It Takes Patience to Hunt Sharks in Bahamas

Hunting sharks is not something one normally associates with a 72-year-old mother of nine, but Gloria Patience of Great Exuma Island is the exception.

Dubbed “Shark Lady” by other islanders, Patience regularly sets sail in a 13-foot Boston Whaler in search of sharks. She uses 150 feet of line, with the large hook at the end baited with fish heads.

Once caught, the sharks are dissected. She drills holes in their teeth and vertebrae to make pendants, necklaces and earrings, which she sells to visitors.

If the sharks--tigers, makos, lemons, hammerheads--are under 10 feet, she hauls them aboard. Those that are larger--like the 18-foot tiger she once hooked--she plugs with a .34 magnum.

Although she has never been bitten, she has vivid memories of sharks butting and biting her boat in their frenzy.

Nudge her and she’ll tell you how she was interviewed by author Peter Benchley before he wrote “Jaws.” She says he told her that he had never seen a shark.

One can usually find Patience, who still sails a 17-foot dinghy in the island’s annual regatta in April, at the Hotel Peace and Plenty in George Town, Great Exuma’s seat of government.

You can also find other island characters there such as Tand Christine Rolle, known throughout the island as the “Bush Medicine Woman.”

“We’ve got the spoonbush for anemia and stomach pains,” she’ll say. “Blue flowers for a cough, the horse bush for backaches and black buttonwood for arthritis.”

Great Exuma is one of those little islands in the Bahamas that the more venturesome traveler may chance upon, sometimes even by a meandering mail boat out of Nassau, the Bahamian capital on New Providence Island.

It’s one of those unexposed places that never loses its mystique. There’s no need for an alarm clock because crowing roosters wake you up.

There’s not much to do in George Town. It has four other hotels, five churches, Olga’s Variety Store, Patrice’s Department Store and Liz and Jim’s shack, which stocks up on ice cream sandwiches.

Wild cotton, from plantations set up by loyalists who fled the American Revolution, and breadfruit trees that a preacher here bought from Capt. William Bligh in the late 18th Century, still grow on the island, which also has the reputation of being the Bahamas’ onion capital.

Half the population is named Rolle, a legacy of one of the original landowners, John Rolle. He bequeathed not only his name but stipulated that his 2,300 acres be passed on to each new generation and can never be sold to outsiders.

The 32-room Peace and Plenty got its name from a slave ship that arrived here in the late 18th Century. Part of what is now the hotel was used as slave quarters.

The hotel’s lively bar was once the slaves’ kitchen. Now, it’s the social center of George Town and one of the best-known watering holes in the Bahamas.

Because the hotel has no beach, owner Stanley Benjamin, a Cleveland industrialist, bought part of Stocking Island two miles away, and guests are ferried over there daily.

And that’s what most guests are content to do--lie on the secluded beach, fish, sail, dive into the island’s Blue Hole, which is 400 feet deep and houses all manner of fish, or explore the sparsely populated island, where they will inevitably run into a roaming flock of wild peacocks.

The problem of the multiplying peacock colony, which includes an elusive white peahen, is generally attributed to a man named Shorty Johnson who brought in a pair as pets, so they say in George Town.

When he left the island to work in Nassau, he abandoned the two birds, which soon multiplied.

“We have to go out and hunt them because they eat the crops,” said Louise Thompson, who runs island coach tours of Great Exuma and Little Exuma out of the Peace and Plenty. “It’s a pity, because they’re so beautiful.”

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These are the hotels on Exuma, with double-occupancy rates for the winter season: Hotel Peace and Plenty (32 rooms, $98 a night); Flamingo Bay Villas (five rooms, $125); Regatta Point (five rooms, $84, self-contained kitchens available); Staniel Cay Yacht Club (six rooms, $175) and the Two Turtles Inn (14 rooms, $68, also with self-contained kitchens available). You can write to any of them c/o George Town, Exuma, Bahamas.

Aero Coach--toll-free (800) 432-5034--has regular flights daily from Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Round-trip fare is $280 per person. Bahamasair has regular flights from Nassau. Round-trip fare is $100. Call (800) 222-4262.

And if you’re feeling particularly adventurous and have extra time, you might want to try the slow mail boat, which meanders through the islands out of Potter’s Cay in Nassau. For information, call (809) 323-1064.

For more information on travel to the Bahamas, contact the Bahamas Tourist Office, 3450 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 208, Los Angeles 90010, (213) 385-0033.