Born Predators - Chapter 9

Pupping

The sea bed fell away beneath her—so that the floor of the world gradually darkened to the charcoal-green of deep water. She was one of the larger creatures in the sea, but she was reduced to a fly speck by the miles of water and the length of her journey.

Hennessey stayed within a body length of the surface. There, the angling sunshine rippled through the waves, casting a patchwork of light and shadow through the water. She felt utterly alone. No other large creatures appeared within the broad reach of her senses. No other journeyed here. She walked the ocean in solitary dominance.

She traveled in a rhythm that ate the distance, a tiny speck in a huge watery world, aware of all around her, aware of her path. But mostly aware of her pups.

In the long evolutionary history of her kin, across hundreds of millions of years, the advent of pupping rang a loud bell of evolutionary innovation. Unlike the bony fish, most sharks nurtured their eggs inside of their bodies even after they hatched, helping the young grow and become stronger. There were very few pups per brood – not the millions of eggs a big fish would carelessly spawn into the uncaring ocean – so the pups could enter the world strong and ready. But that required time for them to grow…she had to carry them for months. And before they were born, they had to be fed. So that had required her ancestors to evolve a unique strategy.

The mothers of her species – in fact her whole clan of warm-blooded sharks - made eggs in two types for two different purposes. The first dozen or so eggs she made could be fertilized and hatch into small pups inside her. But afterward, she produced a second type of egg - a nurse egg - meant only as food for those pups. She produced a steady supply of this rich food steadily in her uterus, and each hatchling ate them and grew, and ate more. Her pups now neared five feet long, after 11 months of feeding them. They now ate a lot of nurse eggs, and her body needed fuel.

So she loped towards the promise of food on a northern path she’d never before taken.

Chapter 9

East Slough Harbor was a small marina sunk into the loose sandy earth of the island. The swampy basin had been dredged out early in the last century, its channel deepened to take advantage of the naturally sheltered harbor, ringed by wild rushes growing seven feet tall in the brackish shallows. Half a dozen sheds loaded with fuel and paint lined the shore. Three sturdy docks fanned out from a central hub dominated by a ramshackle single story bar, the Aces and Twos. Built in fits and starts of small additions and renovated sheds, the bar was a village all by itself, wrapped around a small deck looking out on the activity all around.

Kinney walked across the crowded parking lot and climbed the thin steps to look out on the commotion of fishing boats preparing to leave. The morning breeze smelled thinly of old fish and fresh diesel, pulses of cigarette smoke, and the sulfur egg of the marsh land on all sides. It smelled like lonely high school mornings waiting for the bus.

And then it smelled like coffee. Kinney turned to see Will approaching, holding out a travel cup, “Laurie made us both a quart of coffee,” he grinned. “Figured you might need it. And I stopped at Bagel Charlie’s.”

Kinney’s tired eyes got wide. “Oh God, Charlie’s! I totally forgot about Charlie’s.”

“Figured you were too busy being an internet sensation to get breakfast.” Will climbed up to the bar’s railing, showed Kinney a thin part of the social media storm from yesterday’s press conference. “Social media can’t decide what’s more riveting—your feud with Honeypie--or your belief that a giant pregnant shark named Hennessey didn’t do it.”

“The first is not a feud and the second is a fact, not a belief.” Kinney answered automatically, fishing a still-warm bagel out of the bag Will held. “Did you find a phone number?”

“Gail gave me a video number. But are you sure about this?”

“She’s the only one who saw what happened.”

“Look, there is a massive IPO planned for their company. Jamie started it, remember. These are instant billionaires, all of them. So they’re a little touchy.”

“It will be fast and simple. I’ll ask what she saw. That’s what you reporters do, right?” Before Will could think of any more warnings to launch at her, Kinney grabbed her phone and punched in the code.

One ring produced a blank screen and a recording, “You’ve reached Puja Ganguly, please leave a message.”

“Miss Ganguly, my name is Dr. Kinney Austin, and I am a shark biologist working with Hampton Bay. I wanted to ask some questions about the night of the party. Just as a biologist. If Mr. Brinson was really attacked by a shark, we need to know what kind of shark we’re talking about…”

A loud tone announced a change in the line.

“What do you mean, ‘was really attacked?’” a woman’s voice asked over the line. A video signal popped up showing a young woman of south Asian descent, staring penetratingly through to her with dark eyes and a serious expression.

Kinney asked, “Puja Ganguly? I’m Kinney. I’m sorry for your friend.”

