The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks (19 page)

According to Kevin, the aquarium was sensitive to the dismal history of captive white sharks and determined not to make any of the same mistakes. The project had been planned with military precision and advised by eminent scientists. Monterey Bay was perhaps the most reputable aquarium in the world, and if any group could successfully present a great white shark to the public, they could. As I thought about it, I realized that I liked the idea of people getting to see one of these fish at close range. Though there’s something fierce and romantic in the notion of one last untamed animal, after seeing a great white you could never think that we’d be better off without them. But it would take a combination of skill and luck to pull this off without another dead shark lying at the bottom of a tank. For five weeks Kevin and the rest of the team had cruised around near the Channel Islands, where baby white sharks were known to gather at this time of the year. Three days before the project’s end, they’d retrieved a five-foot female who had gotten tangled in a halibut gill net. She was transferred into a five-million-gallon pen in the ocean, where she was tagged and later observed eating some salmon. It all seemed promising, the shark was perfect, but the lease on the tuna pen ran out and they ended up releasing her rather than attempting to move her to Monterey before conditions were right. (The plan had been to keep shrinking the size of the holding area until it approximated the million-gallon aquarium tank.)

Actually, California had been breaking out in white shark happenings all summer. On August 24, Deborah Franzman, a fifty-year-old teacher who counted swimming with seals among her hobbies, was fatally attacked by a sixteen-foot great white at Avila Beach, two hundred miles north of Los Angeles. It had been nine years since a white shark killed someone in California, and the shark message boards and chat rooms buzzed. Some thought Franzman had been courting danger. “
Swimming with seals?
Why didn’t she just put a dinner bell around her neck!” wrote one member before being chastised for insensitivity by fellow shark enthusiasts.

Meanwhile, a stone’s throw down the coast, three great white sharks had congregated near the San Onofre nuclear plant and were photographed from news helicopters and by pilots from nearby Camp Pendleton every day for a month. After numerous sightings and subsequent beach closures, the sharks became such local fixtures that they were given the names Sparky, Fluffy, and Archie. As word of the trio’s persistent presence spread, sightseers thronged the windswept beach. “We could have went to any beach in San Clemente, but I thought it would be fun to maybe see someone get bit or chased by a shark,” one visitor explained to the local press. Others had asked the park rangers, “What time do the sharks appear?” When a fourth shark had shown up, it seemed prudent to cancel the annual Labor Day surfing competition. No one could figure out why Fluffy, Sparky, and Archie were loitering around this particular spot, until city officials admitted that they had buried a forty-foot fin whale at this beach two years ago.

Closer to home, in August, Peter had been startled to receive email queries from a group of open-water swimmers planning a relay from Southeast Farallon to the Golden Gate Bridge on September 20. As a precaution, they said, they would be wearing an electronic repellent device called the “Shark Shield,” and what were his thoughts about this? “I discourage this idea,” Peter hastily emailed in response. “In September the sharks are just back from the mid-Pacific and they’re hungry. I don’t think the electronic wrist watches would be effective given the white shark’s hunting strategy of rushing up from the depths.” Recounting the story to me, Peter scoffed. “So the shark’s thinking, ‘Hmmm, I don’t like this noise,’ but at that point it’s hauling ass upward at forty miles per hour. What’s it gonna do? Make a U-turn?”

The race, which would have taken place yesterday, had been canceled when the escort boat’s insurance company balked. In fact, no coverage could be had for any boat participating in this competition, nor for any part of the swim, period. The notion that this event had almost taken place disturbed me so much that I’d phoned one of the organizers, a seventy-year-old man named Joe Oakes who also ran a swimming race called “Escape from Alcatraz.” Despite Peter’s warnings, he remained undeterred. I’d mentioned that I was a swimmer myself and that while I certainly understood the allure of open water, given what I’d seen out there I really couldn’t imagine diving in at East Landing and stroking away, particularly in the fall. Oakes laughed. “There are always sharks,” he said in a dismissive voice. He had complete faith in the repellent device, likening its effect to a brisk whack on the animal’s snout. “They don’t like that one bit. Hey, do you want to be on the relay? Get us a boat, and you’ve got yourself a team.”

