THREE fishermen sat on a low wall overlooking the harbour, smoking their cigarettes of the day, as a blanket of fog draped itself over the crooked spines of Brandon's dark mountains. They watched silently as a pair of sheep dogs sniffed for scraps among a pile of discarded fishing nets lying in pools of rusty water on the peer. "The fog was at the back door when I woke up at 6.30 this morning," one of them said. The others nodded, cradling mugs of tea in their hands. The boats at anchor in the harbour swayed rhythmically, as the swell of the morning's spring tide rippled the water in gentle folds.
Further out, beyond the north western tip of the Dingle Peninsula, where the blue shark hunt shoals of mackerel in the North Atlantic Drift every summer, the sun burnt weakly through the milky haze.
Around 10 a.m. Des Sugrue, a 37 year old sea angler from Tralee, climbed on board his 21 foot boat, the Shadow He lifted the anchor the boat's engine came to life falteringly as he steered a slow course out beyond the harbour walls. His companion on board, John Young, a 53 year old charter boat skipper from Brandon, sat outside the wheel house, fixing a line with glittering strips of silver mackerel trace on to his fishing rod.
The morning air was cold and thick and through the fog we could hear the muffled sounds of barking dogs and bleating sheep back on shore, as John reeled in half a dozen green and blue ribbed mackerel. Twitching convulsively, they were dropped into a white plastic bucket at his feet.
For several hours that morning we drifted in Brandon Bay, waiting for a window to appear in the fog that would allow us to move out to sea, close to the shipping lanes, where the shark hunt mackerel and the tankers from Shannon plough their watery furrows. By early afternoon, as we moved out of the bay tentatively, fresh banks of impenetrable fog and 3,500 miles of ocean loomed beyond Brandon Head. To the north east lay the tiny Magharee Islands and to the south, Ballydavid Head and the Great Blasket Islands. In the west there was nothing but a vast expanse of water and the shark we hoped to snag from depths of more than 200 feet.
Six species of shark regularly visit Irish coastal waters: the mako; the thresher; the six gilled; hammerhead shark; the blue shark and the porbeagle. Only blue shark and - to a lesser extent - the porbeagle shark, are caught in Irish waters with any regularity. While there are Irish and British sport anglers who fish for shark, the sport is more popular with continental anglers. This accounts for the relatively low numbers of shark caught in Irish waters. Regular visitors to our shores, 12,000 blue shark have been caught, tagged and released in Irish coastal waters since 1970, according to the Central Fisheries Board.
For three months of the year, from June to September, the water temperature around the west coast of Ireland rises above 14 centigrade. It is during this period the blue shark follow shoals of mackerel into Irish coastal waters.
Throughout the rest of the year they can be found anywhere between the Caribbean, New York's Long Island, Nova Scotia, the Bay of Biscay, Portugal and the Azores.
The most cosmopolitan of all shark, they are capable of speeds of around seven knots and can travel from Ireland to the Azores in 15 days. Distance means little to the blue shark, as they move through the water for 24 hours a day in order to extract oxygen and blue shark tagged in Irish waters are sometimes caught over 6,000 kilometres away. Nearly all the blue shark caught in Irish waters are immature, young females, averaging a weight of 40-60lb, with the record weight for the species in Irish waters standing at 206 lb.
Despite popular hysteria and concerns about shark attacks, only five or six out of 350 species of shark are known to attack humans the white, the bull and the tiger shark are the most dangerous. Although there are no reports of blue shark having attacked anyone off the Irish coast, they are known to have killed people in tropical waters and are suspected of being responsible for a large number of deaths when ships were sunk in the Pacific Ocean during the second World War.
Naturally, the mystique and the power of the shark has made the species the ultimate prize for sport anglers like Des Sugrue and John Young, who come out in small boats every summer, to try to hook them on rod and line. This August, the two men took part in the third annual Irish International Shark and Species Fishing Competition in Brandon. That September afternoon, however, the two men were pessimistic about our chances of catching the creatures after only one day at sea.
