Personal Website for TED HENRY
In 1972 I was in hog heaven when I learned we had been assigned to a squadron stationed on the east end of Puerto Rico. The Navy base was shaped like a hand with mangrove habitat between the fingers and coral reefs at the tips. It sounded perfect. Having earned a Zoology degree I would be able to identify most of the sea life. Ah, but recognizing is not the same as understanding. I had a lot to learn. It only took hours after arrival to get in the water to start checking out the local reefs. At one of the points near our soon to be new house, Holly and I bushwhacked through ten foot tall elephant grass with waves of small lizards jumping out of our way like grasshoppers. We entered the water from a large boulder to skinny dip along the reef. Almost immediately a ten foot wide spotted eagle ray paraded by at arms length and Holly freaked out. I calmed her down asserting confidently that it was harmless (so I hoped). Welcome to Puerto Rico!
We had only been there a couple of days when one of the pilots asked if I would like to partner with him on a sailboat he had picked out. I jumped on the opportunity without even knowing how to sail. But I knew Holly had taken sailing lessons at UW. When I came home from work I sprung a surprise on her by announcing we needed to go look at our new boat. She loved everything about it. With clear warm water, nice beaches, coral reefs, reliable trade winds and several small islands nearby, it would have been a sin to pass up such a great opportunity.
I think it is likely that we spent more time in or on the water than any one else on the base. With two friends that I wade fished with, another friend I dove with after work just below our house to populate our really large self-built aquariums, our best friends that we went on diving and sailing adventures with, inviting lots of guests to sail with us to Vieques Island to go snorkeling on weekends, two ten day sailing trips to the Virgin Islands, and racing our sailboat, we really got after it. With all that going on it would be surprising if I never saw any sharks. However as far as I know there were no shark attacks in the area except the fools who think it would be a good idea to grab onto the tail of a Nurse shark. Nurse sharks have tiny teeth that cannot take a chunk out of you and are not aggressive. Often they are found lying on the bottom which makes them an inviting target for the Steve Irwin[1] types. But the problem is that Nurse sharks are so supple that they can bite their own tail. That makes grabbing onto one a risky move. They won’t necessarily let go before you run out of air.
Few people ever encountered a shark during our time there, but then they weren’t pushing the envelope by fishing in murky waters at nightfall in areas that held lots of fish and where sharks like to feed. It made life interesting. Those who only snorkeled on the reefs (without a speargun) or swam the nice sandy beaches rarely saw sharks. In any case, there was no significant history of shark attacks in Puerto Rico.
1. Things that go bump in the night
Returning with my sailboat to the marina at dusk I dropped our guests off at the main pier and headed out alone to my mooring buoy since we were still on the waiting list for a slip. Being lazy I did this under sail and figured I could swim back. Most people leave a dinghy at their buoy while away but for some reason I was not in the mood for that complexity. I didn’t bother with a motor either. After all, if I could develop the skill to land on an aircraft carrier I could also manage the business of picking up a buoy. By the time I slipped into the murky marina water it had become dark (sunset happens very quick at low latitudes). When I got to the pier I was having trouble pulling out while avoiding the razor edged ousters because the tide was out. I got my legs as high as possible and performed a vigorous scissor kick while pulling up. That’s when my foot hit something solid and sandpapery that was large enough that it did not yield when I pushed off on it. Oh boy! I instantly thought shark and found myself up on the pier pretty darn quick. A moment later my CO sauntered by and commented that he had seen a really large hammerhead swimming around in the marina. Yeah, no shit! All hammerheads look big up close and I was kind of glad I hadn’t seen it. They average 13 feet in length and 500 lbs., but big ones go 20 feet. I never again swam in the marina at night because having been carved out of the side of a mangrove swamp it was prime feeding territory for large predators.
2. Jekyll and Hyde
On the coral reef below our house I soon became acquainted with the resident Blacktip shark that eventually became known as Rocky. He was of average size (5 feet), timid, and extremely fast. The visibility at our house was poor at 15 feet due to wave action so Rocky could sense our position farther away than we could see him. I hated that handicap. I only saw him twice by pure accident. Once while exiting the gap in the reef I came around the corner and we came face to face. It was impressive how fast he could make a u-turn and blast out of visual range. The other time was, for some reason, we decided to hike out to the point under the cliff and jump in from the boulders. I nearly landed right on top of him and I’m not sure who was more startled.