Puja’s brow furrowed, “Everyone says it was a shark.”

“Uhh, well, everyone says that because they saw a dot on Triton or heard someone shout ‘shark,’ but did anyone see Jamie Brinson get attacked? Everything I’ve heard about the incident has been secondhand.”

Puja said in a tone so hollow Kinney imagined the slightest touch crumbling her to shards of porcelain. “I went after him, in a little boat.”

“I heard that. It was brave.”

“Jamie was at his own boat. There was just this huge splash and…” Puja shook her head abruptly.

Kinney said softly. “How far away were you when it happened? Close enough to touch him, or…”

“No. We hadn’t gotten to him yet.”

“But did you see the shark? Independent of the splash.”

“They say it was under the water. They say it made the splash.” Her voice grew hard. “But there was something else.”

“What was that Puja?”

“The ladder. The boarding ladder crashed down on Jamie, when he jumped up for it. He was straining up to grab at it.”

“Our mutual friend, Jon Handic, mentioned you told him something else?”

“I can’t be sure anymore!” Puja shook her head trying to clear it of all the suggestions and the media storm she’d seen.

“I’m just trying to get a clear picture. The ladder crashed down. Yes?”

Puja hesitated, then nodded.

“You saw a splash. Maybe it was caused by the ladder and Jamie falling back.”

Puja stared straight into the screen. Kinney could tell that she was seeing the scene over and over again in her mind.

“Puja, was there anyone on the boat?”

“I thought so…I thought I saw...someone. But no one else did. Everyone else saw a shark.”

“Was Jamie lifted out of the water by it? That’s the way a white shark feeds from underneath. The prey is lifted up, and …”

“The prey? How can make this into some clinical thing? Like you were dissecting Jamie’s death?”

Kinney swallowed, confused by the horror in Puja’s voice. “I’m just trying to test the shark hypothesis about that huge splash. By asking questions about characteristics that are common in shark feeding events. I’m just looking for the facts that would tell us whether there was really a shark hidden under there.”

Puja was almost shouting now. “Everyone else saw a shark! If it wasn’t a shark FEEDING EVENT , what made the splash? Why is Jamie dead?”

“That’s the question, isn't it? Why is Jamie dead?”

Puja breathed deep, exhaled. “I’m done here.” She reached for the escape button.

“Puja. If you didn’t see a shark, but you did see something else, you should tell …”

“Everyone saw a shark!” Puja slapped the connection off.

“…but not you.” Kinney said into the blank screen.

Will stood “Well, that was a disaster.”

“I asked a simple question. Did anyone see a shark or not?”

“Obviously it wasn’t that simple!”

“It was. A shark would have lifted him out of the water initially. And then he’d be lowered as the jaws bit. No one saw a shark. It’s pretty simple I think.”

“See, this has always been your problem. You ask questions like a scalpel cutting. To try to find out things. But you don’t listen to people’s reactions.”`

“Bullshit. This was about getting the facts as simply as possible.”

“You’re a scientist; be objective when examining yourself. And how you affect people when you are so clinical. Eighteen years in this town, you split and that was it. And I don’t blame you, I’ve never blamed you,” he protested to her deepening glare. “It was a devastating blow. But you also can’t blame those of us back home for feeling a little hurt. Just like you can’t expect Puja to just view her dead co-worker as prey, Kinney!”

Kinney stood stunned for a moment, arms crossed. “Okay. Okay fine. I know that hurt, fifteen years ago. Maybe I handled it wrong, then, Will., in the middle of a crisis. But right now, are we gonna make this all about your feelings? Because please, this is about something completely different. I called Puja to see if anyone had actually seen a shark. Something you could have done as a reporter. And I got my answer.”

Will paused a minute. “OK, ok. You called and she didn’t see a shark. Yes that’s the scientific answer. But let’s look at the human piece behind it. If she really didn’t see a shark and did see someone on that boat, why won’t she tell us so now?”

***

Slip 33, near the end of the second pier, held a sleek grey charter boat about thirty-five feet long. Miranda was stenciled on the prow in delicate cursive. At the aft two enormous high-end outboards sat in the down position, already puttering with the deliberately sweet smell of fuel additives. A deeply tanned man worked on the rear deck, wearing a ripped U.S. Navy t-shirt and a ballcap that might have started out as any color in the world but was presently the same shade of bleached white-grey as Miranda herself. He was trim and muscled, only a few years older than Kinney, with creases already deepening in his tanned skin. Bent at the waist, he shot water from a high-powered hose to blast bits of dried fish viscera off the decking.

