Meetings


Baywatch
Alec Connah

As the morning sun rises over the jagged contours of the island ahead, a shaft of light picks out the white smile and muscular form of something high above me. Swaying to an alien rhythm, the creature emits sporadic booming intonations as it clings precariously to its perch; lawyers are, after all, usually more at home behind a desk. My fellow volunteer has only been in the observation tower for twenty minutes and is pumped with excess adrenaline, waving the video camera like a baton and conducting the massive swells of the southern ocean to his own warped bidding, as if tempting Neptune to respond. Anything seems possible off of South Africa’s western cape, where the confluence of the Indian and Atlantic oceans call into being seascapes of such majesty and unpredictability as to overstoke the imagination.

For my part, I’m stumbling around like a drunk in the back of the twenty-foot boat as it rolls and tumbles. From tiny but powerful speakers fixed somewhere above the wheelhouse comes the highly amplified voice of Eric Idle, singing “Always look on the bright side of life.” The skipper lurches toward me, hands me a tuna head lashed to a length of nylon rope, and (in a shouting match with the Monty Python soundtrack) informs me, “Today, you will be the master baiter.” “I’ve been called worse than that by better men than you,” I bawl back in cheery defiance, and hurl the disembodied morsel all of ten feet off the stern, where it drifts forlornly beneath a cork flotation bung. Two bottles of fish oil drip their contents steadily over the side, and a mesh bag of offal discharges its fragrant particle trail for good measure. My instructions were: When a shark appears, lure it towards the back of the boat by towing the bait in—close enough for ID photos—but not too close. Easier said than done?

So an hour passes. Contemplating the distant jagged shore across the silver surface, I finger the skinny leash like prayer beads, becoming incrementally entranced, clichés bubbling their way to the fore: A watched kettle never boils. There are no sharks here, they are only in my mind. Shifting position and the start of a Bob Marley CD break my spell and assist in maintaining the vigil. I fidget, and begin to drift again. I wonder if predators are attracted by reggae bass frequencies? The voice from above intrudes upon my reverie. It’s the lawyer again, making a pertinent point: “Uh, by the way, you have the rope around your ankle.” Like an idiot, I’d stepped into a loose coil. Feigning cool, I lazily stoop to extricate myself, when the voice rings out again, this time much louder: “Shark at twelve o’clock!”

I manage a rapid squinting pan of the scene as someone switches the music off. A vast blanket of dense foam has moved over the water, residue from the wave-lashed rocky shore away to starboard; the immediate impression is that we are bobbing atop some giant’s birthday cake, its icing as yet unblemished. Then Dali lends a hand. On cue, the leading tip of a dark carving knife emerges slowly from the sculpted spume and cuts a slow diagonal across its skin. The fin is standing close to two feet clear from the surface and I follow its steady progress, mesmerized by the surreal quality of the long moment. It dips away gently, the thick mat of bubbles closing ranks to an invisible mend in its wake. Nobody speaks. Away in the distance there is a dull bee-like drone as a little twin-engine Cessna banks and comes in low towards us. The pilot must be curious, and for a moment I see us through his eyes and think how inconsequential we must appear.

Coming in like a train, the Great White crests the top of a muscular swell and for a split second our eyes are parallel, the dark orb instantly appraising me. With my racing pulse comes a time warp, seconds stretching forever, body clock blowing a mainspring, workings tangled in a stream of addled conjecture: It’s immense . . . such pace . . . such power . . . fast symmetry . . . me . . . too slow . . . it’s got the bait! My rope is attached to a car, and the car is accelerating away, but my foot is free. There is a blue-green explosion as the vast crescent-shaped tail kicks gallons of brine over me and the line draws tight, strains, and then loosens, released by the cut of departing dentition. The little plane shoots past us, low enough for me to make out the pilot’s madly grinning face. I hunch over the side like a winded athlete, exhale an extended spray, and in shocked relief turn to my captive audience.

“Dude,” deadpans the lawyer, “Where’s my fish?”

“Caught . . . adjourned,” I reply guiltily, and admit to myself that I’m hooked.



Alec Connah lives in Shropshire, U.K., but volunteered for this research trip to South Africa.