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

CHAPTER NINE

They found the captain on the bridge. One of the crew was at the wheel. The captain was peering into the fish finder, a rectangular box set upon a pedestal, the glass top of which looked like a TV screen. He waved them to him.

"Take a look," he said. "There's a school of fish, pretty good size school, too. My guess is blues. Small ones though."

Kent peered into the screen. He saw a lot of white dots against a black background.

"They are about six fathoms below us, some thirty-six feet. See the gauge along the edge of the screen? That's another Fathometer. Measures depth."

The captain peeked over Kent's shoulder. "Hey, look," he said. "Look near the top of the screen. See those bigger blobs-one, two, three, four of 'em. They're bigger fish on top of the school. Pretty fast ones, too, maybe stripers, striped bass, that is. They aren't sharks unless they are little ones."

Leo stood on Kent's toes and gazed into the finder. "What's all the fuzzy stuff at the bottom?"

"You know how radar works? No? Neither do I, really, but when the beams hit cold water they diffuse, spread out and blur. That's what happens when the radio rays hit the thermocline, or the layer of cold water below the warmer, surface water. And that's why reading these things takes a lot of practice."

"You mean you can cruise along and look into this thing until you find fish and then just heave over a line and catch 'em?" asked Kent.

"Well," smiled the captain, "that's one theory, and maybe a good one if you were using a net or a trawl. Even then the fish might not feel like being caught and go away. Anyhow, I'll tell Castle that there are fish beneath us. He won't feel so lonesome.

The captain walked over to a box on a bulkhead and spoke into it. The intercom carried his words to the stern where Castle and his men were at work. Then he returned to the boys.

"Dr. Castle wants to set out his sharkline in a little while," said the captain. "It's something to see." He paused. "He's going to put out about seven miles of line,"

Kent looked at Leo who shrugged.

The captain laughed.

"This is called longline fishing," he said. "It is sort of a copycat of the longlines used by the Japanese fishermen who sometimes set and haul in fifty miles of line when they are after tuna fish."

"One fishline fifty miles long?" asked Kent, suspiciously.

"For true," said the captain. "Castle's only going to put out about seven miles and with about four hundred hooks. You'll find it interesting. You and Leo can watch the business as they do it, but keep out of the way."

"Yes sir," said Leo. "Come on, Kent."

They scuttled down the ladder from the bridge to the main deck and aft along the walkway to the stern. Dr. Castle spotted them.

"Smell action, eh? Well, come here and I'll clue you."

Dr. Castle explained that his longline had three parts. One was the main line of nylon about three eighths of an inch thick which was wrapped on the spool of a big power winch. As the line paid out over the stern of the boat, his men attached the second part of the longline, which were branch lines called gangions that held the hooks and the bait. These could be of different lengths so that they could be near the bottom or near the top of the water. The third part of the longline rig was made up of buoys, which made the whole line float. These buoys on the Dolphin were inner tubes of old truck tires pumped full of air. A gangion was attached to the main line each sixty feet. Inner tube buoys, between the gangions, were hooked to the main line about every hundred feet or so.

Dr. Castle explained that they would first drop over a marker float with an anchor to hold it erect so that it could be easily seen, and other boats would know that a longline was being fished. When all of the longline was out and in the water, there would be another marker float. The marker floats were tall bamboo poles with silly, flapping pennants on their tops.

"Were going to use menhaden or mossbunkers and whole squid for bait on the hooks. We'll be fishing in water about sixty feet deep, and the line will probably have a sag or belly in it. I can tell you now that there won't be anything to see after we set the line. Nothing to do except eat or have a story hour or something because I'm not hauling in that line for about two hours or more after she goes over the stern."

"The cook is baking apples pies," said Leo.

"Thank you for you interest in my sharks," said Dr. Castle.

"I thought you'd like to know."

How do you tag sharks? Same way we tag blues?" asked Kent.

"Not exactly," answered Dr. Castle, scratching the part of his stomach, which hung over his shorts. "The information cards make a record of species, size, location of catch and water conditions. But there are two types of tags. One is called a dart tag, which is stabbed into the shark just behind his second dorsal fin. Most sharks have two dorsal fins, the ones on top, you know. Sports fishermen fishing for shark use dart tags. They put them on the ends of poles, lean over the side of their boats and spear 'em in. Then they pull away their poles and leave the tag hung in the shark, fixed in him by a barb.