“Are you Chuck?” Kinney called loudly, walking up the dock. She carried a dark green duffle bag of gear. Will had gone back to his car for what he needed.

His thumb let up on the hose and he turned to look at her, dark hair protruding about the ears of his cap. He extended a rough hand with a surprisingly gentle handshake. “Chuck Fossi, Fossi Charters. How’re ya?”

They shook. “Kinney Austin. Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”

“Mayor D told me, anything you need. That’s what he’s paying for and that’s what he gets. We’re too late for any good action today, but I can show you the spots for tomorrow. The stripers should be goin’ hot. Everyone else out chasin’ lions.” He went about cleaning up the deck, and coiling the hose.

“Lions?” Kinney arched an eyebrow, stepping aboard with the unconscious ease of long association with boats.

Fossi noticed her light spring onto the deck, despite the duffle. He always watched when new clients boarded his boat – that first move told him reams about how comfortable they would be out on the water, and Kinney’s body adjusted effortlessly to the slight pitch of the deck. She’d be a natural.

“Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!” Fossi’s eyes went wide and he waved his hands about with fingers spread before breaking into a grin. “It’s those sharks. I call ‘em lions just ‘cause it’s Sharks sharks sharks, all any of us are hearing when the phones ring. That’s why I got Mayor D to spring for two weeks up front.”

“Are they getting any sharks?”

“Couple little ones. Local guys are just running charters back and forth to Seal Rocks right now. But give the big boats another day to get up here and you’ll see the real show.”

Kinney scanned the boat: small but trim, Miranda was equipped for almost any normal fishing charter or light harbor work. A boom was swung off to the side, available to service moorings or manage heavy fishing line. “And here’s Will.”

Hauling a box of odds and ends down the dock, Will nodded to Fossi and stumbled on board.

Kinney grabbed the box and steadied him, “We’re out for shark too, or we will be. But it’s a very specific one.”

“Killed the banker kid, right? All on? Ready to go?” Fossi retreated to the little wheelhouse and backed the boat out of its slip, casually working the engines. Engine oil and exhaust wafted past.

“Didn’t kill him. And I don’t think he was a banker.”

“Brinson. Sounds like a banker. Name like that has its own great hair and a perfect tan. Bankers are great business. I could book a whole summer on Goldman Sacks alone.”

The boat pivoted, and began to motor through the marina’s confined spaces.

“That much cash in the air, huh?”

“Lotta money in this world. These people are a whole new kind of rich. You local?”

“Was. Now I study sharks in California.”

“Sure, sure. Mayor said something like that.”

He didn’t say what the Mayor really said. They moved further out and were soon among the moored yachts. Miranda moved through them like a waiter at a palace garden party. Working.

“Y’know, for a long time we didn’t see sharks much here. And then the seals showed up. Overnight there were White sharks on the seals, and now it seems like every hungry shark in the North Atlantic rolls through these waters.”

“Sand Tigers?”

“Some. Were a lot more in the ‘80s but they were culled out.” He looked at her appraisingly. “Sand tigers what you’re looking for?”

“Probably not. Let’s head toward Seal Rocks first.”

“Us and everybody else….” he muttered.

***

Long Island ran northeast, sloping with geologic patience, gradually kneeling to sea-level and then slinking below. The Miranda rolled east with the Gulf Stream’s gentle gurgle. A half mile out the water was only fifty feet deep—shallow enough for the morning Sun to fill its every drop and paint each square meter of sandy floor. Vigorous planktonic life fueled schools of silver fish, fraternities of mollusks and skittering crab clubs.

They motored quietly into the gentle slurping chop of coastal sea. Gulls and engine sounds followed them into deeper water, the wind non-existent and the ocean glassy under slight swells.

“Oh, it’s getting better, definitely better,” Fossi was saying. Kinney and Will stood with him in the wheelhouse. “Even in the last ten years you can tell the difference. Growing up, my dad would bitch at us—every night, beer in his hand, stinkin’ like fish guts even after a shower—he’d bitch at us about how things used to be. Going from fish that jumped into your net, before the war, down to nothing half a lifetime later. Not even a bite, unless you were a pro who knew his spots and how to guard ‘em.”

“Fished out.”

“Completely! Then the big fleets took off. Those jobs are in China now. Or Spain. But then you started seeing fish come back. Little ones at first, croaker and flounder, lotta striped bass and bluefish as time went by. Then bigger catches over the years, ‘til we even got the tuna back. By that point my dad had passed.”

“I bet he’d be happy.”

