The lure of sharks - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 120

sance trip had been cut short, the plan for our second expedition was
to bring live sharks back to Sea World. We had collecting permits from
Mexico City—which, we hoped, meant there would be no trouble at
the border or with the Oficina de Pesca o‹cial in San Felipe. Because
we planned to bring live sharks back with us, the arrangements for this
trip were much more elaborate and would, among other things, in-
volve setting up a holding tank on the beach to keep the sharks in prior
to driving them out.
I was again working with John Hart and Jerry Kinmont, as well as
veterinarian Jay Sweeney and Dr. Murray Dailey, a parasitologist from
Long Beach State University whose special interest was the parasites
of elasmobranchs—sharks and their relatives. He was most eager to
check out the internal parasitic fauna found in sharks and rays from
this seldom-studied region.
We towed down the same eighteen-foot Thunderbird collecting boat,
now equipped with a new 150-horsepower Mercury outboard engine.
Arriving in San Felipe, we checked into a small motel on the beach
at the south end of town. Murray Dailey was really impatient to get
at his favorite animals—shark parasites—and he begged me to let him
put out a small setline to see what he could catch overnight. Giving
in to his pleading, I helped him launch the boat. Murray then laid
out the small baited setline not far from shore and, when he was
through, anchored the boat o¤ the beach in front of the motel and
swam in.
We all went into the center of town for supper and to discuss our
plans for the next day. Arriving back at the motel after dark, we sat on
the patio looking out to sea. Suddenly someone said, “Where's the boat?”
We stared out into the dark; none of us could see it. We knew there
was enough light shining out from the motel to illuminate the light-
colored hull, but it simply wasn't there! We also noticed that an o¤shore
wind had sprung up and was blowing out to sea.
A feeling of panic overcame us. We all jumped in the truck and drove
into town to see if we could find a panga fisherman to run out and try
to find the boat. We managed to raise one sleeping fisherman from his
warm bed. Muttering something unintelligible in Spanish, he headed
down to his boat and out into the dark sea. He came back in an hour,