Falling in Love with a Killer (cont.)

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Outside Magazine July 2001

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Falling in Love with a Killer (cont.)

THE DAY BEFORE THE tournament, I was up before dawn to go catch-and-release shark fishing with Carl Safina, a lifelong fisherman and the founder and director of the Audubon Society's Living Oceans Program, based in nearby Islip, Long Island. Safina and his staff of eight scientists and lobbyists use environmental and fishing-policy analysis to convince nations around the world to protect fish and their habitats. In 1997, a coalition led by Living Oceans successfully lobbied the National Marine Fisheries Service to have the Atlantic Coast's commercial shark-kill quota cut in half. Safina's 1998 book Song for the Blue Ocean is a poignant chronicle of the world's declining fisheries and those who rely on them.

Safina, 46, is of medium height with a dark beard and wavy brown hair, topped by a Living Oceans cap. We were going out on the Miss Peach, a 30-foot Black Watch sportfishing boat owned and piloted by his friend Timothy Dykman, a local artist and fisherman, to hunt down a few of the North Atlantic's sharks and check them out firsthand. We motored 18 miles south to a place called the Butterfish Hole, and Dykman cut the engine and lowered a perforated bucket of ground fish into the water. Safina filleted a bluefish and laced a hook—its barb filed off so it could be pulled out of the fish's mouth easier—through the meat. He slowly let out the line behind the boat until it was 60 yards back. A hunk of foam rubber kept the bait floating just below the surface.

Safina said he doubted we'd find a mako; now mostly blue sharks prowled here. "People used to fish these waters for giant tuna and swordfish, and they'd get besieged by sharks, sometimes as many as a hundred a day," he said. "No one wanted them; they were considered trash fish." But by the late 1980s, swordfish and the great schools of tuna were almost gone. "If you wanted to consistently catch big fish—and tourists do—sharks were it. They were the only thing left that was easily available."

Soon the commercial fishing industry realized that a lot of money could be had from sharks—or shark fins, to be specific, which are sold to Asian markets for shark-fin soup. The other 95 percent of the animal, of such little value that it's not worth refrigerating, gets dumped overboard and sinks to the bottom where it dies from blood loss. (In 1998, President Bill Clinton approved a law banning the practice of finning in U.S. waters, but there are still no regulations for international waters, 200 miles beyond U.S. shores.)

Suddenly Safina jumped up, grabbed the rod, and started reeling like a madman. He handed the rod to me and I shoved the butt of it into my belly and held on tight. The strain on my arms from the running blue shark felt like I was doing a chin-up. It was the first time in my life I've been hooked into a creature that weighed more than me.

At first that fish and I just had fun with each other, testing our skills and stamina. He'd come my way some, I'd go his way some, but I knew this would lead somewhere else, like a little playful wrestling that could at any moment turn into dirty sex. Things between us slowly became serious, angry, and mean. I thought that fucker was going to tear my arms off, and then I didn't care if he did. I poured myself into that 150-pound-test line, and the shark did, too, all couple-hundred pounds of him. Again and again he fled from me to the depths, and every time I hauled him back up. We might have stayed there forever, locked in a monofilament embrace, but eventually Safina jumped in when the shark was near the boat and popped the hook free, divorcing us.

"Some sharks take ten years to reach sexual maturity," Safina said as I massaged my arms. "If everyone decided right now to just leave them alone, it would be years until you noticed any improvement. And even then it would happen very slowly."

Another blue shark had followed the chum to the boat. He looked to be the size of a pro wrestler. He stayed close, pacing the boat like a heeling dog.

"Far be it from me to understand why people join those tournaments," Safina said. "The marinas who put them on do it because they can make a lot of money from entrance fees and retail and service sales. It's a business. But I don't want you to think that shark tournaments, or even recreational shark fishing, are wholly to blame for declined shark populations. Finning and by-catch are the main factors. In the grand scheme, shark tournaments are almost beside the point. My aversion to them comes from attaching a carnival atmosphere to the killing of a big, beautiful fish—something that, if done, should be deeply contemplative and personal."

Safina was still caught up in the grace and allure of landing a fish. He respected Potts and told me that I was lucky to be going out with him, that Potts was a good fisherman. But Potts didn't plan on throwing his makos back.

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