Unfortunately he could instantly turn into Mr. Hyde. The first time I speared a nice dinner sized snapper he rocketed out of nowhere and chomped off the back half. And he came back for the rest, pushing me out of the way while I was desperately pivoting to keep him in sight and trying to keep the remaining piece stuck on my spear. He was not to be denied. He was as crazy as a Rottweiler. I was completely ineffective and he wrestled the remaining front half from me. I decided to give it one more try another day. He showed up right on cue after I speared another fish. I was mentally prepared and grabbed the spear to hold the fish out of water and headed for the beach. That damn shark nearly climbed my back to get at the fish and escorted me all the way in. I realized he knew this game. I made it to shore somewhat shaken but I had my fish. I was disappointed that my dreams of spearing fish for dinner had just vaporized. I didn’t like being the huntee. I suspect he always knew where we were but stayed out of visual range, and that’s kind of creepy. I spent many hours chasing tropical fish for my aquarium on that reef without any shark hassles at all. Even spearing a lobster did not cause shark problems. However I’ve had large moray eels bite off a lobster tail now and then. That’s why sticking hands into holes is not a good idea.
3. Beached
Holly and I were snorkeling below the house when I saw Bill, one of the squadron pilots, heading out with a speargun. Holly and I had the exact same thought and immediately headed for the beach. You probably don’t think of 80 degree water as being cold, but it does suck the heat out of you over time. We were sitting on the sand warming up in the sun with the languid waves lapping at our feet when I saw Bill’s snorkel headed back. But something about it looked odd. As he got closer I could see he was swimming on his back (not an effective way to weave through coral heads) so he could look back between his fins, and right behind him was the huge dorsal fin of a Hammerhead (they have really tall pointed dorsal fins). Bill swam until his butt hit sand and then he rolled over and crawled as fast and as far as he could. That damn shark came completely out of the water right up onto the beach. I had a momentary predacious thought of grabbing it by the tail but decided that it would be stupid to gab onto something that outweighed me by 4x and might just slap me hard enough to break an arm. So I just watched in awe of the spectacle. It thrashed back and forth and worked its way back into the water. Whew! What a sight. Bill’s legs were shaking so bad he had to wait awhile before he could stand. Bill never came back to our beach for another round of spear fishing. Yeah, spearfishing is so much fun[2].
4. Sharks that go bang
There’s more than one way to get in trouble with a nurse shark. I was at the marina when one of the special services skiffs went blasting out. They came chugging back after a while towing one of the rental skiffs that was awash to the gunnels. It turns out that a group of drunken enlisted men from the ship tied up at the pier had got themselves well lubricated and went out to do a bit of shark fishing. Of course they did not stop with that. They caught a nurse shark, stuffed a large firecracker in its mouth, and threw it back. The shark got its revenge by swimming under the skiff and spitting out the explosive. It was probably against the hull when it went off which put a hole in the hull. It seemed like some sort of mayhem accompanied every ship that came into port. Excessive alcohol consumption was a major factor. Extra MP personnel were always put on the schedule when ships were in port.
5. A Big Scary Shadow
One day a group of us were scuba diving for lobster in the bottom of the harbor under the main pier where the aircraft carriers tie up. The bottom is very soft and visibility is terrible once it gets stirred up. I drifted up to get out of the murk when a giant shadow passed over me. A big Tiger Shark was cruising our little group. Yikes! I banged on my tank with my speargun in the agreed upon sequence and headed up. Tiger Sharks are notorious taste testers and I was a lot more interested in being the taster rather than the tastee. OK, add it to the list of locations to avoid. There were plenty of safer places to chase lobster and quite frankly the bottom of the harbor was not a very fun place. But you know, young testosterone laden pilots frequently think up new experiences that sound good in theory.
