Baby shark, shark, shark

POLIHALE — For the past few weeks, I have attempted to learn, or rather retrained myself, how to fish.

The fishing on Kauai is just not the same in the Western states as it is on island and it has taken a little time to adjust to the new techniques and the smell of squid in the garbage can after an expedition (which I will never leave there again).

It’s something that finally paid off earlier in the week when I pulled in a Black Tipped Reef Shark, leading to some extreme excitement until the three-foot baby was released back into the waters of Polihale to continue its daily shark life on the Westside of the island. In earlier times in my life, there would have been little to no hesitation to keep my first catch off the shores of Hawaii, but something in me (mostly my fishing companions) urged me to set the shark that did an immediate 180 degree turn back to the water after being captured in powerful pure muscular thrust, free.

I obliged and the shark left without incident as the runners passing by our beach camp got a glimpse they probably didn’t expect. Some of them even did a little shriek in horror when the saw the baby shark and the crowd of rookie ocean anglers getting the hook out of its mouth.

The catch, however, alarmed me to the reality that the shark’s mother was out there in the waters somewhere, large and vicious in my imagination, but in reality probably not over five-feet. It showed me that you never know what is out there until you actually pull something onto the beach and that you probably know even less what lurks in the waters below you when you’re out there.

Nobody likes to eat shark from what I hear and was told, but the urge to take a bite out of my first catch like hunters do on the mainland subsisted to the calls of freedom for the shark who was caught off a shrimp and a large hook, with adequate enough weight to keep the bait out at sea.

The shark was not my first catch out of the ocean and I hope it will not be the last, but I could not help but liken the shark to that of a large catfish. They serve an essential function as the cleaners of the Ocean and have a huge role in the grand scheme of the ecosystem.

One of my companions told me, “if you don’t let that shark go, you will regret it when it takes a bite out of you a year from now.”

After correctly identifying the catch and finding that Black Tipped Reef Sharks are near endangered and harmless (at that size), I vowed to learn more about the fisheries on Kauai and to try my best to respect all the life that lives in the ocean, despite the urge to follow through on a stigmata, however aptly earned.

That shark, if he makes it through life escaping fisherman like me, will remain in the same waters for a large portion of its life, serving the role that it was born into as one of the apex predators in the ocean. It goes to show that persistence eventually pays off, all it takes is a little smelly shrimp and beginners luck and you may just catch a shark. I just hope that the shark remembers me and tells his friends the tiger shark, the hammerhead and great whites (which I hear there are two well know living on the Westside) to stay away from my blue surfboard in the future.