AN HOUR LATER, PETER, KEVIN, AND I BOARDED
JUST IMAGINE
,
TYING
the whaler alongside. I realized immediately that it was even harder to climb between pitching boats of wildly varying sizes when they were tied together. Fingers mashed between the railings would fare about as well as a caterpillar clapped between two blocks of cement. Poor timing on the swells could easily result in hang time from
Just Imagine
’s railing or, worse, falling between the boats as they smacked against each other.

The sailboat was roomy but hard-used, with fore and aft bunks, a pocket kitchen, a semicircular dining banquette, and, surprisingly, a bathroom with a full-size shower. Overall, it looked nothing like the pictures of yachts you see in travel magazines, the ones where assorted Italian magnates and an accompanying herd of fashion models are lounging around on deck drinking Cristal and wearing Pucci sarongs.
Just Imagine
was to glamour yachts what cargo planes were to Lear jets, what Clydesdales were to Arabians. Its decor listed heavily toward seventies-era rec room—acres of shellacked knotty pine, dusty bottles of no-name brandy, a stained glass porthole, and, in the center of the floor, a groovy bas-relief carving of a woman wearing nothing but long hair.

Unfortunately, Tom explained, on the trip down from Seattle they had encountered some bad weather and they had jibed and, well, part of the starboard side had been ripped off. We looked: yellow twine and duct tape crisscrossed an area once occupied by a railing. “Best not to walk on that side,” he said. Also, Tom mentioned offhandedly, the refrigerator had gone down, and the plumbing did not quite seem to be working either. I stared at him. “What do you
mean
the plumbing doesn’t work?” I felt panic. “Well, just now I tried to flush the toilet, but there was this backwash…” He opened a cabinet and pumped a long lever hopefully. “See, there’s no vacuum—hey! What do you know! It’s working!” Something gurgled ominously in the head, followed by a vicious blurping noise. “So there is plumbing?” I confirmed. “I guess there is! That’s cool!” he said, with surprise in his voice. I glanced at Peter and Kevin. I supposed I could drink warm beer and I’d have to donate most of my groceries to the island crew, but plumbing seemed non-negotiable.

I stood off to the side while everyone else attempted to create a mooring setup that would stay secured for the duration. The process was anything but simple: Should the bow face north or south? How far should the sailboat be from the buoy in the middle of the bay? What about the anchor? How many ropes? It went on. Peter and Kevin climbed into the whaler, untied it, and idled beside us so they could ferry the ropes to the buoy, while Tom and Bob argued about where
Just Imagine
should lie. The spot they chose was quite far offshore, straddling the mouth of the bay. It was obvious that whatever shelter the cove offered would be next to useless in this spot, especially in the event of northwest winds (which happened to be the prevailing winds). This anchorage also aligned
Just Imagine
with a gap between Sugarloaf and Arch Rock, so that westerly gusts would come barreling through at a ninety-degree angle to the boat, broadsiding it. Peter noticed this immediately and asked if the yacht shouldn’t be moved in slightly, but Tom wanted to hook the anchor on a reef edge that traversed the area. He crouched at the bow holding the windlass, a device that lowers and raises the anchor. Slowly, the chain paid out. Tom spoke to
Just Imagine
as he was doing this, and after several minutes of encouragement, he suddenly yelled, “Oh no, oh no, OH NO,
GODDAMMIT!”

“What’s wrong?!” I asked, alarmed.

“Oh, I thought for a second there I lost the anchor,” he said, looking relieved. “But I caught it just in time. That wouldn’t have been pretty.”

Given that
Just Imagine
was now more than two hundred yards from the buoy, Peter and Kevin had to tie four ropes together to reach it. This, of course, made for three weak links, and as a precaution they looped another set of ropes along with the first. When they reboarded, I could tell they were startled by the way that the yacht was now secured on both ends—ropes off the stern, anchor chain off the bow. Tying a boat up this way, stretched like a hammock, is not usually recommended as it prevents the boat from tracking with the wind, and sure enough, even though the gusts had died down and right now there was really nothing but a breeze,
Just Imagine
began to buck from side to side. Peter and Kevin stood at the stern with their arms crossed, looking perturbed. They were convinced that if the wind picked up there might be real trouble, but Tom and Bob, who had strong opinions about the matter, were adamant.

