Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [111]
They had armed themselves with several harpoons in preparation for an encounter with the big fish. Guns and knives were also aboard, to the extent they would matter. The scientists were under no illusions about their chances versus Carcharodon carcharias if it appeared in its full-grown size.
Forsaking sleep, they cruised the deep channel in Rockaway Inlet. In the daylight Nichols could see some distance through the water, paying special attention to sandbars, against which the sun would silhouette his quarry. Whereas the brown shark, the commonest large shark in the latitude of New York, Nichols noted, kept below the surface in the manner of the littoral species, its fin and tail seldom seen unless it was crossing a sandbar, the pelagic species like the white shark rode high in the water, announcing their presence like a surfacing U-boat.
Suddenly, on the second day, Nichols felt his heart protesting against his ribs. He had spotted a shark moving along the edge of the bar. Nichols carefully worked the sloop toward it, avoiding the shoals where he would go aground, and followed the winding course of the shark. Murphy narrowed his eyes as the sloop swung from one tack to another, and finally saw an elusive shadow moving a couple of boat lengths ahead. The light in the water could play tricks with the shadow, blowing it to monstrous size, but then the shadow slipped too far ahead to discern its true substance. Murphy tightened his grip on the harpoon and wondered if the iron would slow a white shark. Whaling in the South Atlantic, the power of five- and seven-foot blue sharks had astounded him. “We have seen one hooked, shot full of lead from a repeating rifle, then harpooned, hauled on deck, and disemboweled, yet it continued alive and alert for a long while, thrashing its tail and opening and shutting its weird expressionless eyes . . .”
As the huge shadow darted, Murphy readied himself for the possibility it may turn and shoot under the bowsprit, giving him but a fraction of an instant to strike. He knew well the consequence of a bad throw—he'd watch the iron graze the fish and “the pole stand quivering in the sand, while the shark darts away into deep water and is gone.” He was not sure anymore if he knew the consequence of a good throw. For the local sharks, he knew it was a sure strike and “away goes the shark, spinning out the coil of rope and carrying the tub over the water with a rush.” But what was a harpoon to an enraged three-thousand-pound fish: a bothersome needle? Should he pray it would come close enough for the guns and the knives? Or pray that it wouldn't?
When the shark came within striking distance Murphy surged forward, heart drumming, hoisting the harpoon, angling for purchase on the bowsprit. But the fearsome shadow was what Nichols and Murphy immediately recognized as a sand shark, Carcharias taurus, what is now known to shark biologists as the sand-tiger shark, a common, large, fish-eating species in the region, not known as an attacker of humans. With dismay the men exhaled, perhaps for a moment doubting their pursuit of a white shark. Lucas had warned them that almost every case of a captured purported man-eater he had investigated on the coasts of New Jersey or Long Island resolved to be “harmless, if ugly-looking, sand sharks.”
The shark disappeared and the scientists spent the day and the night looking for larger shadows in the bay. Other sharks appeared, but nothing to arouse their interest. Nicholas and Murphy discussed leaving Jamaica Bay for the waters of Lower New York Bay and guarded against the unwelcome feeling that the trip was turning into