Sharks, the Sea and Me by Rodney Fox

Author:Rodney Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, BG, BIO030000
ISBN: 9781743052631
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2014-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Hunting for great whites continued to escalate in the wake of Jaws. The saying heard often was ‘The best shark is a dead shark’. An American entrepreneur was said to have offered $10,000 for a large dead great white shark to freeze and display. Game fishermen vied to break Alf Dean’s world record. Many a lobster fisherman hung a baited hook and chain on heavy-duty rope over the side when anchored up for the night, hoping to land a great white for its valuable jaws and teeth. The teeth became collectors’ items and popular as necklaces.

I didn’t see many game fishermen when out on my shark expeditions, probably because we often lured sharks with horsemeat and blood as well as fish, and game-fishing rules forbade using land animals as bait. Several times, however, the sharks we attracted were hooked after we left. Professional fishermen sometimes anchored near us at the Neptunes overnight, blatantly hanging over hooks to catch our sharks, which utterly disgusted me and my guests. I’d go over in a dinghy and ask them not to catch any sharks while we were there because our visitors had come all the way from the US and Europe just to photograph living great whites. The fishermen couldn’t care less, so I’d shift to Dangerous Reef and hope that, without our concentrated chumming, the sharks would not be drawn to their boat.

On one of Carl’s ten-day tourist trips, we did a little exploring, looking for better spots to see great whites. We picked up his group 480 kilometres west of Port Lincoln at Ceduna and tried various islands for sharks on the way back. At beautiful Pearson Island, where I had dived for abs and seen tuna fishermen shooting sea lions several years earlier, we spotted rare Pearson Island wallabies and quite a few sea lions but no great whites. We sheltered at Little Greenly Island during a bad storm. The wind was howling at 110 to 130 km/h, the seas huge, and for two days we could do nothing. With only two days left, we secured the gear and overnight bashed 16 hours back to Dangerous Reef, everyone strapped in their bunks. It was one of the worst seas I’ve been in and everyone was battered and sick. Even the skipper threw up.

As we anchored in the calmer waters off Dangerous Reef, the sun came out, the wind died down and, after bacon and eggs, toast and coffee, we felt much better. We had started our oil slick upon arrival and hung baits over the side. This was our last day and with no sharks, spirits were gloomy. Some of our American guests were quite low, having paid so much money to just get violently seasick. One said he couldn’t go home because he’d boasted so much to his friends he’d be a laughing stock. Two guests were sitting on the back deck, making hangman’s nooses from rope which they (sort of) jokingly said were for Carl and me. I

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