Eye of the Whale (13 page)

Skilling caught sight of the tail fin whipping back and forth, and then the dorsal, which was well over three feet. Skilling recognized over a hundred individual white sharks by sight, each one identified with a name he or his students had given it. But he had never seen one with a dorsal that big. It was hunting in “sisterhood territory,” an area owned by some of the largest females.

When the boat arrived at the kill, the water was still stained with blood. A tornado of western gulls pecked at the remains of a blondish-brown pelt with one flipper dangling. The flayed underside revealed pink meat, red blood clots, and white muscle.

Skilling could tell from the large floating remains that this was a “super weaner.” These baby elephant seals were not content to stop nursing after being weaned, and would steal the teat of another mother, displacing her pup. Instead of weighing the ordinary fifty to one hundred pounds, these overstuffed sausages grew to weigh up to three hundred pounds as they continued their rapacious diet. Skilling knew that weaning pups in general had only a 50 percent chance of surviving their first year. Finding food, avoiding being crushed by
the bulk of two-ton elephant seal bulls, and escaping the jaws of white sharks was too much for many of them, including this one.

Skilling smiled. There was enough meat left to bring the shark back to finish off its meal. He would have a chance to tag her. They just needed to be patient.

The
Sailfish
pulled up next to them, and they lashed the Boston Whaler to the dive boat. Skilling looked at the metal cage, which no one had anticipated they would need today, since most of the sharks had already left on their migration. On Fenster’s command, the crew quickly lowered the cage into the water.

Once he had awkwardly made it aboard the
Sailfish,
Fenster turned to face Skilling. “Dr. Skilling, I wonder if we could film you putting a satellite tag on this shark.”

“Sure, if it surfaces again,” Skilling said. He didn’t like to over-promise. He was already assembling his aluminum tagging pole, which looked like a miniature, delicate harpoon. On the metal point of the pole, Skilling placed a barbed titanium tip. A leader line of monofilament connected this razor-sharp spearhead to the cylindrical satellite transmitter tag, which was about the size of a small microphone. Skilling wanted to be prepared—he might get only one chance to lodge the barbed point of the arrowhead into the dorsal muscle of the shark.

“Dr. Skilling…” Fenster began nervously. “I was actually wondering if you might be willing to tag the shark…in the water.”

It was unusual but not unheard of for film crews to want him to tag the shark from the cage underwater; it was more dramatic. Skilling, however, wanted to make sure he didn’t lose his chance to tag this possibly record-breaking shark, and working topside would allow him the greatest mobility. Still, he knew the Faustian bargain he had made. Despite his Ph.D., he was no different from any wildlife personality. TV Land was TV Land, and he knew what maintaining his reputation as Dr. Shark required. It was true that the underwater
footage would be much more impressive. “All right,” he said, “if that’s what the film needs.”

Tony, the cameraman, was getting into his wetsuit and preparing the “pig,” the massive IMAX camera, which was all the bigger inside its yellow waterproof housing. Skilling pulled on his dry suit.

Fenster smiled weakly. He still did not look satisfied. “Do you ever tag the sharks from outside the cage?”

“Boil,”
Skilling shouted as he saw the turbulence in the water that preceded the shark’s appearance. It was not far from the floating carcass. He raised the hatch on top of the floating cage. “Get in, Tony. Fast.”

TWENTY

S
KILLING’S HEART
was pounding. The feel of the frigid water through his dry suit was like a dull ache, but he tried to focus his mind on what he had to do. He held the aluminum tagging pole, his hands covered by thin neoprene gloves to give him as much dexterity as possible. He didn’t want to lose the two-thousand-dollar satellite tag and, more importantly, the opportunity.

As his eyes scanned the gray-green water, Skilling started to rehearse what he would say about the satellite tags—how they had allowed his colleagues to discover that white sharks migrate thousands of miles but that they were extremely territorial and returned to these same feeding grounds. It would be a long wait before he would get another chance to tag this shark if he missed it this year.

