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

CHAPTER TEN

The afternoon grew older. The longline moved steadily back into the boat. Most of its hooks were empty, but still the tagging score mounted as the men worked, and Dr. Castle did not seem displeased. "I been skunked before," he said ungrammatically. "This is not bad."

There were four small, blue sharks, a specie supposedly the most numerous of all the oceanic sharks. There were three brown or sandbar sharks, the most common of the large sharks reported in New York and Jersey waters. They were fair size, about six feet, which explained their presence so far offshore. "Like the duskies," said Dr. Castle, "these sand-bars are also what swimmers see when they think they see something which mostly they don't." There were fifteen smooth dogfish.

Dr. Castle showed Kent how to tell the difference between males and females. He flipped over a three-foot dogfish and showed him two thick fingerlike appendages located between the shark's pelvic fins. "These are claspers. Only males have them. They are used in the mating process."

From time to time one of the college men would visit the little laboratory to run a test of the ocean's salt content and to record a water temperature.

"This is important," said Leo to Kent. "Most people see an ocean and think, well, there's an ocean. You can have about ten different types of ocean all in a mile stretch of water, and all with different conditions which affect the things that grow and live in the kind of water they like. Your bluefish, for instance, can hit a band of cold water on their way up from the south and stop dead. Just as if they'd hit a stone fence. That cold is a fence for them. When the temperature rises, they'll move on. Not for that reason alone, though. Warmer waters make the plankton grow and give the little fish more to eat. Then the bigger fish move up to eat the smaller fish. But you know a lot of this."

"Some," admitted Kent. "There's more I don't' know."

"You said it, buddy. That's why I said the other night that searching the ocean is more important than finding one fish, even your albino."

Leo, decided Kent, was a wise kid, much wiser than he looked, all ribs and knobby arms and legs and the size of a cricket. He felt just a mite humble and unreasonably stubborn about it, which, he decided, was small of him, sort of baby. He played shortstop, not Leo. But, as Dad reminded him once in a while, he had a lot to learn.

The white shark came alongside with about fifty hooks to go. It turned the working deck of the Dolphin into a scramble. It flipped the hook from its own cavernous mouth even before the sling had been slipped under it. It fought the sling as it was being hoisted. Castle, tiptoeing like a bullfighter, got a lasso around its tail, and just in time because it slithered out of an end of the sling and nearly made it back to the sea. When they got it on deck, it beat the metal like a crazy bongo drum. The men weaved and ducked out of its reach. When it quieted some, Castle slipped in with a club and gave it peace.

"I want this baby," he said with a fierce look, which belied his great love for sharks at the moment.

The white shark was not really white. It was the color of dirty-blue slate along the back, and a smudged and unclean white along its belly. It looked used and tough and vicious. It was sixteen feet long, and it somehow made the deck space look small.

"In the tropics these things get to be about thirty feet long," said Dr. Castle. "This is just fair size. But I want sections of him for growth studies." He patted the shark's side. "Feels like a file, sharp and bristly. And look at those teeth."

Kent did and shuddered. The teeth in both the upper and lower jaws looked like Indian arrowheads with needlelike points and saw edges. Leo, squatting for a careful look, said, "My dentist would love him."

"Remarkable thing about sharks' teeth," said Dr. Castle, just as proudly as if they were his own. "If they bust one off, they just drop down another from sort of an ammunition rack along the gums to replace it. They keep rows of them for almost instant use. This shark, the white, is your man-eater in these waters, although I hate to admit it. They are very dangerous fellows. Did you know that they devour their prey almost whole? Entire seals, sea lions, tuna fish, sturgeon-all big stuff have been found intact in their stomachs."

"Men?" asked Leo.

"Say small boys," said Dr. Castle and roared with laughter as Leo flinched.

There was something sloppy and messy and small-boy, garden-dirt silly about being on a working boat even among scientists, thought Kent. Something nice and scrimy and somehow raw and unfinished that went with the sea itself. Something strange and scary, too, even under the blazing light of the sun overhead and the clean tang of the tasteable air.

The men hauled the white shark out of the working area, and went on with the fishing.

"Come on," ordered Dr. Castle. "I want to get another set out yet today. There's lots of daylight. Won't be dark until nine or so. But maybe I'll use a short line, say a couple of miles for the dusk fishing."

The Dolphin's Diesel engine snored as though it were dozing. The captain came down the deck from his bridge and joined them for a visit leaving a crewmate at the wheel. He was just in time. There were three hooks to go when the longline produced an unusual visitor and the sling went into use again.

"It's a hammerhead," shouted one of the hard working college men.

It was indeed, and about ten feet long. Kent and Leo scriggled over for a closer look as it flopped out of the sling upon the deck.

"Gently, gently," shouted Castle. "I don't want this one hurt."

The hammerhead shark has a head shaped like the capital letter T. In some of them the crossbar of the T is straight. In others, it is bowed or curved. Its wide and staring eyes are set into the ends of the T's crossbar. If you turned the hammerhead upon its side, its head would look like a hammer.

This one was a scalloped hammerhead, almost totally pale gray in color, a species not uncommon to Jersey waters in the warmer months.