"We use roto tags. These are made up of a plastic plate with a number on it, and sort of a snap fastener. We punch a hole through the second dorsal fin with much the same kind of a punch you use to put holes in paper for your loose-leaf notebooks. Then we stick the fastener through the hole in the fin and snap it closed. A little shaft fits into a hole and locks itself. We call 'em roto tags because they can move around and not bother the shark. Those boxes are filled with them." He waved a careless hand at the deck.

"What's that box?" asked Kent, pointing to sort of a wooden trough with one open end.

"Measuring box," answered Dr. Castle. "It's our own invention. We never get enough money in this business to buy stuff, so we invent and make what we need as much as we can. We flop my dear sharks in that box, if they are small ones, and take their lengths, their metric lengths and their inches. Big ones we run a tape measure on between wiggles and bangs, if we can. Of course, the ones we want to open for study are easy to measure. They are dead."

"What do you say, Dr. Castle?" yelled one of the college men.

"Bout that time," said Dr. Castle. "Out of the road, boys."

Kent and Leo found a spy spot in the doorway of the little laboratory off the working deck and watched the winch spool wind off line, watched the scientists bait hooks, watched the line vanish into the water, watched the first marker buoy dwindle with distance as the Dolphin moved slowly away from it.

The men worked with sure hands, but the job demanded patience. There were no snags, no fouled loops. And finally the line, seven miles of it, stretched across the open sea. The Dolphin idled and rocked on her round bottom ever so gently on the flat sea. The sun said just about high noon.

"Time to call the Lab, said Dr. Castle. He went forward to the bridge.

"Time to eat," said the college men. "It'll be soup and sandwiches until dinner anyhow. And you can't always stop to chow when we're busy."

Kent peeled off his T-shirt and sat on a bait box. The sea looked like lemon-colored oil, and the sky was sun-washed into the palest of blue. The Dolphin rocked sleepily and idled ahead, leaving only the whisper of a wake. Kent felt as if he were hung in mid-air.

Dr. Castle, munching a cud of sandwich and waving a dill pickle, jarred him back into his own body.

"Talked to the office," he said. "Dr. Vernon said to tell you that the Boat Owner's Association is going right ahead with their plan to announce the thousand-dollar prize for your albino. He said as far as the Lab is concerned, all he would do is to admit again that such a fish was reported, and allegedly tagged. Reported by respectable people. He said you might not like the news, but for you also to remember that the Lab exists to serve sports fishermen as well as science itself."

Dr. Castle scratched his stomach.

"I think I know how you feel about that fish, but there's a couple of ways of looking at things. Even if the wrong people get interested in the sea for the wrong reasons, the interest is real, and enough of it helps the right people investigate the sea for maybe the right reasons. Leo says the pie is for dinner so you might as well stay up here on the deck."

Dr. Castle squinted aft. He stuffed the remaining pickle into his mouth and bolted for the door of the little laboratory. He emerged with a pair of binoculars, which he raised to his eyes. He peered through them a long minute and handed them to Kent.

"Take a look," he said. "Off to the north, and you can barely see them for the glare. School of porpoise. Hope they aren't bugging my sharks."

Kent found them in a focus. The porpoise were breaking the surface in a series of endless, arcing leaps. Now and then, and misted by distance, there was a rainbow glint as the sun lighted their aimless spray.

"Will porpoises eat sharks?" asked Kent. He was glad to change the subject of the Boat Owner's prize.

"Other way 'round," grunted Dr. Castle. "White sharks and white tipped sharks will eat porpoises when they can catch 'em, which isn't often unless the porpoise is hurt and can't swim his normal speed. But on the other hand, schooling porpoises, or even single ones, will turn on sharks and chase the tar out of them. And, on still another hand, both sharks and porpoises hunt right alongside each other to feed on trash fish or fish garbage thrown from fishing boats. Let's put it this way. Most sharks won't bother healthy porpoises, but healthy porpoises can bother sharks if they feel like it. There's sort of a rule in the sea, which says that things about the same size and speed don't usually mess with each other unless one or the other is hurt or wounded. Then, I hate to admit it, but my own sharks will eat each other."

"You said that the sharks don't eat the blues very often," mused Kent quietly.