“Nah, he’d figure out some way to call it all bullshit and keep bitching.”

He pulled the boat starboard, southward and out to sea. A small set of other boats were ahead of them, pulling east along the coast. Land retreated to the barest of green strips. Stiffer chop came up and set the boat to rocking cradle-like. A flight of gulls settled into the pocket of air just above and behind the mast.

“You hear that?” called her host.

“Hear what?” The charter’s twin engines drowned out everything for her ears

“Seals barking.”

She listened carefully and imagined she could hear the high pealing but couldn’t be sure. “So they’ve come back too?”

“Pains in the ass, every one of ‘em. They’ll come right up to the boat, turn over your crab pots, chew up your nets, and you can’t do shit about it ‘cause they’re all protected. Spook ‘em or, god forbid, jab at ‘em a tiny bit with a dinghy oar, and someone’ll see it, and you’ll get written up. The fines are un-freaking-believable. So when they show up we just move on while they eat primo catch. I don’t think you could

bring back the fleets even if you wanted. Wouldn’t be enough fish for them and the seals together.”

“It seems like seals eat everything, but you know they don’t. Not like the damage a mechanized fishing fleet can do.”

Will interjected, trying to get the sense of Kinney’s comments. “Meaning?”

“Meaning you can blame the seals for stealing some fish off the lines and out of the traps. But they are not emptying fish out of the oceans. People and industrialized fishing are emptying the oceans. Just like your Dad said.”

Fossi steered the boat south towards the seal sounds. In the glare of the morning sun, miles off, he could see a line of other boats, other charter captains, most more familiar to him than his neighbors. “Perhaps, but the bottom line is only a few guys really have what it takes to keep things going. It’s the summer now, so I have work—but eight months outta the year Miranda’s sitting in dock. Hard for anyone to make the numbers work. Seals are doing great though. Their numbers work, year in and year out.”

“You really don’t like the seals, huh?”

“I love the outdoors as much as the next guy. I make my living off nature. But half of it won’t be here in a few years. Seven billion of us, more on the way. The ocean could feed a lot, if we let it. Most valuable part of the whole world and we’ve got no idea what to do with it.”

Kinney kept her eyes on the horizon, toward the south where the water got slowly deeper and deeper it fell off the edge of the continental shelf. “We did have an idea: strip it bare. Take the fish and sell them. Repeat till it’s all gone. That’s been the ocean business model until now.”

“Yes, every place I’ve seen. Things just get worse.”

“Not Monterey,” Kinney said with an unavoidable twinge of pride, “Monterey had all those problems. The difference in Monterey is that it got better.”

“Lucky you! I’m just saying nature’s important for what it does for people, not only because of little whiskers and cute sparkly eyes, like your Monterey sea otters.”

***

The sea was a glittering carpet in front of the prow, with ruffling waves of blue and green and gold where the Sun played between them. Rapidly now, they closed on Seal Rocks, a ring of hard granite rising up out of a frothing cluster of waves a little more than three miles offshore.

Leaning over the rail in an unconscious survey of the sea, Kinney spotted the source of the name. A telltale flash of motion—a dark flipper breaking the surface. Dusky shapes, just a few feet submerged, rushed across the boat’s prow. They shot off to the port side, coursing along with each other, wavering and separating and converging.

“Man, they can fly,” Will sighed. One of the seals broke the surface, hurling itself wholly out of the water and into the air. Young and handsome, it was just a bright-eyed yearling still shy of its first breeding season. Its spine bent into an S, bridging a head and tail held perfectly horizontal as its fore flippers extended wide. Then it was back in the sea.

Kinney’s eyes narrowed to slits:

“They’re running from something.” She abandoned her handrail and scuttled to the boat’s far side to follow them.

Fossi said nothing, just swung the wheel while Miranda heeled and came about. Kinney tracked the seals as they slashed to and fro. Two of them jumped, arced high, splashed back down. Kinney couldn’t spot what drove them from the water, but that was the way of ocean predators. They strike from the dark below.

The seals knew it too. Sticking together, they presented multiple targets and a broad swath of bubbles cloaking their movements in silver. Jumping took them out of vision completely, if only for a moment, and offered brief moments of speed free of the water’s drag. They ran under the boat, and through the decking a thump reverberated.

“Feel that?” asked Fossi.

Kinney rotated to the boat’s other side as the seals emerged. They pulled to the left and took some depth, plunging out of sight again. Kinney scanned around, her heart pounding. “Will!” she called. “There’s a shark under the boat.”

