed.