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feel somewhat safer. Now all we had to worry about was our dive bud-
dies nervously waving their bang sticks around.
In addition to Bob and Ron, the team included underwater pho-
tographer Chuck Nicklin, aquarists Kym Murphy and John “Muggs”
Carlton from Sea World, Larry Casteñares from the University of Mex-
ico City, and me. We departed San Diego and two days later at day-
break arrived at our first stop, the bleak, lonely Alijos Rocks. The weather
was gloomy and overcast. Even without the thought of sharks, none
of us felt like going into that gray water. Under the best of conditions,
there seems to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for very early morning
dives when you have just crawled out of a warm bed.
We anchored at a spot where there was about sixty feet of water be-
low the boat. Bob and Ron went in first, carrying their bang sticks,
to spread the rotenone. Shortly afterward the rest of us would join
them to gather the stunned and dying fish. Among us we had four
bang sticks in case we were harassed by the aggressive sharks we an-
ticipated meeting. Down we went, our heads swiveling in every di-
rection to look for the sharks we knew would be drawn to the hun-
dreds of struggling, dying fish.
After all our preparations—and worry—not one shark was to be seen.
In a way, it was a letdown. Here we had psyched ourselves up to meet
hordes of sharks, and they just weren't there. We set to work gather-
ing as many fish as we could of all sizes, right down to the tiniest go-
bies drifting out of the crevices. Dick Rosenblatt, the ichthyologist at
Scripps for whom the scientific collection was being made, had ex-
pectations of finding new species at these remote islands; if there were
any, they would be the small, geographically isolated, resident fishes
that, over time, had evolved to become genetically di¤erent from their
ancestors on the peninsula of Baja California.
We finally figured out why there were no sharks: it was late Febru-
ary, and the water was still too cool. We never learned which species
of sharks had caused all the trouble for the hook-and-line fishermen
from Scripps, but I suspect they were tropical and subtropical species
like Galápagos sharks (
Carcharhinus galapagensis
), blacktips (
C. lim-
batus
), and hammerheads. When the water cools down in winter, they
all head for southern Mexico or Central America, where the temper-
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