"That's only because there are easier fish to catch as I told you, but some sharks will eat them. Take the thresher shark, the one that gets its name from the tail that looks like a big scythe, a tail that's almost half his total length. Threshers feed on blues, herring, bonito, mackerel, menhaden. They use their tails to flail school fish into tight groups the way cowboys used to make cattle mill in a small circle. Then when they get the fish all herded with their tails, gobble, gobble. We might see a thresher along about here although on this coast they like southern New England better than Jersey. Leo says that there is banana ice cream."

"Thanks," said Kent and made his way around the deck-walk to the galley below. Dr. Castle and his men began their line haul about two o'clock in the white, bright afternoon. Kent and Leo found observation spots out of the way of the working men.

A terminal anchor-marker pole came over the side first and was stowed away. An auxiliary winch on the starboard side of the boat began to wind in line, which would be later spooled on the main winch. It was used so the men could handle fish from the side of the boat. Castle had also rigged a sling of mesh cording which looked like a stretcher, the kind helicopters use to rescue wounded soldiers.

"Being caught is a shock to most fish," explained Leo gravely. "Dr. Castle handles his sharks as gently as possible no matter how they fight so that when they are tagged and returned to the water thy aren't hurt. Unless," he added with a grimace, "he wants to kill 'em dead for specimen study."

The work was slow but steady and the canvas work gloves on the men's hands grew wet with cold seawater. The first ten hooks, sizable ones of sharpened and barbed steel, were empty. The men took the bait from them, and, if it hadn't been chewed by some unknown diner along the bottom, they flipped it into boxes for re-use later.

The eleventh hook held a dogfish shark about four feet long. Two men hauled it in by the gangion, flipped it into the measuring box and held it firmly to remove the hook. One of the college men used a punch, which looked like a pair of pliers, to put a hole in the rear dorsal fin. He snapped the tag tight. The shark was relaxed. Another college man lifted it and heaved it over the side.

Dr. Castle looked over at Kent.

"That one eats crabs, lobsters and little fishes, no blues," he shouted. "He's the smooth dogfish, Mustelus canis."

There was a shout from the man watching the winched line move. "Big one!" he yelled.

"Use the sling! Hold him! Hold the main line!"

Kent and Leo scampered across the deck and up the starboard catwalk where they leaned out and watched a huge boil in the water. They watched the men maneuver the sling and slip it under the shark. It was a big fish, and it came flapping and heaving to the deck, yawning a mouth from which a chunk of squid still hung.

The shark had a back that looked like a ridge of dull, blue-gray metal and a white belly. It was about nine feet long. It bucked and thrashed on the deck, still in the cording of the sling. The men walked respectfully around it until its firs protest ceased. They measured it and tagged it.

"Dusky shark," announced Dr. Castle, scratching his stomach with a wet glove. "Lots of 'em in the Jersey waters. These are the ones that ocean bather see when they think they see anything. They eat skates and ugly old sea robins and lots of flatfish like fluke and flounder. You want to kiss it, Leo?"

"Just give it my regards," said Leo.

"Come here, Kent," said Dr. Castle. "Take a closer look."

Kent leaned over the cord-tangled shark with interest.

"Funny-shaped tail," he said.

"What you call a tail is a fin with sharks," explained Dr. Castle. "It's the caudal fin. It usually has two lobes, an upper and a lower. "Together," he grinned, "they make up the tail."

They lowered the dusky shark into the water, and it flounced off in one great dive.

"I like those old duskies," said Dr. Castle. "But what I want now is a big white or a porbeagle or a mako or a tiger. The water temperature is a bit cold for tiger, but it's warmer than I expected, so maybe we'll have lots of callers yet."

"Maybe a tiger shark about thirty feet long?" asked one of the college men.

"Not that big," said Dr. Castle. "I'd have to open him up." He paused thoughtfully. He looked at Kent. "You know those tigers are something like Leo. They eat anything at all. Examination of their stomach contents is something. Scientists have found other sharks in "em, sea lions, stingrays, turtles, birds, horseshoe crabs, boards, empty sacks, tin cans and lumps of coal. And that's the pure truth!"

"Lumps of coal I can't go," said Leo.

"Take five," said Dr. Castle. The men stopped the winches. Dr. Castle walked over to a bulkhead and told the captain to just hold the Dolphin easy.