Skilling felt awkward in his dry suit and thirty-pound weight belt, like an astronaut in an alien environment. There was nothing about humans that was evolved to move in the watery world. The strong currents rocked the cage, and he had to hold on with his free hand to stay in place. The bright yellow housing for the IMAX camera was like a miniature submarine and made the small cage feel even smaller. Tony was on hookah, breathing air pumped in from the boat, but Skilling was on a rebreather. By recirculating his exhalations, the rebreather eliminated the bubbles that might attract the shark and interfere with the filming. The rebreather was expensive, but Fenster had included it in the movie budget, and now Skilling knew why.

Skilling looked around in all directions, orienting himself by the location of the carcass. It floated above him like a dark cloud, the flipper puffing out to one side. Light was streaming down all around it. The visibility was incredible, seventy-five feet at least, and he could see rock formations that were usually lost in the plankton-clotted water.

He shook his head as he remembered Fenster’s question about leaving the cage—just what you might expect from a movie director if he was using some elasmo-model from the special effects department. But this was not “Bruce,” the animatronic shark from
Jaws
. This was a real shark, and a big one.

Then he heard his father’s voice in his head.
You really showed ’em what a Skilling is made of.
It was what his father always said when he threw a touchdown pass in a football game in high school. For a Skilling there was no such thing as defeat; there was only win or escalate. His father would be impressed if he left the cage. Maybe he’d never again have to hear him say to one of his fishing buddies back in Iowa, “Who in their right mind spends his life studying fish? Good for catching. Good for eating. But who the hell wants to know what they’re thinking?” That always got a big laugh.

Suddenly, Skilling stopped thinking and stopped breathing, too. He spotted the large shape of the shark. “Holy Mother of God” were the garbled words that sputtered out of his Catholic childhood. Fear often has its own logic. Skilling couldn’t imagine such a pious name making its way into the scientific literature. Simply “Mother” would have to do, and this shark could well be the matriarch. The absence of paired claspers—the equivalent of the shark’s penis—told him that it was indeed a female.

Any desire to leave the cage had vanished. It was as big as he had imagined. By his estimate, the shark was twenty-one or maybe even twenty-two feet long, certainly a contender for the record. Its size also told him something else. This was a shark that could polish off a
two-thousand-pound elephant seal bull. A super weaner pup would have just been a snack. There was no doubt in Skilling’s mind that this shark was still hungry.

Mother was no longer rushing from the bottom for a killing blow. She didn’t have to. Her victim could not fight back. Ambush had served its purpose. The shark looked almost docile as she swept her massive scythe-shaped tail and headed for the seal, or what was left of it. From her eye back to her gills, the shark had many deep gashes and severe bite marks that cut right down to the muscle. One of the gills was ripped and had a piece missing. There was no way to become a female of this size and age without enduring a fair share of scars from fighting or mating; the male shark would bite the female as they went into a mating spiral. Mating between whites was not all roses and candles, Skilling would tell his students, who would giggle as he told them about the hooks and spurs on the male’s claspers.

Tony was filming as the shark tore into the carcass. She probably could have eaten the rest in one bite, but instead she chose to saw off a chunk, as if she were having appetizers. Her tail slashed from side to side, helping her tear through the meat. In the past, it was thought that there was only one shark at any given carcass, but researchers had since found that there were often several. Skilling hoped Mother would be dining alone.

The shark was too far from the cage, but if he moved out of the cage door a little, he might be able to reach its dorsal muscle with the titanium tip of the satellite tag. As the shark was busy tearing off a bite, shaking its head from side to side, Skilling realized this was his chance.

Skilling tried to get his resistant limbs to move. Every cell screamed at him to stay inside the cage as he unlatched the door and forced himself through it. Holding on to the bars with his free hand, he was so close—a foot or two away. He had to let go of the
cage to reach the shark. He would never forgive himself if he missed this chance. With his blue diving fins, he pushed off from the cage.

Mother whipped her head to the side. Skilling froze as she stared at him with one black eye. The wash from the shark pushed him away from the cage. Practically hyperventilating, he sucked in oxygen, terror pumping through his limbs.

He reached behind him but could not feel the metal bars. The shark’s slightly open mouth was a gash of black. A chaos of triangular white teeth stuck out of pink gums. Her black-tipped pectoral fins were splayed like wings, and her caudal fin hovered like a samurai’s sword, ready to slice forward in attack.