Four miles out, the engine was cut, and a scent trail of blood, fish oil, bran and minced mackerel was put overboard in large perforated sacks to lure the shark to our boat. The swell created a wide "rubby dubby" slick far out to sea, the oil spreading out on the surface and the denser particles beginning to sink with the tide.
While we waited for shark to appear, John pointed out the hazardous nature of a sport which involves catching shark and then releasing them unharmed. The hooks are biodegradable, and rust and disintegrate in the shark's mouth within three days. "It can be very dangerous, to the extent now that we don't bring them on board the boat. We don't do that anymore. They can thrash about and drive their teeth into the gunnel of the boat," he said.
All afternoon we waited in vain for dorsal fins to appear near the slick and in the evening we returned to port without sighting a single shark. "There's a pile of work involved for a very small return. It's fine for those who go fishing for shark on a regular basis because they don't go away disappointed," John said. "It's a bit of a dedicated sport: shark fishing. There are not that many people who will sit around all day and catch nothing. You can go out for four days and catch nothing or you can catch four in a day. There's no knowing. That's the price you have to pay with any big fish," he said, turning on the radio to listen to the weather forecast for the following day.
The sun was splitting the stones down at the harbour wall when we awoke the next morning. With fresh mackerel and three buckets of "rubby dubby" on board we headed out to sea again, a light fresh, north north easterly wind blowing in our faces. By 10 a.m., we were five miles out and the first onion bag containing eight pounds of rank smelling bait was placed in the water.
As the tide carried the oil out to sea, John and Des filleted fresh mackerel from head to tail, the blood leeching purple stains into the wooden cutting board. "It's a nice, fine day. C'mon fishies, let's be having you," John said, attaching the mackerel to a nine ounce bronze hook. "It's a good slick, isn't it John?" said Des, lighting one of his cigars. "It is, yeah. You can imagine what an oil slick would do," John replied, as they cast their lines some distance from the boat.
For the next four hours, guillemots and cormorants hovered over the rubby dubby slick and the sun heat down on our heads. Des and John fished for haddock, pollack and gurnard while they waited for shark to appear. At five minutes to one in the afternoon, with the sun high in the sky and the swell lulling us to sleep, John suddenly spotted movement around his float. He had seen a dorsal fin.
Alter hours of tedium and disappointment, we fixed our gaze on John's float in the water, waiting for a shark to bite. Although we could not see the shark, John insisted one was moving around his float. When John picked up his fishing rod a few minutes later, we watched the reel run slowly for the first time. It had taken the bait into its mouth. After another short wait, sensing that the time was right, John placed the rod in the protective butt pad rod holder" around his waste, put the reel in gear, sharply tugged the rod into horizontal position and forced the hook firmly in the shark's mouth. The reel began to spin rapidly. The shark was hooked.
"THEY wait and come in and see the boat and then they take off again. They might take several hundred yards of line before they come in again. With the big ones, that can happen half a dozen times. He's got the hook in him now. We've got to tire him, out you see, so that you don't get him thrashing about," John said.
For the following 15 minutes the shark exhausted itself as John reeled it in slowly. As he began to tighten the reel, the slim outline of a seven foot, 80 pound female shark gradually emerged alongside the boat. Its dark, shadow moving up through the water until the thick, inky blue back of the shark became visible. Just as the dorsal fin was nearing the surface the shark, taking fright at the sight of the white hull of the boat, dived suddenly and John let the reel run unimpeded. "We're never butchers when we take up a fish. Softly, softly does it," he said, fixing a glove on his left hand.
Ten minutes later, as John drew the shark towards the boat for the third time, it was clear the big fish had tired. As the line tightened, the shark emerged from the deep again. For the first time we could see its magnificent indigo blue back, the porcelain whiteness of its underbelly, then the powerful head with small, black pupils set in the tiny discs of its eyes. John and Des, concerned not to injure the shark, drew it alongside gently, its five gill slits becoming visible above the water line. Des held the line taught, the shark's head and mouth raising up out of the water, while John cut the line with pliers. In seconds, the shark was free again, diving deep beneath us. As we watched the tide turn, Des lit a cigar and returned to the wheel house. He started the engine, turned the wheel and headed for home.