"Usually see these fellow in August," said Dr. Castle. "Yike! Yike! Yike! He shouted. "This one ain't no fellow. It's a girl. It's a mother!"

The scalloped hammerhead, rolled out of the cord sling, and was giving birth to pups!

Kent stared in amazement. Leo's mouth hung open. The men seemed stunned. None of the scientists had ever seen anything like this. As Dr. Castle said later, how could they?

Just as if she were pupping in some sheltered, inshore bay close to some friendly, marine-nursery grounds, the mother hammerhead delivered her babies. There were two, four, six, eight, ten of them alive and about sixteen inches long.

Leo was so eager to see them he almost fell among them.

"Don't nest in 'em, Leo," yelled on of the college men.

"Sluice them with water," shouted Dr. Castle. "And move fast. I want all of these pups tagged and mother, too. And you better handle them with lovin' care. I want them safe and back in the sea!"

With sure hands and moving quickly and deftly, the men tagged the babies, the pups. They tagged the female hammerhead, too. They used their hands to transport the pups over the side. They used the sling with care to do the same for the mother. Everybody on the deck lined the rail. They watched the pups wiggle easily into motion. They watched the female begin to swim. The family vanished.

"Hey!" cried Kent. "The pups aren't going with their mother."

"I'd be surprised if they did," said Dr. Castle. "Because most sharks bear their young alive, the young are larger, better equipped, than the young of other fishes. Some of them you can't see with the naked eye, but the shark young come ready to be on their own and big enough to have a good chance to survive. It's great, just great! Why, five minutes after being born, those sharks are going to work, and alone!"

The last hooks came over the side. The marker pole and anchor were lifted aboard and stowed. The day's first set of the longline was ended.

"Well," sighed Dr. Castle. "That was memorable. Now to make some sense of a report to phone in to the office. This is news. I'll write a scientific paper about how we shocked a hammerhead into giving birth."

"Would she have given birth is she hadn't been caught," asked Leo.

"Sure," said Dr. Castle, "but not here and maybe not now and maybe not even for a week or so yet. I just don't know."

"They must be the youngest fish ever tagged," marveled Kent.

Dr. Castle stretched his stomach and scratched it with proud care. "Any younger than that," he said, "And they'd come with Sandy Hook Marine Lab tags already on 'em as standard equipment."

Kent shook his head. There was a buzzing in his ears. He looked about to see if any of the others had heard anything. They had. Some of them were looking at the sky, west to the unseen coastline. Then, sliding into his vision, a blurred form in the sun-washed sky, he saw a blob, which became a helicopter. The others watched it come closer to the Dolphin and with a shared curiosity. It was a small chopper with a kite-like frame body. It looked frail and as though somebody had put it together with sticks in a Boy Scout project. Then it was overhead and circling.

"That's a State bird," said one of the college men. "It's one of the New Jersey Marine Patrol helicopters, one of those they use to chase party fishing boats off the beaches, and to make 'em stop throwing papers and garbage over the side. It's a long way from home out here. Wonder what he wants?"

The chopper circled and hovered overhead close enough for them to feel rotor wash.

A bullhorn spoke to them. A bullhorn is an electrified megaphone that amplifies voices, makes them louder.

"Is Kent Palmer aboard that boat?" asked the voice.

Dr. Castle ran toward the bridge and borrowed the captain's own bullhorn. He yelled through it.

"Who wants to know?"

"Me," came the answer, "the State of New Jersey."

"Why do you want to know?" boomed Dr. Castle.

"Because," said the overhead speaker.

"He's here," shouted Dr. Castle, a vast scorn in his voice for any authority handed down from above.

The helicopter spun. It looked more like a box kite than ever. It scuttled crabwise toward the coast. It moved fast. It turned into a pencil dot on the pale paper of the afternoon sky and vanished.

"Well," said Leo. Everybody said, "Well."

Kent said nothing at all. He and Leo made their way forward to the bridge where Dr. Castle was busy getting in touch with the Lab by ship-to-shore phone. The captain stood by his wheel and looked like a Viking at nap. He was a man not easily disturbed. Dr. Castle talked a long time. He listened a long time, too. He replaced the phone and pulled up his shorts, which had slipped down, around his hips. "Kent Palmer and his albino bluefish," he said softly. "And I never had a chance to tell 'em about my hammerhead." He shook his head and stared at Kent. "I told you that the Boat Owner's Association had gone ahead with their thousand-dollar prize. That's nothing. It's a nothing nothing. The biggest brewery in the country, maybe the biggest beer maker in the world has just offered a prize of $250,000, that's a quarter of a million dollars, for the capture of your albino blue."

Dr. Castle recited firmly. "The State of New Jersey and this brewery think it is great for the resort business. The Federal Government thinks it is splendid as an inducement to greater marine recreation. The Department of Interior's Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife sees it as added proof of the importance of its work."

Dr. Castle continued. "The advertising industry is hugging itself for having such a dandy idea so soon. And we are ordered back to port sooner than possible, which may not be all that soon."

He looked at the captain who seemed sleepier than ever. The captain squinted back at Dr. Castle. They had shared many a day on the Dolphin.