The Line Tender

by Kate Allen

  “You know my dad, Tom, and that’s my neighbor, Mr. Patterson,” I said, pointing to them at the edge of the rocks.

  “She smells a little ripe,” Sookie said.

  “Is she a she?” I asked.

  “She is,” said Robin.

  I covered my nose and noticed fresh scrapes on Robin’s arm.

  “Ray, you ready?” Robin yelled. Another biologist trekked through the rocks to the shark’s head.

  “This is Ray Rodriguez,” Robin said.

  I shook hands with Ray.

  Ray and Robin moved through the rocks, circling the shark, discussing types of incision. They decided on a lateral cut down the side of the fish.

  “We have to move fast,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Tide’s coming in.”

  I nodded. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the sketch pad. I figured I could use it to draw and take notes, if I heard something that sounded important.

  “Dad,” I whispered, pointing to his camera.

  He nodded.

  Robin crouched down and rested a gloved hand on the shark’s snout.

  “Wow,” she said, looking over the shark’s face.

  “What are those marks?” I asked.

  “Some of these are scratches from a seal most likely. Maybe we’ll find that seal in her gut.”

  I heard Vern Devine’s shaky voice in my head, Wait for the seals.

  Robin pointed to another area of the nose, near the missing chunk. “These other scrapes look like they might be from her journey to the beach.”

  I flipped to a clean page in the sketch pad and made a line drawing of the snout, filling in the defensive wounds from the seal in all of the right spots. I erased the section of the nose that was missing and drew a concave line.

  “Robin?” I asked, blowing away eraser dust.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you looking forward to this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s like opening a present. I can’t wait to get the wrapper off and see what’s inside.”

  I heard Sookie snort. He thought it sounded like Mom too.

  Robin stuck her hand inside the upper jaw and nodded.

  “Why are we doing this?” I asked.

  “Because looking at a dead shark will tell us something about the ones that are still alive,” Robin said.

  * * *

  ° ° ° °

  While the biologists continued to take measurements, I made a simple line drawing from nose to tail. Robin gestured for me to move closer.

  “Come on in here,” she said. “So you can see better.”

  I stood by Robin’s side.

  “Seeing the shark this way doesn’t do her justice. They really are powerful when you see them swimming through the ocean,” Robin said.

  “Four-point-nine-three meters,” reported Robin. I wrote the figure on my page.

  Sookie and the biologists rocked the shark, moving her just slightly to help Robin take the measurements.

  In the distance, the arc of onlookers grew by a few more people, and Ray walked around the shark, snapping photos with his camera. It made me think of Dad, who was standing with Mr. Patterson in the crowd.

  “Ray is photographing scars, fin marks, and distinctive body markings. Though it’s a little tricky with the decomposition and abrasions from knocking about in the ocean. There is a huge archive of these types of images, and biologists can use the photos to identify white sharks around the world,” Robin explained.

  I nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  I hiked back through the rocks, holding the sketch pad away from me to help keep my balance. When I got to the sand, I tucked the pad into my armpit and grabbed Mr. Patterson’s elbow and Dad’s hand.

  “Come with me,” I said. “You’ve gotta see this.”

  Mr. Patterson smiled. “This is as far as I go, dear. But thank you.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said. “Let’s just go slow.”

  “What if my cast gets wet?” Dad said. “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll get out of there before the tide,” I said. “You can take pictures.”

  Dad nodded.

  “I guess I’ll keep an eye on Tom,” Mr. Patterson said.

  I tucked my sketch pad into the waistband of my shorts, stuck the pencil through my ponytail, and ferried Dad and Mr. P to the carcass. While they managed to keep their balance, I slipped on loose rock, but the sketch pad stayed dry. They took places near the dorsal fin and Dad began shooting pictures.

  “How often do they eat?” I asked Robin.

  “That depends. If a shark feeds on a nice seal, it may not eat again for weeks. It takes a long time for a shark to digest a large meal.”

  “Dorsal high—fifty-point-three,” Ray called out.

  I scribbled the numbers beside my drawing of the dorsal fin.

  Within minutes, Ray cut the shark from the gills to the anus and used a small knife to free the skin and muscle that covered the abdominal cavity. He pulled away a thick layer that resembled a pinkish foam carpet pad. The smell was like nervous skunks, fresh from a swim in raw sewage.

  Robin made a face. “Well, her organs have seen better days. They are a little soupy. But I’m really surprised about the overall condition. It’s better than I thought.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, she’s been rolling around along the seafloor and it doesn’t take long for isopods to get in through the gills and other openings. They feed on dead sharks from the inside out,” Robin said, pulling away the skin and muscle.

  That’s exactly what Fred said would happen.

  “Can I see the inside before you start messing around in there?” I asked, thinking of the field guide. I had been dying to know what was under the hood of this shark, so that I could draw the outside in a more realistic way.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “Let me make it a little easier for you.”

  Robin and Ray pulled back more of the carpet pad.

