Before Jaws

Sharks Can Ruin Your Whole Summer

You may not like sharks, but you have to respect them. These purpose- designed, prehistoric eating machines are beautiful and scary at the same time. Anyone vaguely familiar with the late 20th Century remembers the 1975 movie “Jaws” about a huge great white shark that terrorized a peaceful, fictitious seaside community. It was a great movie and made people aware of “terror from the deep.” 

--This movie just so happend to have its 50 year anniversary this year.  Here is a look at this timeless classic-- 

To this day, some people are squeamish about going into the water due to this movie. What sticks in most people’s minds is the opening scene – a shark attacking a girl swimming at night by a gong buoy. You never see the shark – only the “shark’s eye view” of flailing limbs on the surface accompanied by the “dum, dum, dum, dum” music and French horns. Scary stuff I am here to tell you a similar story with one big difference: what you read here is true. It is not some phony yarn fabricated by polyester suited, gold-chained Hollywood writers over cafe lattes. The sharks are not automated, plastic dummies. This is the real thing.

A Town on Edge

Sharks demand your respect because they do their job beautifully. They earn their living cruising the seas eating things (mostly live things). They can be as small as 10 inches or as large as 60-feet. Having cartilage instead of bones, they are extremely flexible and can maneuver quicker than other fish. The tools of their trade are their highly specialized rows of teeth, which continuously renew themselves (a shark can go through 30.000 teeth in their 20-to-30-year lifetime). Although shark attacks are rare and shark caused deaths are even rarer, because it is such a horrible way to go, sharks are prominent in our minds when we take to the water.

Northport Bay is a protected body of water off Long Island Sound encompassing Centerport Harbor, Asharoken Beach, Northport Harbor, Duck Island and Price Bend. It’s a typical North Shore Bay mostly surrounded by high, lush hills and it is well protected from most winds. Fathometer readings vary from the high 20’s to wading pool depth. The time was early 1950’s and the little, picturesque town of Northport was rife with rumors of large shark sightings in the bay. Shark sightings in Long Island Sound are not common – especially in congested bays and harbors. Since the only sharks ever seen in Northport Bay were very small sand sharks, the rumors carried about as much credibility as a UFO landing in the town park, still, one could sense the town was a bit on edge.

Documented Sighting #1

Back in those days, one could go clamming without a license. There is nothing like sitting in the cockpit and sliding freshly opened clams (enhanced with lemon juice and a spot of catchup) down your gullet. While professional clammers worked in the depths with long rakes, we would clam at low tide in waist high water bending down digging in the mud with one hand while holding onto the dinghy with the other. With the naturally murky water and billows of disturbed mud, you could not see anything so clams were located by feet. Back in those days, there were three or four family boats that cruised and anchored together. We also went on clamming safaris together. While the kids in the family (including myself) were too small to do any real clamming, we watched the adults from the beach. 

For years, a standing joke amongst us kids was to periodically holler “shark!” to try to rattle our parents and uncles. This was always greeted by howls of laughter from the kids and snickers from the adults. But there came a day when my uncle and cousin, who was about eight years old at the time, were clamming alone off the west shore of Duck Island. My uncle had his back facing open water and my cousin sat on the beach making idle kid conversation. Suddenly, his eyes got as big as saucers. He yelled “shark!” and pointed behind his father. My uncle laughed and continued clamming but my cousin became increasingly agitated until, finally, my uncle turned around to see a large grey fin fast approaching him. He quickly pulled himself into the dinghy and watched the fin pass by. No more clamming that day. 

Documented Sighting #2

A few weeks later, our family boat was anchored alone in Duck Harbor. It was a quiet, very hot weekday and no other boats were around. On a full moon low tide, it was dead flat calm in the late afternoon. We sat in the cockpit reading, telling sea stories (and sweating). Suddenly, moving around the point entering Duck Harbor we spotted three shark fins – two small and one big. Much to my mother’s distress, my dad and I jumped into our dingy – at that time a sturdy 10-foot Dory type – and quietly paddled out to the fins. The big fin broke away from the pack and, as we stood silently in the Dory, slowly passed by us. That sucker was longer than the dinghy! Humbled, we quickly paddled back into the boat. 

Things were getting serious now. Imagination is a wonderful thing. It can also ruin your life if you let it. After these incidents, we kids never swam much that summer. In bay waters, you can only see a couple of feet down leading to complete blackness below. Hell, there could be anything lurking down there! Lock Ness monsters, sea serpents, huge crabs, giant squid and of course, large sharks ready to charge the surface at your helpless little flailing arms and legs.

Proof Positive

It wasn’t until late August or early September that the town had proof positive there were large sharks in the area. A local fisherman snagged a big one by the bay. Mouth agape and bloody, it was a ferocious 10-foot Mako strung by its tail at the town dock for all the town’s people to see (just like in the movie). We never heard much about sharks in the area after that season and, as memories faded, we started swimming more frequently. The ongoing “shark!” joke during clamming was never repeated. But even to this day when I am swimming and I look down into the murky depths, I sometimes hear the “dum, dum, dum, dum”  music and the French horns and think about that big shark strung up at the town docks so many years ago.

(Reprinted with permission of Regina Fexas.)

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