6. Human Pop-ups
I took a group of friends to the grass flats one half mile offshore on the north side of Vieques Island to ride the current and pick up large sea shells and a few lobster. Water depth there was about 20 to 25 feet, easily within my free diving range. On this drift I stayed on deck while everyone else was in the water. I had numerous ropes hanging in the water for people to grab and I stood on the cabin top where I could keep track of everyone. It was always a fun social event. And then something dramatic happened. Have you ever watched one of those nature programs when a leopard seal cruises by and the penguins pop out the water onto the ice like a bunch of missiles? It was like that. I watched a small Tiger Shark (small by Tiger Shark standards) cruise through my group and it was amazing how fast they scrambled out of the water. It was the first shark encounter for most of them and there was a scent of panic. I gave some of them a hand straight up so they didn’t all have wait for a turn at the ladder. After all, no one wanted to be the last one left dangling. It was funny how they all turned around after exiting the water to intently scan the depths like little kids checking out their poop in the toilet. But the shark was long gone.
In my three years on those grass flats it was the only shark I ever saw. But I think I was lucky. You see, the grass flats are where turtles like to feed, and Tiger Sharks are the primary predator of turtles. Much later I would discover while watching a nature program that Vieques Island is a known Tiger Shark hotspot. Ignorance is bliss. Would it stop me from diving there today? Not in the least but I would want a boat close by. I sometimes reminisce about how some of us would start where the boat was anchored, catch the along-shore current, drift for three hours, swim the half mile to shore and walk the shoreline back. It was awesome to have a wife that liked that kind of stuff. It was Holly and the boys. Just like going skiing.
7. When life gives you lemons
One of the greatest fishing experiences of my life was wading in the muck, water up to our armpits, at nightfall, to catch the many exotic species that hung out in the mangroves. Most were really tasty. Things like grouper, snapper, snook, permit, yellow jacks, and even baby barracuda. During my three years there I never saw another fisherman excluding my two buddies. We had it all to ourselves. It was awesome. But lessons would be learned. During our second foray I had fish on a stringer hooked to a belt loop and a very aggressive small lemon shark showed up. It ended up ramming my bare leg giving me a nasty floor burn. Shit, shit, shit! Saltwater on a fresh wound is nasty painful. It was probably just a mistake caused by outright aggression, murky water, and by wearing shorts making my pale legs appear similar to the belly of a fish. Crazy Mike (he earned that moniker by going spearfishing at night and hanging his bag of fish on his weight belt) hollered at me to stand still while he cast his lure in front of the shark. Before I could protest he hooked the shark which went into crocodile death role mode and kinked the wire leader so bad that it broke. On future trips I learned to put my stringer on a bleach bottle on the end of a 50 foot cord and to wear Levis. However that shark would show up every time as soon as we entered the area and it was a pain in the ass. Kind of like a big horsefly intent on a meal. It persistently turned what should have been a tranquil pastime of casting lures on super smooth water into a contest of wills. The thing is that small lemon sharks remain in the shallows and stay out of deeper water because their cannibalistic relatives will gladly make a meal out of them. So much for parental nurturing.
8. A Bull in the Mangroves
This was one of those moments. A frightful moment. A moment where I wished I was anywhere but there. We were in the muck of the mangroves and the light was just about gone. Normally we spent our time casting small lures into the mangroves with our backs to the deep channel. I don’t know what, but something made me turn around and scan the open water. And there it was, a big shark moving fast directly at me while pushing a big bulge of water. I couldn’t really maneuver so I had to put up with whatever was about to happen. I got ready to slam it in the snout with the butt end of my fishing rod. Fortunately it bent off the attack mere inches away. I could have reached out and grabbed it. I don’t know what it was thinking. Did it just get a charge out of sending my pulse through the roof (like dolphins are known to do)? Was it sizing me up for a taste test? It continued to circle aggressively as we slowly muck-walked back towards our take-out. The thing about bull sharks is that they generally telegraph their intent, at least if one is diving with them in clear water. If one starts getting aggressive then it’s time to get out of the water. I have found them to be more predictable than lemon or tiger sharks, neither of which I trust for a second. That being said however, bull sharks account for a large percent of shark attacks and have large teeth and strong jaws. Anyway, did I say this was a big shark? That encounter permanently ended our wade fishing in the mangroves. We switched to using Sam’s Boston Whaler which was a lot of bother but less frightful.
