Re: Great White Shark Breaks Captivity Record

From: "George J. Myers, Jr." Date: Fri Oct 8, 2004 12:41 pm Subject: Re: Great White Shark Breaks Captivity Record That reminded me of my grandfather taking a couple of us out in a rented rowboat somewhere around NYC maybe Sheepshead Bay (named after fish with well you see,...ahh!) in Brooklyn or maybe City Island, Bronx. Fishing with drop lines and worms we caught two ugly looking little things a black "spider crab" (like a small king crab but black) and a "sea robin" which has spikes that can puncture you, both on the bottom. I was in Skagway, Alasaka with the National Park Service, Denver Service Center, right after Mt. St. Helen's exploded back in 1980 (went by the clouds of ash in a Greyhound $99 special anywhere in the US to Seattle, WA) digging around the "Moore Cabin" orginally an American riverboat captain, Tlingit woman and his son, working what they thought was a Canadian homestead claim (the rest is Klondike history) and went dropline fishing with a William and Mary recent grad from The James River, "tidewater" Virginia. We caught a small fish with a huge mouth, with a piece of hotdog. We asked one of the rangers there what it might be, he said they call that an "Irish lord" and we had a big laugh. Maybe it was a small "dolly varden" (Salvelinus malma Walbaum) I heard about. Some mussels growing there on the rocks! They have this fish there "candlefish" with so much oil in it, well ahh, you see! The oil was stored and consumed as a staple by the Tlingit natives up there, especially in winter after hung on racks, reminding me of the smokehouses in Seal Cove a little. --- In GrandMananIsland@yahoogroups.com, webmaster@m... wrote: During the Cold War, I studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey for a year. The campus was up the hill from the aquarium which, in those days, wasn't much more than the exhibit over at White Head Island. It certainly didn't have a million gallon tank as it does now. Of course, the aquarium always did have an excellent location near the boat basin, the long pier, and the rental fishing boat dock, so tourists all seem to end up there. It is also situated at a major intersecton along the coast highway to Carmel-By-The-Sea and Pebble Beach. My folks came out to visit several years later, and Dad and I went deep sea fishing on several days in a small outboard motor boat. We passed the aquarium entrance every morning and late afternoon to get to and from the rental boat dock. It was always packed with people. On the last day I caught one of those soup fin sharks, so named for the only edible part, which local Filipinos use to make shark fin soup. The creature was 52 inches long and weighed 48 pounds. It was the catch of my lifetime, for which an old fisherman on the dock offered me five bucks. :-) --- In GrandMananIsland@yahoogroups.com, "George J. Myers, Jr." wrote: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20041004/shark.html? ct=5599.84339241968 Once Grand Manan Island had the unofficial record for the length of a Great White Shark, something like 26 feet long found washed ashore in the 1950's. I saw this article and thought of the mola ("Among the largest bony fish; pelagic fish having an oval compressed body with high dorsal and anal fins and caudal fin reduced to a rudder-like lobe; worldwide in warm waters") or "headfish" or "ocean sunfish" my Mom said she saw beached on the Seal Cove Beach I think. (Gulf stream moving around?) I read one of Arthur C. Clarke's early science fiction novels over there on City Island in the park with the bronze seals, and in it they herd sea animals, out in the Pacific. I think the sunfish though solitary would make a good candidate for ocean "cattle" if they could be raised to swim like large "schools". Or maybe "whale sharks" real fishes that William Shatner helped to protect (a 50 foot fish!) For the latest on him see: http://www.shatnerhasbeen.com/