  I drew what I saw, but without knowing what I was looking at, they were just flabby shapes. A long shape filled almost the entire cavity.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s the liver. It can be up to twenty percent of the shark’s body weight. The fatter the liver, the healthier the shark.”

  Was this shark healthy? Robin removed large sections of the liver and put them into plastic bins. As Ray sat one of the bins onto a scale, I peered inside. The single lobe looked like a very fat baby and there were several others to go.

  “We might have better luck here,” Robin said when it was time to look at the stomach contents. “The walls of the stomach are thick, so it will take them longer to break down.”

  The stomach was bulging, indicating that something large was inside. I drew another sketch. Once again, Robin sawed away at fine layers to make a slit down one side of the gut, which contained:

  a porpoise

  a toupee

  fish bone fragments

  Dad snapped pictures. Even though the porpoise was large and essentially swallowed whole, the toupee stopped my heart.

  “Pardon me, but what is that?” Mr. Patterson asked.

  “Sharks can’t digest hair,” Robin said, holding up the hairball. “The shark probably ate a fur seal recently.”

  I was relieved that it wasn’t human hair and strangely delighted that it was a seal. Mom and Vern were right.

  “Hey, Robin?” I asked. “Are the seals coming back to Cape Cod?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And are the white sharks following them?” I added.

  “Let’s talk afterward,” she said, pointing the toupee at me. She held my gaze for a moment, like she kn
ew I was on to something. I felt a shiver across my scalp.

  A new brand of stink entered the atmosphere when the decaying stomach contents sat in plain view. The fish bone fragments would be sent to a lab where they could hopefully identify the specific species of fish, giving clues to the shark’s whereabouts. Fred would have loved this stuff. I started a new page in my sketch pad called Stomach Contents.

  Robin showed us the spiral valve of the intestines. It looked like a giant sausage link, but when Robin cut a long section from the wall, making a window into the valve, I could see a spiral structure inside, like a staircase. I thought immediately of the moon snail that Fred showed me in Folly Cove and I wondered how nature could make that perfect pattern in two different animals, for different reasons. The pattern was beautiful.

  Robin pulled out the reproductive organs for a closer look and with what was salvageable of the decayed major organs packed away in coolers, the shark’s carcass began to resemble the empty lobster bodies Sookie had taken away from last night’s feast.

  “We’ve got something here!” Robin cried, examining the womb on a flat rock. Her voice cracked in excitement.

  Ray leaned in. There were two shark pups in the uterus, dead, of course. The shark was a mother. On the back of Stomach Contents, I drew two pups side by side.

  “I have never seen pups in a white shark’s uterus before,” Robin told us. “This is rare.”

  Fred would be freaking out. Robin carefully removed them from the shark’s womb and laid them on top of a cooler for a closer view. At this point, Robin and Ray seemed to forget there were several of us straining for a peek at the baby sharks and they hovered over them for a minute.

  “Dad,” I said, pointing at the shark pups.

  * * *

  ° ° ° °

  After working in the cavity for a while, Robin said, “Let’s look at the gills from inside.”

  Robin began sawing into the shark’s side with a knife. In minutes, she peeled back thick sections, like a steak, for each gill and she turned them like pages in a book. Each page had rows of red folds like an accordion made out of meat.

  “These are beautiful,” she said. “Lucy, will you help me?”

  I looked up from sketching. “Me?”

  Robin nodded and tossed me a pair of gloves, which I stretched over my fists. I left the book in the sand, and Robin motioned for me to hold one of the gill sections. I grabbed the slab. It was cold and firm. If it weren’t for gutting fish on Sookie’s boat, I probably would have been more grossed out. Touching the inside of the shark was fine. Smelling the inside of the shark was another story. Robin pointed to areas of the gills while explaining to the crowd that water flows off the gills one way and blood flows the other way.

  “The shark needs to swim at all times, otherwise it will suffocate.”

  I looked over at Sookie, who was standing on the perimeter with his arms crossed, seeming pleased with himself. I wiggled the gill flap with one hand and ran my finger over the feathery sections of the accordion. It was hard to believe how detailed all of the shark’s different systems were and that I had my hand inside the body of a great white. I kept my gloves on and stayed beside Robin. When Robin cut the lens from the eye, I held it in my palm. It was perfectly round and was the color of a red grape. I touched the clear jelly that Ray squeezed from little holes in the shark’s snout. The holes were actually sensory organs that gave the shark a sixth sense and helped her seek prey.

  * * *

  ° ° ° °

  Two hours from the start of the necropsy, the tide was coming closer. Robin cut out a section of five vertebrae.

  “There are rings of calcium in each vertebra. You can count the rings like a tree to find the age of the shark,” she said.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Robin sealed up the wedge-shaped section to be sent back to the lab along with tissue samples, fish bone fragments, and a suspected tapeworm. The pups would go too.

  Robin explained this was critical information. To understand and protect the white shark population, first, biologists must collect age data. If there were too many young sharks or too many old sharks in the ocean, this signaled a problem. Just like Vern Devine told us. Robin said it could be a problem with disease or reproduction. Our shark was middle-aged.