We climbed down the wooden ladder into the cabin to get a lesson in how things worked. As we moved through the interior, Tom spent a long time rhapsodizing on the craftsmanship of the woodwork, fondling objects he found squirreled away inside cubbyholes, and giving us a thorough inventory of the moldering food that was left over from the Seattle trip. The contents of the broken fridge had been spoiling for more than a week. I couldn’t wait to throw the rotten lunchmeat over the side, see what came along to check it out.

He glossed quickly over the instrument panels, which looked like something you might encounter at NASA mission control. Colored switches, lights, gauges, keys, and dials lined the wall nearest the hatch. There was talk of which knobs to turn and which buttons never to touch, which dials should be monitored and which warning lights could be ignored. He explained the workings of the arcane 12-volt electrical system in about twenty words, mentioning offhandedly that if an earsplitting buzzer went off, as it was sometimes apt to do, we should shut down everything immediately, call him, and maybe go ashore. Peter took notes. I was suddenly very tired and distracted, catching only odd snatches of instruction.

Moving to the fore, Tom opened a wood-paneled drawer of documents and maps, explaining that this was where he kept
Just Imagine
’s important papers. Joking, I noted that these, then, were the things we’d need when we took the yacht to South America. Tom wheeled around to look at me, his face hard, the laid-back demeanor nowhere in evidence.
“I’d have the police after you so fast,”
he said, in the low, measured voice of someone completely unamused. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then, noticing the tension, we all laughed uneasily. Clearly, he did not think my joke was that funny. Surely though, he couldn’t think I was serious. In that split second, I’d seen something akin to panic in Tom’s eyes. Here he was, explaining the ins and outs of his precious boat to a group of strangers: how to run the engine, what to do and not do with the propane valve, how to unscrew the special handmade rack that held the dried fruit. And then he would be sailing in the opposite direction, leaving us in charge, having moored his baby in one of the most notoriously dangerous marine spots on Earth.

PETER AND KEVIN SHUTTLED TOM, BOB, AND BRIAN TO THE
FLYING
Fish,
which still had fishing lines trailing behind it. I stood on
Just Imagine
’s deck and looked around. Fisherman’s Bay was a classic U-shaped cove, ringed on all sides by vertical rock. The bay was tricky. It looked like a lee, but it was actually quite exposed, and in the past boats had ventured in seeking shelter and never made it back out. At the southern tip of the
U,
in a thimble of a gulley, was the North Landing. The gulley’s mouth was barely fifteen feet wide, and from there it narrowed almost to a point. Drop offs required the boat driver to dash in between swells, maneuver next to the one flat rock in the gulley, hoping that the passengers had enough dexterity to leap quickly, and then dart back out before the next set of waves came surging in. At one time there had been a crane here too, but the entire derrick was ripped from its concrete platform by a storm in 1905 and had never been replaced. That was the thing about North Landing: At first glance it looked benign, much more manageable than East Landing. It wasn’t.

Just Imagine
’s anchorage centered it between Sugarloaf, the massive rock 200 yards to the west, and Tower Point, 150 yards to the east. Adjacent to Tower Point was the even more massive Shubrick Point. This northeastern stretch of the island was all Sisterhood. I would literally be sleeping above them. Earlier, as we boarded the sailboat, Peter had volunteered that he’d seen Copepod Mama—eighteen feet if she was an inch—feeding right where we were anchored. And Scot had once watched the same shark drag a carcass into the shallows, directly in front of the Fisherman’s Bay buoy. Seals had been hit close to shore in here, and the sweep of water at the bay’s mouth was noteworthy for the number of jumbo-sized elephant seals that had floated there, headless—alpha kills that only a Sister could’ve made. Then, there was Ron’s experience in this neighborhood. He’d had his closest call ever right off
Just Imagine
’s newly positioned bow.