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Posted by Hawker on 16:26:51 12/28/07
BIRDING, SHARKING and CROCING EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK 12/04/2007
The slight breeze fell to zero as I slipped around the corner between Joe Kemp Key and Christian Point. Two miles away, even without the aid of binoculars, I could see long stretches of the far cove were whitened by multitudes of pelicans, waders and shore birds.
I paddled the canoe close to the beach in the surge trough that parallels the marl shore. The water was skinny and barely passable, and when it ran too shallow for advancement, I stood and poled.
It was a bright day with only mare s tail for clouds, and the absence of wind made the surface of Snake Bight as smooth as polished marble. The only disturbance on the water was the occasional mullet jumping, shattering the sheen. It was one of those dry season days common here in South Florida when one feels that summer never really ends and winter never gets a start.
Scanning the flats to the east I hoped to spot the dorsal fins of sharks, which like birds, are compelled to journey each fall, winter, and spring along Florida s coasts. Some sharks swim through the slot between Florida s sandy coast and the banks of the western Bahamas and, then fan out into the Caribbean, and travel onwards to the shores of Central and South America. Other sharks round Florida s end, south of the Isle of Bones. Another group filters through the Keys traveling across Florida Bay and into the Gulf of Mexico. Theirs is a long, arduous, migration labored in a medium eight hundred times denser than air, and at depths that range from a few inches to hundreds of fathoms.
Shark watching, unlike birding, has only a few sufferers, and most of the genuine adherents know each other either by name or by reputation. We are an unorganized assemblage with loose and shifting affiliations. We seek our grails from the capes of southern Africa, where two of the world s great currents rub brawny shoulders to the Gulfstream s swift flow off Palm Beach. By custom, some sharkers check off any shark they see, they don t care whether the observer is above the water or in the sea with the animal. Others of us only list those sharks encountered while both the shark and the diver are underwater. I fall into the latter category, so sharks spotted today won t be ticked off in ink, but any new species sighted is worth a pencil notation and a line or two in the margin of my Princeton Field Guide.
I stood and worked the field glasses along Snake Bight Channel gazing for birds and fins when I noticed the wake of a large crocodile heading in the direction of the markers. At this time of the day a well fed croc should be hauled up on a bank, absorbing the sun s warming rays to help it digest its last meal. This animal however was intent on swimming a straight course far from shore. I pondered the probabilities; should I head left then north to search for the fabled pink flock at Porpoise Point, or should I cast my lot with the carnivorous reptile heading in the opposite direction? The odds said the out of place croc at hand was worth more than the remote possibility of flamingos at the far point. I bent down, chose the pole and eased the canoe across the flat.
I maintained a good distance between myself and the reptile. My objective was to be only an observer and not a participant in the unfolding story and I allowed my 12 X binoculars to close the gap artificially.
The croc stopped, then breathed out just enough air to sink its back and tail below the surface, leaving only its eyes, nose and ears exposed. I could not see anything that would indicate the reason for this change in the croc s behavior. Halting the boat, I picked up the binos, then without warning the surface to the left of the reptile erupted with jumping mullet and slashing fins. Tarpon I thought, big tarpum nailing mullet! With hard thrashing and loud crashes the mullet and their pursuers crossed the channel. The melee then continued until it was a few scant yards in front the croc. The mauling proceeded onto the shallows and then into water only few feet deep. Now the attacker s backs and dorsal fins were clearly evident. They were not tarpon at all. They were a pair of big bull sharks eight or nine footers shredding the mullet. There was the intense slap of only half submerged tail fins slashing the surface as bits of sea grass, mud, and water were thrown into the air.
Then silence, utter silence, the croc breathed out and sank. The mud settled, the foam dispersed, the ripples expanded across flat s slick surface, and scene dissolved back into nothingness. It was a sudden death for the mullet, and life sustaining energy for the sharks, and nature had played out Her eternal drama once again in Florida Bay.
Sitting down and with tide in my direction I headed up the man made channel towards the observation platform at the end of Snake Bight Trail. There were plenty of birds in view. White pelicans were suspended in a thermal over the land, reddish egrets walked the flats with a drunk s stagger, and shoals of shore birds flew in flocks so close I could hear the rush of air created by the beating of their collective wings. I scanned the shore from time to time, looking for that glimpse of pink, and occasionally I was fooled momentarily by spoonbills. The flamingos, my target and an object of many quests for decades had once again eluded me. It will be another day and another tide before we will finally rendezvous.
The tide had switched and the wind had picked up by the time I turned the boat around to head back up the channel. I stuck close to ditch s edge where the shallows slowed the current, kept low in the canoe to cheat the wind and bore into the paddle, trying to gain as much headway as possible with every stroke. After a tough hour of nonstop slugging I arrived where I had seen the croc and the bull sharks.