  At the very end, Ray closed the flaps on the cavity and Sookie helped the biologists roll the shark into a new position. Ray sawed off the dorsal fin and said, “Poor old girl.”

  She looked wrong without the dorsal fin. The pectoral fins were removed and placed on another folding table. Our shark was a finless bullet. I thought about what Vern had said about fishermen killing sharks for their fins. After seeing the details of this shark inside and out, it seemed even more of a waste. I tried to write and draw everything I could remember in the sketch pad, so I could transfer all that Robin had explained into the field guide.

  Robin invited us to touch her serrated teeth and examine her snout before Ray removed the jaws. She explained how the shark continues to make replacement teeth throughout its life.

  “There’s the outer row that we see,” she said, sweeping her hand along the jawline. “But behind that row, there are so many spare teeth, ready to advance forward when one of the front teeth pops out. It’s a continuous process.”

  It was like waiting in line for your name to be called.

  Ray went to work on the jaws, prying them loose. “Robin told me you wanted a pair of these,” he said.

  “Yeah, I lost the first set,” Sookie said.

  It was a bloody mess that turned all of the shark’s white parts pink-orange. Ray cut away at the gums and rocked the jaws from side to side like a gruesome set of false teeth until they came loose. Dad took a picture of Sookie holding the dripping jaws in the air. Without them, the shark was unrecognizable. Sookie helped the biologists carry the plastic tubs and coolers back to their trucks. Soon, the waves would carry away the remains.

  “You hungry?” I asked Mr. Patterson, joking. He was sitting on a boulder, looking as though his joints might be bothering him.

  “Lord, no. I think I’m going to be sick. I could have gone without that last part.”

  “Seriously,” I said.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “About the way a shark is made to do what it needs to do.”

  “Amazing,” he said.

  “Let’s get Dad out of here.”

  Once Dad and Mr. P were safely on the sand, I trudged to where the trucks were lined up. Robin was laughing about something with Ray, while she dug through her backpack. I walked close enough to the two of them to make myself seen.

  “Nice work today,” Robin said to me.

  “You took some copious notes,” Ray said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s for a project at school.”

  Ray nodded. “Cool.”

  Robin pulled a handful of granola bars from her bag. “Anybody want one?” she asked.

  I looked at her hands, wondering if it was safe for them to be touching food after where they had been. Ray took one of the bars. He thanked her, ripped open the wrapper, and started eating. Robin did the same. I guessed it was safe. Only thing was, dry oats and twigs held together by glue weren’t really part of my soft foods diet.

  “Lucy?” she asked, holding up the last bar.

  I grabbed the snack. “Thanks.”

  I tore the wrapping and bit off a hunk of granola bar. My body can do this.

  “Anybody have any water?” I asked with my mouth full.

  “I have some lukewarm coffee,” said Ray.

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  Ray handed me a doll-size thermos cup, and I took small, bitter sips. It was worse than Moxie.

  “When did you know that you wanted to become a marine
biologist?” I asked Robin.

  “When I was really young,” she said. “I remember the first time I walked into the New England Aquarium. It was dark and full of concrete like a parking garage. And it smelled of fish and penguin droppings. I remember my sister pinching her nose, but not me. I liked it.”

  I smiled, thinking of my mom.

  “Gross, I know,” she said. “We walked up the ramp around the big tank in the middle. We stood at one of the observation windows and I saw the nose of a shark come into view. It was so close, I felt like I could touch it. I knew from a young age that I wanted to work outside.”

  Ray nodded, as though he felt the same way.

  “I love the ocean,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said. “We were going to talk about seals.”

  She nodded.

  “When I was a grad student, I read an article that stayed with me,” she said. “It predicted what might happen to the seal population off Cape Cod after the Marine Mammal Protection Act became law. Back then, seals had been my focus.”

  My scalp started buzzing like I knew where she was headed.

  “Anyway, that article I read in school caught my eye because it talked about the next link in the chain. It talked about what was coming next, after the seals. And it was the sharks. The sharks eat the seals.”

  “So she started looking for the sharks,” said Ray.

  “Yup, that’s when I started to focus on sharks. Do you know who wrote that article?” asked Robin.

  “My mom?” I guessed.

  “Your mom,” she said. “I had to meet her, so I tracked her down. And I learned so many things from her.”

  I looked down at my granola bar and noticed it was almost gone. I had swallowed most of it. My cheeks felt hot, and my eyes stung like I was going to cry.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

  “Fire away.”

  “Do you ever swim with sharks?” I asked.

  “Not on purpose,” Robin said.

  “My mom used to.”

  “I know,” said Robin. “She wasn’t afraid.”

  “Do you think that’s crazy?”

  “A little bit,” said Robin. “But your mom always believed she was safe, and if she thought the sharks were agitated, she stayed away. Your mom wanted people to see that sharks aren’t man-eaters, but I think she also wanted people to be aware that the ocean belongs to the sharks. They can breathe down there. We can’t.”