Russ Vetter, Leg II SHARK CRUISE. My, my, it’s 4:30 in the morning on Friday the 13th. I wonder what luck we will have today? The wind has laid down a bit from 20 to 30 knots overnight to a steady 10 to 15 out of the west. Not bad for shark fishing.

Dawn comes with a beautiful sunrise but we experience our only bad luck of the day. The “high flyer” is a special buoy that sits at the end of the two miles of longline. It is thrown over first and contains a radar reflector (the aluminum diamond on the top of the pole), a black flag that indicates fishing gear in the water, a strobe light when fishing at night, and a sea anchor that applies drag to the line and keeps the line fishing straight. As the high flyer is thrown it hits the water and breaks in half. Luckily we have a spare and all that is lost is the time it takes to retrieve the broken one and replace it.

On commercial fishing vessels and on some of our trips to the Eastern Tropical Pacific, where conditions are more unpredictable, it is common for the line to be cut in half by a passing ship or just to break due to wear and tear on the gear. At that point all the captain has is the dim reflection from the radar bouncing off a tiny piece of metal and the black flag barely visible above the horizon in rough seas. It the captain can find the high flyer he can save his gear and his catch and prevent the addition of one more piece of ghost fishing gear floating on the ocean.

We have moved back toward the mainland and occupy a sampling block about midway between San Clemente Island and San Diego. This is blue shark country. We capture 4 blue sharks in the morning and 21 on the afternoon set. We only catch one small mako.

On the morning set we capture a breeding female blue shark. These animals always fascinate me due to the extraordinary pain that must be endured when sharks mate. The shark is covered from head to tail with bite marks, where male sharks have bitten her during mating. Some of the tooth marks go in as deep as your finger nail. No wonder the skin of female sharks is much thicker than the males! ABOARD THE R/V DAVID STARR JORDAN, Off San Diego, California.