Will jumped over to the side of the boat to look down.

“Stay with them! The seals!” she shouted to Fossi.

hey’re staying with us,” Fossi countered. “Miranda’s the only piece of cover for a mile in any direction.” He never got to finish the thought.

Spray erupted from below: a stinging white mist shutting his eyes. Something solid slammed into Kinney’s side and fell heavily to the deck. She jumped backwards, nearly losing her footing, forcing her eyes open against the salt. It was wet chaos: two long lean forms writhing on the deck. The first was a seal with whiskers agleam, and dark canine eyes wide with terror, trying to gather its hind limbs under it to flee on the slippery deck. Smaller than he had appeared in the water, no bigger than a Golden Retriever, he flopped frantically to the deck’s farthest corner and emitted a tiny roar from his throat.

The second was a White shark.

No mighty specimen, the eight-foot fish barely outsized its prey. Its tail thrashed violently and its mouth hung open with the shock of slow asphyxiation. Where the seal’s fear and confusion was painfully obvious in its soulful face, the shark’s eyes showed a blank stare: burned-out holes leading nowhere but the void. It couldn’t be frightened. It hadn’t the context. It’s mouth a scraggled nest of gray teeth, the fish took a gummy snap at the air. Kinney danced away and felt adrenaline hit her bloodstream in a hot rush. The shark lay out before her: a perfect, compact mechanism of death utterly undone by mere atmosphere.

Will ran over towards the flopping forms. “Will, stay away from the jaws, they can be unpredictable.”

Fossi’s head swiveled. “Shit!” He yanked the throttle dead and hurdled back to the stern. “What’d you do to my boat?"

Kinney looked back and forth between the dripping, stranded creatures: the seal yelping and flopping terrified against the gunwales with no way to climb it, the shark mutely agape in the early throes of a slow death, swallowing air. The deck held nothing to help either of them. Kinney took a near-empty bucket, and leaned out over the water to scoop it. With about a gallon in the bucket she turned to pour its murky contents over the shark’s gills. The five black slits sucked feebly. Keeping them wet would buy a little time.

“Jesus!” Fossi surveyed the quivering grey torpedo. “Think we can lift him together?”

It was a small shark, but denser than it looked, all muscle and cartilage. It took a great fatty liver to keep it buoyant in the water.

“Her. No claspers, see?”

Fossi could only grumble in response. He went to the gantry and swung the bar amidships. He rummaged around in a bin near the gantry, and came up with a loop of garden hose hooked to a hefty metal clip. Kinney and Will bent down to lift the shark, slipped the loop around the front fins, and hooked the loop to the heavy line running along the gantry’s arm to meet a small winch. With huffing effort they got the bound shark up to waist height, resting atop the gunwale.

“Hey, since you’re out here every day, would you say these sharks are typical size? On the small side?” Kinney was still gathering data.

“Yeah, guess so. They get up to 10, maybe 13 feet at the most. The seals are small too—just harbor seals. There’re Grey seals up north at the Cape, twice as big.”

“So a shark as big as Hennessey wouldn’t really hang out here a lot.” Kinney mused. “She’d go north. Especially if she’s pregnant.”

Fossi frowned slightly, “Well, these seals here might be small, but they eat everything-crab, flounder, herring, squid. Might as well chow down on my damn wallet. And so these sharks are the only things keeping the seals in check.” He slapped his hand on the shark’s side. Then looked up Kinney. “What are we doing now?”

Kinney felt a pang, looking over at the shark, thinking of her strung up on a different steel line, a fatal one. If this young thing didn’t get out to sea by the end of the week, that’s exactly where she’d end up. Even subdued and half-asphyxiated, the animal’s strength hummed through her every muscle. Her eyes surveyed the world of Sun and air with intensity and calculation. Over 400 million years of shark evolution, they had never conquered the land. They never had to. “She’s beautiful,” Kinney breathed.

“Thing’d kill you and me in an instant if it could.”

“No,” she shook her head gently, stroking the animal again. “We’re not seals and she knows it. We’re not her prey.” Kinney ran her hand from the pectoral fin down to the flank, feeling the rough tapestry. “Each little bump on the skin is actually a miniature tooth laid like shingles along the body. When you rub the skin carefully front-to-back with the denticles’ grain, it as smooth as satin, tough as iron. Rub it the wrong way and it’s a razor burn.”

