Shark Tracker: Confessions of an Underwater Cameraman
240
Shark Tracker: Confessions of an Underwater Cameraman
240eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781742242620 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Shark Tracker
Confessions of an Underwater Cameraman
By Richard Fitzpatrick
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2016 Richard FitzpatrickAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74224-262-0
CHAPTER 1
Bruce, the baby great white
'Mate, we have a great white shark!'
I had been working at Oceanworld for a few months when I was awoken early one morning by an excited phone call from the curator, Ian Gordon. Some of the crew had gone out fishing for seven gill sharks that were needed for the aquarium, and had been using long lines to fish the deep waters off Sydney's North Head. To make sure the sharks were healthy, the lines were checked every half hour or so. The crew had been out for a few hours with no bites at all, then just after sunrise they pulled in a line and up from the depths came a shark. But they soon realised it was not a seven gill shark, but a baby great white shark. It was about 1.3 metres in length — the perfect size to be placed in the main shark tank at Oceanworld. And, as it had only been on the line for a short time, it was under minimal stress.
Ian and I had a quick discussion about the best way to deal with it. Cruising back with it inside the specially built shark transport container from outside the Heads was going to take well over an hour to get to the aquarium at Manly. We worried that this was going to take too long. So instead we decided to bring the shark to Shelly Beach, on the ocean side of Manly, where we would have a truck ready with another specialist shark transport unit to take the shark quickly to the aquarium on the harbour side.
I was to assemble the crew and take the truck to meet Ian and the boat at Shelly Beach. It just so happened that day my car was not working and I was staying a couple of kilometres from the aquarium, so I quickly had breakfast and started running. A couple of staff members passed me in their cars on the way, but none of them stopped to pick me up. Finally I arrived at the aquarium and, breathless from the run, I assembled everyone and told them we had a very special shark on its way. We quickly put the shark transport unit together and onto the back of a work truck and got the oxygen bottles ready. It was only a five-minute journey from the aquarium to Shelly Beach. We parked on the boat ramp and waited for the Oceanworld boat to arrive. Everyone was really excited. One unusual piece of kit that we'd been asked to bring was a surf ski. So we took this off the truck and put it in the water. By this time it was about 7.30 in the morning. It was a beautiful bright day and the beach was full of people jogging and swimming. Little did they know that one of the ocean's most feared predators was about to arrive.
Finally we saw Ian slowly making his way around the corner of North Head and towards the beach. He was travelling slowly to minimise any shock from the bouncing boat to the shark in the shark transport unit.
Ian motored the boat towards the boat ramp and I jumped on the surf ski and paddled out to meet him. All the guys on the boat reckoned the shark was in great condition. It still had the hook in its mouth, connected to the long leader of the long line. We attached the end of the leader to the back of the surf ski and the guys in the boat used a harness to gently remove the great white from the transport container and ease it into the water. The idea now was for me to paddle the surf ski around until the shark started to revive. The leader was about 8 metres long. So here I was, out in Shelly Beach paddling the surf ski with a great white shark 8 metres behind me. I paddled gently and slowly so I was not driving the shark but rather allowing it to recover and start swimming of its own accord. I was simply directing it which way to go. The shark stayed on the surface the whole time with its dorsal fin breaking the water. As I started to paddle closer to shore, people on the beach started yelling at me, 'Shark! Shark!'
'Yes, I know it's a shark,' I yelled back.
By this time we'd attracted a lot of attention and people kept coming down to the water's edge to see what was happening. I made my way back towards the boat ramp where the rest of the crew were waiting for me. By this time the boys had taken the boat back to the aquarium: at high speed the journey would only take twenty minutes. The idea was for me to keep paddling with the great white shark behind me for at least twenty minutes to give it a good chance of recovery before stressing it again in the short truck ride to the aquarium.
When it was time to put the shark in the transport container, the team simply slung another harness underneath it, and then lifted it out of the water and placed it in the shark transport unit. The shark transport unit in this case was simply a large tub of seawater into which we injected oxygen at an extremely high rate. Once the shark was settled in, we made the five-minute drive from the ocean side of Manly to the aquarium on the harbour side. When we got there, the rest of the boat crew were ready and waiting. The aquarium at Manly has a unique feature: a sealock that allows sharks to be swum in from the harbour outside into a holding area before they are released into the main tank. Ian and the guys had the sealock doors open and the guys were already in their wetsuits in the water waiting for us. Again using a sling to take the shark out of the holding tank, we quickly ran the length of the jetty and down the stairs and put the shark into the water. The shark was still in the sling as the guys swam it over from the jetty to the lock and into the holding facility. The rest of us ran down to the diving area and quickly donned our wetsuits and dive equipment in preparation for the shark going into the main tank. Once we were in all our equipment, we jumped into the holding tank where Ian and his team had already removed the hook from the shark's mouth.
