“Sharks are known
to have swum around a downed bleeding pilot without taking so much
as a nibble. There are also reports of them rearing up out of the
water and taking a bite out of someone’s ass. Sharks are the
most unpredictable animals in the universe and demonstrate no particular
behavior patterns. Now that we have that out of the way, what are
we going to do the rest of the week?”
We went scuba diving.
That’s how ‘George’, our ichthyologist shark expert
whose real name I can’t remember, began our first lesson.
He had been hired by the Peace Corps to teach us about shark behavior.
This was supposed to help us out in the event that we fell out of
a boat and found ourselves in the company of a shark.
We had arrived the night before. The boatman, Juan, had taken us
to this small island about 100 yards off the shore of a tiny Puerto
Rican community. Juan showed us our rooms and then went to bed.
Before he left, he mentioned George would join us in the morning.
We had a restless night. A few of us had been standing around in
our room, sizing up our new digs, when suddenly, we all levitated
off the floor a couple inches at the most god awful, loudest roar
we’d ever heard in our lives.
 “What
the fuck was that?”
“How the fuck do I know?”
“Why don’t you go out and look?”
“Yeah, you go out and look.”
We decided instead to lock the door. No lock.
“It sounded like a lion.”
“What do you know about how lions sound?”
“The movies.”
“Yeah, the MGM lion, sounded just like that.”
We heard it again.
“Jeezuz Christ!”
“We’re on an island in Puerto Rico. There are no lions
in Puerto Rico.”
There were other sounds too. More like screaming. The speculations
about the source of these roars and screams continued throughout
the night until we finally fell asleep.
The next morning George showed up and gave us his brief shark lecture,
then showed us around. Sure enough, there were makeshift cages made
out of what looked like heavy-duty chicken wire holding several
big cats, a couple little ones and a lion. The cats belonged to
the zoological department of the University of Puerto Rico and were
boarding on the island. The cats were fed large chunks of horse
and it grossed me out, plus I felt bad for their confinement. So
I spent little time with them.
 There
was also a hammerhead shark and a nurse shark that circled endlessly
within a fence of the same wire material that extended on three
sides out from a long pier, which formed the forth side of the aquatic
pen. George was the only guy to ever manage to keep two healthy
sharks alive in the sea in this manner. I spent hours on the pier
watching as the two sharks would slide gracefully by, only a foot
from the edge where I sat. I wanted so much to reach out and touch
that fin as it slid by but avoided the temptation.
One night Juan motored me to the small community across from the
island. He returned to his permanent post on the island pier, having
instructed me to give him a yell when I was ready to return. I came
back after dark, yelling across to Juan to come get me, waking him
from his dreams. When I reached shore the only lights on the island
were in our rooms but there was a moon and I half felt my way up
the narrow path to our quarters. Suddenly, not two feet from where
I walked an incredibly loud shriek let loose that nearly knocked
me down. Once my heart stopped pounding and my hair settled back
to rest upon my head again, I could hear muffled laughter further
up the path. With Juan’s help the fishermen had put two lion
kitties in a small cage and left them in the brush by the side of
the trail, knowing I would wake them as I came up the path. You
have no idea how loud a couple lion kitties the size of a small
dog can scream, especially when only a foot away in the dark.
One evening George took us in a couple of small boats to the nearby
Bay of Phosphorous. In the sea, the florescent algae clung to our
oars as we rowed, leaving behind a sparkling trail. I had seen phosphorous
before in the North Sea. A trap net is too complicated an affair
to describe here. But the important detail is the last, the pocket.
When the pocket of a trap net comes to the surface it is still dark.
Everyone’s eyes are on the depths of the pocket as it slowly
rises, waiting for the first star, the first sparkle, a sign there
is life in the net. First one flashes in the dark void, then another,
and another, until you are hauling towards you a swirling universe.
Then the fun and fury begins.
Of course some mornings bring only darkness.
But the phosphorous of northern seas is nothing in comparison to
what we saw that night. George had given us each a glass jar without
explanation. Then as we entered the bay he told us to fill our jars
with sea water, screw them tightly shut, and shake. Each jar glowed
like a lantern of green light. All around us in the night water
moved clusters of glowing lights, suddenly exploding into fireworks
displays as predator fish would burst into a school. Grown men were
reduced to children, shaking their jars of day-glo water in delight,
the green glow lighting up their faces. Of course the journey from
man to boy is never a long one for a fisherman, as you may have
figured out by now.
 Toward
the end of our stay I decided to take a last walk in the small community
across from the island. This time I made a friend and we sat by
the water and talked a long time. I told him how I admired the farmers
I saw working the fields by hand, chopping furiously into the sides
of mountains that seemed to rise almost straight up into the hot
Puerto Rican sun. He told me how everyone used to keep some animals
and do a little farming. Then they found out they could collect
U.S. welfare and started letting the avocados and fruit rot on the
ground. He said many of his friends had abandoned Puerto Rico and
gone to New York for work and found that only women could find work
cleaning houses. The men would sit at home in humiliation that the
women were providing for their family. They would just watch television
and drink. He was very bitter. Eventually we started telling each
other funny stories and he cheered up. Finally we shook hands and
I headed back to the dock. I didn’t like the idea of a yelling
across to Juan and waking him that late. I stood on the dock staring
at the water for a while, then jumped in, not knowing how deep it
was. It came to my chest. I waded a while but soon started swimming.
I am a lazy swimmer and slow. Eventually I rolled onto my back and
back stroked most of the way. Finally, I reached the dock, pulled
myself out of the water, showered and went to bed. Juan opened one
eye as I passed him on his cot. The next morning George asked me
at breakfast if it was true I had swum to the island. I told him
I had and he said, “I have something to show you tonight.”
That night George and I took the skiff to about halfway between
the island and the shore. George snapped on a flash light and swept
the water. It was teeming with sharks.
“You must have had to push them out of the way as you swam,”
he said. “They love to feed here; shallow, lots of schools
going for supper.” Since then I rarely swim in the sea at
night. Never actually. Even swimming in the day gives me a moment’s
pause. To tell the truth, I’m sort of partial to swimming
pools. |
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