Before I leave the mangrove stories I would like to describe how Sam and I thought a Tarpon had killed Crazy Mike. We had made the long boat ride to the windward side of the mangrove system where there was a tidal river that led to a saltwater lake. While idling in the channel at slow speed a tarpon came out of the trees, grabbed Mike’s golfball sized lead headed jig and jumped high in the air. With his rod bent double the jig came unstuck and came flying back like a major league fastball. It hit him square in the forehead with a tremendous “thwock” and he was out cold before the back of his head hit the deck. He developed a huge bump that grew just like a cartoon. Clearly he was seriously hurt. I jumped down to check his condition. He did not seem to be breathing and his eyes were totally rolled up. I was getting ready to start chest compressions when he moaned. There was an alarming amount of blood coming from a gash on the back of his head. After a bit he sat up and started laughing. There are several reasons we called him “crazy Mike”. He wanted to continue fishing but we weren’t having it. Sam got the boat turned around and we headed back. The marina was several miles away and there wasn’t a good place to stop and make a call. Some of the ride was bumpy because we had to deal with the rip at Punta Puerca. If I had carried my emergency VHF radio that day I could have called my squadron and got a helo to pick him up right there at the boat and drop him directly to the hospital which was very close as the crow flies. When we got to the marina I called the hospital to say we were inbound with a head injury. Sam took care of the boat and I made the drive. Thankfully the hospital staff were ready so I handed Mike over. He was kept overnight to make sure there were no developing issues and to close up the cut of the back of his head. I wondered how he was going to get comfortable with trauma on both sides of his head. He sure looked gruesome for a few days with two massive black eyes, a giant head bruise and a large bandage over his now shaved head. Tarpon were my favorite fish to catch because they are so darn crazy. I hooked one once that jumped so high it got tangled in tree limbs. They are just nuts. It was often just a case of hang on and watch the show.
9. Mayday, Mayday!
I was teaching sailing lessons using Special Service’s sailing dinghies when there was a sudden cascade of problems. First, while teaching my two students how to gybe, the mainsheet bridle dropped down, hooked the rudder pintle and pulled the rudder right off the transom. With no rudder in a strong breeze we were over in a flash. OK, being capsized in 85 degree water is no big deal. Yeah but, that’s when I discovered this dinghy did not have any bow floatation. The bow sank and the dinghy went vertical with the transom flush to the surface, and alarmingly bubbles were coming out of the two side tanks. Things were starting to get out of control. The other dinghy also with students came by and picked up my two students and headed back to the marina. Somehow my foot was gashed in the melee and was bleeding pretty good. So I’m sitting there eyeballing which shoreline might be closer if the boat sank. It was at least a mile either way but I can easily swim a lot further than that. Right then a bull shark showed up and started circling in ever tightening circles. I guess it had been attracted to all the thrashing. Eventually it made a run at my legs which I pulled out of the water at the last second putting the transom slightly under water and I kicked the shark when it went by. Now it was really agitated. It went out and returned to make a run directly at me. As its snout came out of the water I kicked really hard and made solid contact. That put the shark into a rage. I remember praying, “please don’t sink, please don’t sink”. Fortunately my buddy showed up just then in a skiff to tow the dinghy back. It was an awkward trip because no one was willing to get in the water to tie off to the bow 17 feet down and to clean up the rigging. No way, no how. I soon had a stern talk with the Special Services manager about the poor state of his sailboats. I was definitely not Mr. Nice Guy while spelling out what I expected to get done pronto. He was always very amiable but struck me as quite lazy as some civil servants tend to be.
10. Ghost Shark
This is sort of funny but also substantially not funny. The not funny part was crashing a large aircraft with a crew of six into the ocean just off the runway. I have described this event in detail elsewhere. While paddling a life raft with our hands towards shore to get away from all the fuel floating around us I saw the squadron’s biggest screwup swimming towards us. He was the only person on site and I could not imagine how he got through the swamp so fast nor what he thought he could do. After ordering him back to the beach with no compliance I had an inspiration. I pointed off to the side and started screaming shark. Oh boy, that got his attention. He got back to the beach PDQ. Oddly enough no one later asked me about the shark. I guess they assumed I had seen one and never questioned it. After all, sharks are attracted to big commotions in the water and no one would be surprised that sharks would show up. That ghost shark even made it into the official safety report. Heh, heh!