Fossi watched her hand glide down the shark’s flank, slowly, barely touching the skin. The expression on face was focused but gentle, like she’d done this 1000 times before and would keep doing it. This was a different Kinney. And it surprised him because he too would often take this kind of quiet solace in the sea. And he too wouldn’t let many people see it.

Back to the reality of the wet deck and dying shark, “Back in the water then. Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She pushed the shark out over the sea, swinging the arm of the gantry toward the side. Will helped her steady the now-limp creature. Fossi leaned over and with a heave, unclipped the hoop of hose. The shark dropped, hit the water and spun loose. But she lay still in the water, listed to one side and then started slowly to sink.

Kinney stared down at her with furious worry. “She’s stunned, not enough oxygen in her brain! She can’t move enough to get any oxygen in her gills. She’s dying!”

“You’re really nuts for these things.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, fixated on the sinking form. She looked back at Fossi, and the plan building in her mind must have been visible in her eyes.

“Don’t do it,” the skipper warned.

Without a word Kinney hopped over the side.

She hit the water feet-first, and an awkwardly delayed rush of cold soaked through her clothes. Kinney blindly reached down and grabbed the sinking tail of the limp shark. Pulling up on it, she arrested the drop but that pulled her head under. Kicking to stay afloat, she surfaced and grabbed for the line that Fossi had thrown in. She pulled the shark to the surface with all the strength in her body, flipped its bulk tail down, and moved the limp form to her chest where she wrapped her arms around the bulk and squeezed.

A fist-sized bubble of air burst forth from the shark’s gullet where it had been trapped. “Give me the hoop. The hose!” she sputtered.

“Jesus, Kinney!” Fossi used the winch to drop the line down to sea level. Kinney re-wrapped the hoop around the still quiet shark. It took some time to inch it over the pectoral fins jutting out from each side. “OK, let out some line, and start motoring forward, we need to move water over the gills.”

“You have to get back aboard.” Will called, trying to pull the life preservers from its mount.“No, I’ll be okay hanging on! The line’s clear of the screws, just don’t go faster than five knots. I have to keep her mouth pointed straight.” She dropped back in the water, still hanging onto the shark.

Fossi swore to himself and put the boat’s engines in gear, slowly edging forward. Kinney pushed down on the mouth of the shark as water began to flow past. Into the open mouth, the oxygen rich seawater flowed out the shark’s gill slits, pushing life back into the inert body.

A minute went by, then another until with a sudden flip the shark broke free. Even in a depleted state its strength was more than sufficient to slip the line without apparent effort. It swam slowly forward with a few slow tail beats. Kinney closely watched it lose orientation, and correct itself. Then with rocketing power, it roiled the surface with rapid tail beats, and shot down into the depths.

“Whoop!” Kinney yelled, triumphant. Treading water, with the small shark gone, she felt useful and competent for the first time since getting on that fancy jet. This was what she was here for, not press conferences and social media campaigns. She was here to take action. Solve problems. Be the center of facts used to make good decisions. At least to know something about sharks that wasn’t a lie.

The boat was now turning back. Kinney’s victory saving one shark flipped instantly to the very practical issue that there were undoubtedly other sharks nearby – and they knew exactly where she was. All the others lurking under her – curious perhaps – made Kinney herself a prime for a test bite. Time to get out of the water.

Fossi cut Miranda’s engines and Kinney kicked alongside, grabbing the line that trailed from the gantry. Will hauled her hand over hand back onto the deck where she plopped down dripping.

“That was almost the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen!” Fossi accused, smiling and throwing her a towel and wrapping her in it. “Dumbest sober, by a mile.”

Kinney smiled and caught her breath. “Never give up. Never surrender.” Then looked over at the remaining passenger.

The seal had been busy. Despite its weak limbs it had managed to work its front half up on a large plastic egg crate that Fossi had lashed down. It slapped its tail flippers

gamely at the decking, slowly working its back half up on the crate. “Not as smart as they look,” said Fossi.

The sight and smell of ocean inspired the seal to another spasm of effort, laboring like a drunk in a sack race, working chest and then shoulders over the lip at which point its balance was tipped and the beast plummeted headlong over the gunwale.

Fossi burst out laughing. “Back into the mouth of the ocean. Or a White shark.” He watched over the side to see which one it was.

Kinney and Will joined him “These sharks are pretty small,” Kinney said.

“Pretty much what's here. Small ones. Not like up at Cape Cod, that’s where the big ones go,” Fossi turned back to the wheelhouse. “What next?”

“This is what I wanted to see. There are only small sharks here. Like the 13 foot one that bit Brinson. Now, let’s go find Hennessey.”