"Great Whites are a bunch of punks," he said, spitting chum as he spoke. "Ever since that movie by that Steven Spielberg fellow, they all swim around like their fins don't stink. We all have notochords of cartilage, you know. Not just the big bad Great White." Those fightin' words were uttered by Quint, a macho mako shark who hangs out off Long Island.

Lon Cohen was lucky enough to land the interview with Quint, and the writer's story "Making Time with a Mako", appears on Hamptons.com. In the wide-ranging conversation, Quint revealed that his great-uncle on his mother's side knew Ernest Hemingway: "His name was Tony. He was a big man somewhere down in the islands. Had his own crew and everything. Anyway, Hemingway was so impressed with my uncle that he gave him a part in his book, ‘Old Man and the Sea’."

Bet you never knew that.

Here's one of Quint's Pacific cousins, being tagged this summer off San Diego, and a screengrab of the latest update of their tracks. Check out TOPP's live data site for more species updates.

Notice the mako in the Sea of Cortez? That's our Monty, doing his thing....and, yep, where he is, he's closer to Phoenix than to Los Angeles. That info's for those of us who didn't believe what he was telling us on his widget.