11. Line biters
I seldom sailed anywhere without trolling a lure big enough to catch sailfish. And catch fish we did, on every trip. Some were large enough to fire up the grill and feed the whole neighborhood. Sometimes all we caught were those pesky barracudas that chewed up my lures. I don’t think I ever caught one over 40 pounds but there was one caught in the nearby Virgin Islands that weighed 105 pounds. That is a big fish. Sometimes all we caught were fish heads! That’s right. If during the fight the pull increased suddenly and then nearly went slack it meant that a barracuda had just chomped off everything but the head. However if the pull increased dramatically and line started peeling off the reel at a higher speed it meant that I had been “sharked”. If the line started pulsing it meant the shark was shaking its head side to side like a terrier with a rat. Once the line was reeled in one could tell if a shark had taken the fish by the ragged nature of the bite mark. If a hooked fish was not too big and we saw a dorsal fin behind it we would reel furiously trying to keep the fish up on a plane because sharks with their underslung mouth have a difficult time biting something on the surface. If we had guests aboard I would hold the rod high and let the fish skim the surface right behind the transom so they could get a good look at the shark and undoubtedly capture a long lasting memory. Anyway, I always found the spectacle fascinating. I think it would have been easy to catch one of those fish thieves by having a second rod set up with a large hook and a chunk of bait for literally a bait and switch routine where the fish is pulled and the bait is immediately dropped in its place. But what would I do with a shark? It just didn't appeal to me. Apex predators like sharks are necessary for overall ecosystem health and, anyway, just who wants to see more photos like the trophy photos of yore?
DISCLAIMERS
I wrote about sharks because it is an attention grabber, not because it is anything more than a footnote on our time in the tropics. In contrast, who wants to hear about the two biggest problems, sunburn and mosquitoes. Those mosquitoes could make flying hazardous when they got inside your helmet on early morning flights. Sure, the aircraft were sprayed inside before takeoff but there were too many crannies for them to hide in. In that case we often went up to altitude where the air was dry and freezing cold to kill them off before proceeding with the mission. Back on terra firma the best escape was sailing out to open water.
Sometimes I went out of my way to check out a shark. Nurse sharks, often 8 to 10 feet long, were always worth a look. They were no more of a problem than a stingray sitting on the bottom. To have a problem with either one you have to do something really stupid. Later we would call it pulling a “Steve Irwin”!** I remember lobstering at a good reef well away from the popular anchorage on Vieques when Sam surfaced and said there was a large bull shark hanging around, so I quietly slipped into the water to take a look. Yep, it was a big one and it came up at a leisurely pace to give us a close-in once over. Of course I carried a speargun so I could give it a poke if it tried to get too familiar. With our curiosity satisfied we pulled the anchor and moved to another area. Curiosity is one thing, foolishness is quite another.
My most significant hazards resulted from chasing reef fish for my aquarium, There was usually some surge on the reefs that sometimes pushed me into fire coral (it stings and then creates a crusty weeping floor-burn like wound) and the very numerous venomous long-spine sea urchins. The purple sea urchin spines are very sharp, very brittle (meaning they always broke off in your skin), and when your body eventually dissolves the spine it leaves behind a purple spot. It is a divers tattoo.
[1] = I assume everyone knows who Steve Irwin was and how he died. I’ve always had a problem with him showing off on camera by teasing Salties (saltwater crocodiles) and handling highly venomous snakes. That he put himself right on top a stingray so close that it could lift the base of its tail where the barb is located and drive it right into his heart is hardly shocking. Everyone else knows that you can tweak the end of a stingrays tail without risk, but you don’t place yourself above the body. Stingrays are set up like they are to reduce predation by hammerheads. Hammerheads have learned to stay away from that tail and come in from the side to bite off the wings and wait for the ray to die. In fact I have a fierce looking barb in my display case that I pulled off a carcass that was missing both wings.
[2] = Sarcasm alert