The flat was flooding now and easily navigable. I stood and poled the canoe half way between the channel and Christian Point. Pressing the pole against the bottom, I rested, glanced at my watch and made an estimate of the daylight remaining. I reckoned I could spend half an hour staked out, waiting to see what might show up, and still be able to make it back to the marina before darkness fell and the mosquitoes rose.
I pointed the bow into the tide, the water passing around the hull made the canoe more stable and easier to stand in. I cleaned my sunglasses and examined the sea grass bed around me, looking for animals.
Being able to pole a canoe in Florida has big advantages and presents some dangers. Your added height and steeper sight angle permit a much better view of your surroundings but, standing also presents problems. The canoe is far less stable and the possibility for a calamitous fall is always present. A broken arm far from help could present difficulties but, for those willing to accept the risks and invest in learning the skill there are plenty of pluses; the most notable ones being an entire world of animals not visually available to the seated canoeist or kayaker and the addition of many more cubic miles of shallow water wilderness not deep enough for paddling.
As a young person I was an inept skiff poler, the object of ridicule by two of my childhood friends, who later became renowned flats fishing guides. My salvation from humiliation came from a Miccosukee, Henry John Billie. I met Henry not long after I took up canoes when I was in my 40 s. Henry was born in the saltwater glades not far from where I now stood. He lived with his step father, mother and siblings in a chickee on a creek that had access to Whitewater Bay long before there was an Everglades National Park. His family was one of the last of the clans that existed from the land. They farmed a little, and hunted and, when they had gathered enough hides the family would pole, paddle and, sail to Smallwood s Store on Chokoloskee to trade the skins for staples. By the time Henry s family finally gave up life in the wilderness and moved to a land locked reservation, the knowledge of the Seminole dugout had seeped deep into his brain. Using an adz he could hand carve a canoe from a solid cypress trunk, and he had the physical mastery to guide a dugout through the water with a poetry of muscle and bone like a gator slipping serenely through a slough.
Fortunately for me, Henry had a special gift to teach, and even though I lacked the genetic strands to ever become his peer, I did get the compliment from the old Seminole, after years of his patient instruction, that I did very well, considering I was a White man.
There was a small splash to my left, I turned and, caught sight of a lemon shark hunting just off the port beam. Life was teeming everywhere. A horseshoe crab scurried along the sea grass bottom like an animated, child s windup toy. A stingaree was plowing the mud for morsels off the starboard quarter and an eagle bullied an osprey overhead, finally extorting a meal for itself at the fish hawk s expense. Willets and marbled godwits passed by, both of these species being lifers for me. On the horizon, flocks of shore birds rose in a group, twisting and turning, changing color from white to brown to white in the sun s diminishing light. Closer in, a flight of skimmers carved temporary scars in the water s surface snapping up a last snack before the sun s departure.
Directly ahead a fin loafed in the shallows. I tapped the water with the pole, and the shark needed no further encouragement. It slid straight and quick to the bow, then along the side of the hull looking excitedly for an opportunity to feed on what ever produced the noise. It was a spinner shark, an animal that had evaded me for thousands of dives all over this planet. They are shy, fast and, elusive sharks that have a particularly frustrating capacity keep themselves at a distance just beyond a submerged diver s ability to see them. Even if I won t give myself full credit for the encounter, just seeing this fine animal for the first time ever and, so closely allowed for a sliver and a half of satisfaction.
I turned the boat to the west and into the declining sun, and my mind returned to Henry and then to Henry s belief that some humans can shift shape and transform themselves into animals to confuse and confound those of us who are only mortals. Henry passed away in 2004, and I wondered if he was now the osprey kleeing above, or the long sought spinner shark I had found. I decided he was not seen today. He is the flamingo and he is urging me to continue the quest until that one sweet day when I will finally see him again.
Spinner Shark http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/spinnershark/spinnershark.html
Tarpon = Tarpum http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/Tarpon/Tarpon.html
Stingaree = Southern Stingray http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/SouthernStingray/SouthernStingray.html
Lemon Shark http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/LemonShark/LemonShark.html
Sharks of the World http://www.amazon.com/Sharks-World-Princeton-Field-Guides/dp/0691120722/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198086516&sr=1-1
Smallwood s Store http://www.florida-everglades.com/chokol/smallw.htm
Also seen:
Hooded Mergansers in the scrape pond on the north side of Mount Schinus. This maybe the same flock I saw at the same location last fall and winter.
White Crowned Pigeons Paurotis Pond, in the mangroves next to the old boat ramp.
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