In all the commotion this was the first chance I really had to have a look at this amazing shark. It was a baby boy, only about 1.3 metres long. At this point in history only a handful of great white sharks had been trialled in captivity in aquariums around the world. No one had successfully kept one for any length of time. The main problem with the great whites caught previously was the length of time between their capture and subsequent release into the aquarium facility. Most had been caught long distances from the aquariums and the transportation times had been many hours, even up to half a day. In fact, most of these sharks had been captured accidentally by fishermen, who had then contacted the various aquariums. So far we had had the shortest transportation time of any great white to date.
The other thing we had going for us was the fact that this was a small specimen. If anyone was ever going to have a chance of successfully keeping a great white shark in captivity, this was it. This was a holy grail of public aquariums. In addition, the main shark tank at Oceanworld was perfect for pelagic predators. It was in the shape of a giant doughnut, and the tunnel running down the middle of the doughnut was 110 metres in length. The circular shape, in addition to a large water flow, created a great current that was perfect for open ocean or pelagic predators.
Adrenaline was running high among the crew. We had a quick briefing as we stood waist-deep in the holding tank nursing this baby great white shark. It was decided that all the dive crew would go into the tank in scuba gear and spread out to ensure that the shark was swimming around successfully. It had been at least ten minutes now since the shark had been free swimming behind the surf ski at Shelly Beach. The outer sealock door was now closed and the inner door to the main tank was open.
The dive team quickly entered the tank and swam off to take up positions around the aquarium. Ian would bring the shark in and start swimming it around until it started to swim on its own accord. I positioned myself against the wall on the inner ring of the tank so I could get a good view as Ian and the shark entered. Gently holding its pectoral fins, Ian started to swim the great white around the aquarium. With the forward momentum of the water flushing across its gills, it did not take long for the little great white to start beating its tail. Its breathing rate was weak at first, but I could see it increasing in strength with every successive beat. After only a few minutes Ian was able to release it and the shark began to swim on its own.
To a baby great white the main tank at Oceanworld must've seemed completely alien. In the ocean it would never have experienced the density of animals that were swimming around the aquarium. Light came not from a single source like the sun, but from multiple light sources of fluorescent and metal halide lights. And then of course there were the transparent acrylic walls of the aquarium. Until now this baby shark had never encountered obstacles like these. And this morning bizarre bubble-breathing creatures — the Oceanworld dive team — were ranged along these walls. The idea was for the divers to stay out of the shark's way as much as possible, but if for some reason it started to swim towards a wall or bumped into one, a diver was to swim with the shark and try to get it to move away. For the first few minutes the shark had a hard time navigating around the tank. It constantly bumped into walls. At one stage it swam directly at me. I thought it was going to turn away, but when I realised it wasn't, I started to wave my arms about, hoping to scare it into taking a different direction. But the shark kept coming. Even though I knew it was only a small shark, I caught myself thinking a great white is coming straight at me. It actually slammed into my chest and I had to push it gently away from the wall.
We were all hoping that as it settled in, the shark would start to swim around the entire length of the tank, but this was not to be. Instead, it swam in circles in just one half of the entire aquarium system. At least now it was no longer swimming into the walls. At this point I realised I had not seen any of the dominant grey nurse sharks in the tank since the great white had been released. I started to look around for them but then Ian signalled the divers on my side of the tank to slowly move away from the walls and leave the shark alone. As I retreated, a diver coming from the other side of the tank indicated I should come and look at something.
I swam with him over to the other side of the tank, and there were all the grey nurse sharks: they were sitting side by side on the bottom of the tank and refusing to move. Some of these sharks were up to 3 metres long and had been in captivity for over 15 years, yet none of them would move. I could actually pick them up and they would sink back down to the bottom. It was amazing to think that most of these grey nurse sharks were at least twice the size of the great white, yet had had such an immediate reaction to its arrival.
We named our baby great white Bruce after the robot shark in the Jaws movie, and I had high hopes that he would settle into life in the aquarium. Bruce spent the first twenty-six hours on the northern sand flat, then moved to the southern sand flat. It was as if he forgot about the other side of the aquarium. Joining the two sides were two 3-metre-wide raceways, but Bruce rarely swam through them. We thought he might be avoiding the raceways because they were darker than the other areas of the aquarium. So we strung up a series of 500-watt spotlights. Bruce immediately swam down one raceway, completed a full circuit, and then went back to his favourite side, never swimming back around again, much to our frustration. Here we had an aquarium especially built in a doughnut shape to accommodate pelagic species, and Bruce wouldn't swim all the way around!
We had hoped that Bruce might eat some of the fish in the aquarium, but over the following days he showed no interest in food. Ian and I stayed at the aquarium over the following days, keeping the shark under constant surveillance. There was very little sleep for either of us.
