When Sharks Mate and Storms Break

by Bob Tis

The first Monday of summer snuck up on me like a missing bag of dirty laundry – I knew it was there, but I didn't want to see it, smell it or have any involvement with it.

Dawn didn't so much break but instead cracked gray scrambled eggs over the East End of St. John and spiced them with some moldy Sahara dust. The life-giving gas stove in the sky tried hard to burn off the haze, but by lunchtime, despite the best efforts of the planetary wind turbines, it was only hot, hazy and dissonantly gray.

It felt more like the first day of a nuclear winter.

Fortunately, I was on the boat, which is infinitely better than land most any summer day in most any place I have ever been. And we had a lot to talk about, out at the mouth of Coral Harbor. The National Park Service had scheduled dinghy races (no joke) the previous Saturday, so local mariners could choose their storm berths on the hurricane chain and in the protected bays of Hurricane Hole. The races were hastily canceled because of some forecasted gales. Consequently, there were some nice boats to watch, as they hoisted white sheets and shoved off into the gray day, back to their home harbors. People were making plans on this first weekday of summer, talking about how nice the people are in Grenada, how pretty the girls are in Trinidad and how cheap the diesel is in Venezuela.

Others debated the benefits of Borck Creek over Princess Bay in a hurricane and discussed the best strategy for the undignified dinghy regatta now scheduled for the next Saturday.

The sea remained confused all morning, but then sort of got tired of itself and laid right down. The day reminded me of a grumpy man in his Lazy Boy chair, stuffing himself until he had to let out a notch in his belt, looking for a release, wanting to yell at someone. A thunderstorm was definitely welling up – you could feel it.

I played some cards, napped and listened to the latest fallout from the states on the radio. I overheard Dr. Joy Brown, the radio psychologist, tell one of her callers to "pull your socks up." I laughed and decided it was time to venture out into the world, get some supplies and think about dinner.

That's when I saw the dorsal fin circling the anchorage.

It was a big shark, maybe eight or nine feet long. It wasn't a huge surprise, friends on dive boats had been talking about seeing a lot of Blacktip and Lemon sharks. Sharks are certainly not unexpected visitors in Coral Bay, just guests that you like to keep your eye on. I cleaned a bag of beans in the colander and set them on the stove to soak. Then I saw a second shark.

This nature event was worthy of notifying my neighbor, Jeff, who was anchored up twenty yards to port. But he was already on deck, sans clothes but with binoculars in one hand and the shark book in the other.

The sharks started circling closer together on this squalid afternoon, and the air above the mangrove flats became noticeably tense. The big fish took their dance in near shore, just fifty yards out from the beach. Then one shark, the smaller of the two, just stopped with its belly on the turtle grass below and its dorsal fin exposed above the surface in the shallows.

Now we had to investigate. We got in the dinghies and rowed over toward the stalled shark. Carefully we dropped a small anchor, well up-current, and inched down on the beached shark. Its snout was dug into the mud, and it ignored us.

Dressed now, Jeff was astute enough to have brought the shark book, and I identified this Tiburon as a Nurse Shark because of its curved and floppy tail. Jeff held the book up to the shark and decided it was a Sand Tiger Shark because of its pointy snout. We rarely agree on anything.

We waited for the second shark to reappear, but there was no sign of it. The beached shark just sort of snuffled off into a more comfortable spot down the way, where the water was about two feet above the turtle grass and it could stay mostly underwater. Jeff and I discussed the events of the day and options for the summer. The afternoon was still a gloomy cloak over the natural machinations above and below. Ten minutes passed and the bigger shark reappeared and began circling. It closed in on the smaller shark and they both circled each other very tightly. It was a mating dance.

We let out the anchor line and drifted above this violent assignation. The sharks rolled over each other, flopping all over the turtle grass like wrestlers in Olympic competition. True voyeurs, we watched this fish pornography unbeknownst to the fully occupied sharks until the sun went behind the mountains and darkness began to creep into the landscape. It wasn't beautiful; it was more like watching an automobile accident, you couldn't take your eyes off them as they scraped against each other.

After about 45 minutes they abruptly finished. Just like that, they swam off together, like two people leaving a bar to smoke a cigarette – very matter-of-fact, orchestrated even.

I rowed off for shore in my inflatable, promising to bring Jeff back some ice cream, as he motored back to his boat. It was quiet in Coral Bay, and I managed to gather the necessities – garlic and onions for the beans, ice for the beer and ice cream for Jeff – in short order. The rain began fall hard by the time I had returned to the beachhead. I had options, I could have sought shelter, but I needed a freshwater shower and there was no way I was going to let my ice and Jeff's ice cream melt. You all know how much groceries cost in Coral Bay.

I rowed my boxy blow-up boat with short, sharp strokes out to the anchorage, soaked but satisfied. I would later collect some of this water for my tanks. I made Jeff's sloop and handed off the still frozen chocolate ice cream. He invited me on board to watch the gathering thunderstorm. I begged off, citing my soaking beans and just as I did the world shook with a thunderclap. A gust like I hadn't seen in months blew me toward the mouth of Coral Bay. I was on a sleigh ride, my aluminum oars were no match for the gale, and I was pushed into the maw of wind and rain. I drifted toward land until Jeff, now soaked too, retrieved me with his motorized dinghy. The gust, I learned later, had blown one Coral Bay seaman off his decks, nearly killing him.

Jeff towed me home with the rain pelting us and the lightning turning the night into noontime. It was a humbling ride in an unforgiving little gale, but I reveled in the madness of it all, thumping along over the waves, soaked to the skin, spooked by the lightning. I felt more alive than I had all day.

I scrambled aboard, dried off and brought the beans to a boil. Summer was here. The wind and the rain, the sharks shagging in the shallows, the storm clearing the air. Why not love it all?