Skilling started to back away quickly, kicking his feet as he reached behind him for the cage.
Don’t turn your back. Don’t turn your back.
He knew all predators preferred to attack from behind, as every attack exposed them to the risk of injury.

The shark started to rock her caudal fin back and forth as she approached slowly, perhaps intimidated by the size and unfamiliarity of the cage. Mother’s snout had two holes for nostrils, and her extremely sensitive olfactory sacs were no doubt trying to decipher his scent. The dark pattern of spots making Mother look like she had a five o’clock shadow were sensory cells that could pick up electrical activity, such as his wildly beating heart and the muscles of his legs as he kicked. He was no longer thinking. His body was just reacting, a series of primordial moves that were far older than any rational thought.

Mother hovered for a second. Her hesitation gave him courage. The cage and boat must have looked like a large sea creature to the shark, but he’d seen them bite cages and boats and even rudders before.

He pointed his small aluminum spear at the shark. It was hardly a weapon. The dark unblinking eyes stared at him. Unlike fish,
whose widely set eyes must scan for predators, sharks, like humans, could look straight at their prey.

As Skilling stared directly into the ancient unknown of the shark’s eyes, all human arrogance was stripped away. The shark’s massive back was gunmetal gray and its belly a ghostlike white. Its gill slits feathered like ripped paper as the giant continued to move slowly forward.

Skilling finally found the cage and fumbled behind him with blind hands. The door had swung closed, and the latch wasn’t opening. He stole a nervous glance behind him. Tony was still filming but from as far back in the cage as he could get.
Doesn’t he see me? Why isn’t he opening the door?

Skilling shook his hand to try to get Tony’s attention, then quickly looked back at the shark. He didn’t have another second to consider the cameraman. Mother rolled her pupils back, and her eyes turned white. Skilling dropped his tagging pole in a panic, knowing what would come next. He grabbed the icy bars and used all of his strength to heave himself through the water and around the side of the cage. The cage shuddered and the metal groaned as hundreds of teeth, each sharp as a scalpel, collided with the side of the cage, inches from his hand and body. Mother’s white-and-gray torpedo snout was distended, her lower jaw gaping open in a silent roar. The skin above her upper jaw was creased by her massive bite. Her teeth and gums jutted out from the top of her jaw, like a rabid beast baring its fangs.

Unable to move backward, the shark kept thrusting forward as she shook her head, trying to free herself. She had discovered that the cage was not prey, and was hunting what was. Skilling was looking down the cavernous gullet and saw the cartilaginous gill arches expanding to devour him. Several teeth had broken off and were falling like white triangular leaves through the water.

As Mother finally freed herself, Skilling managed to squeeze
through the gap between the boat’s propeller and the back wall of the cage, where Tony was still filming. Her eyes rolled back in her head, Mother was trying to bite whatever was alive. As she sensed the electrical current of the motor, her jaws clamped down on the boat’s propeller. She let go with an angry shiver of her head, thrust her caudal fin three or four times, and was gone into the deep. Skilling knew that if these stealthy hunters did not succeed on the first strike, they would often circle around and approach from a new angle. He had to get into the cage, and fast.

Skilling moved as quickly as he could to the front, scanning the water for the shark. This time Tony had the presence of mind to help unlatch the door. Skilling slipped inside quickly as the gate banged open against the cage. He was safe.

Out of the depths, Mother launched herself at them, the bars of the doorway distending around her snout, her jaws reaching for the elusive prey. Skilling grabbed the yellow camera from Tony and used it as a shield against the shark, who had thrust her head halfway into the cage. Tony was frozen, his body pressed against the back bars. Skilling waved his hand in front of Tony’s mask and pointed his thumb up. Tony didn’t have to be told twice as he pulled himself through the hatch at the surface. He didn’t look back for the camera, which Skilling was using to fend off the shark. Mother opened her mouth wider and bit into the housing of the camera, yanking it out of Skilling’s hands. The shark whipped its tail from side to side, each thrust the force of a car crash. As Mother wrenched her head free, the camera was torn from Skilling’s hands.