On the fifth morning it became clear that he wasn't thriving. His swimming looked laboured, his mouth hung open and he was holding his body at a strange angle. He didn't have enough momentum to glide. It was clear that if we kept him, he was going to deteriorate further.
We all agreed that, with regret, we had no choice but to return him to the ocean. The dive team assembled and Ian gave us a briefing. The intention was to get divers to herd Bruce into position so we could get him into the transport sling. As we entered the tank we could see one of the staff members watching from the tunnel was madly waving his arms and pointing. Bruce had stopped swimming. We quickly got him into the sling and swam him out through the sealock to the Oceanworld boat, where he was quickly placed into the transport container. We hoped that the pure oxygen running into the tank and the rapid water flow from the pumps would help revive him, or at least sustain him, as we made the mad dash to the open ocean just outside the Sydney Heads. On board were Ian, Aaron — Oceanworld's senior curator, who had only just arrived from Israel — and me. Benji, our general manager, was driving the boat. In our haste to leave Ian had forgotten his fins and I still had on the two weight belts we used to be negatively weighted in the tank. Aaron had all his gear. As we worked in the aquarium we never wore BCDs, the inflatable buoyancy control device jackets that divers all wear nowadays; we just had a backpack with a tank attached.
As soon as we were far enough off shore we all entered the water and unloaded Bruce. I grabbed him and started swimming him down at an angle. Poor Ian couldn't keep up without fins. I had given Aaron my video camera to record the action. It wasn't long before Bruce started to beat his tail — slowly at first, but I could feel the beat get stronger and faster. We were heading down pretty quickly. I released Bruce and watched him swim off. Then I realised I still had the second weight belt on and was quite negatively buoyant. It took a lot of effort to swim to the surface. At one point Aaron appeared and signalled, 'What are you doing?' I pointed to the second belt and he gave me the 'crazy' signal. I was determined to get to the surface without dropping the belt, as I knew I would get grief from Ian and the other staff. Finally I got to the boat and as I unclipped one belt to pass it up, I accidently unclipped the other one and it disappeared into the depths.
We were all disappointed that we were not able to keep Bruce for longer, but it was always our intention to release him if he showed stress.
Since then the Monterey Aquarium in California has successfully kept small great whites for months at a time. Their philosophy was to release the shark once it started eating the tank's other inhabitants. But they have now abandoned their great white project.
CHAPTER 2Dave, the constipated grey nurse
Working with sharks in captivity gives you an intimate insight into their lives in a way that is practically impossible in the wild. You begin not just to recognise them physically, but to get to know their personalities. Every shark has a different character and, just like us, they have good and bad days.
One of the most memorable experiences I've had with a shark was during my time at Oceanworld. The shark in question was a 2.8 metre male grey nurse shark (Carcharias taurus) called Dave. Grey nurse sharks, also known as ragged tooth sharks or sand tigers in other parts of the world, are stocky, well-built animals with hundreds of crooked teeth that protrude from their mouths and give them a very mean look.
This day, one of the dive crew noticed something odd about Dave. He was swimming awkwardly, hunching his back, and he also had a bulge in his stomach. I jumped into the shark tank for a closer look.
I soon saw Dave swimming towards me and he certainly was in a bad way. As he swam over the top of me I could see a bulge on his underside the size of a dinner plate.
Dave slowly swam away and I waited while he completed a lap of the tank. As he swam overhead for the second time I reached up to feel the swelling. It was very hard to the touch and I recognised the problem immediately. It was a digestive tract compaction: Dave had something big trapped in his intestines and it wouldn't budge.
A few years earlier I had seen a captive blacktip reef shark with a similar problem. He was swimming about frantically and then, as I watched, expelled a mass of fish bones. This alone was unusual but what I saw hanging from the shark's backside was totally unexpected. It looked like the bladder of a football and for a minute or so it trailed behind the shark as it swam, until slowly but surely it was sucked bit by bit back into its body.
Nothing like this had ever been described in the scientific literature, but a couple of months after I witnessed this, Jerry Crowe from Waikiki Aquarium published a paper documenting how sharks are able to push their intestines out of their bodies into the seawater, an ingenious technique to rid themselves of unwanted gut contents.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Shark Tracker by Richard Fitzpatrick. Copyright © 2016 Richard Fitzpatrick. Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,Bruce, the baby great white,
Dave, the constipated grey nurse,
A bite on the bum,
Diving can be dangerous,
Raine Island, turtle and tiger shark haven,
The Island of Dr Moreau,
Underwater shark rodeo,
Lefty, the veteran whitetip,
The shark claw,
'Ve have a leak?',
Captain Blood,
Adam Adam Adam,
To boldly go,
Silvertips,
Moray eels,
With friends like these,
The giant squid,
In the jaws of a great white,
Sex under the sea,
Jellyfish,
Venomous creatures,
Weird creatures,
Richard's rules,
Acknowledgements,