Not Quite Hooked : Students on Shark Study Expedition Quickly Lose Appetite for Knowledge

Finally, a contest that school kids could sink their teeth into.

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Write an essay about sharks, junior high students were told. If you’re a winner, you’ll get to go to sea on a real-life shark-hunting expedition.

Visions of the movie “Jaws” were swimming through youngsters’ heads at three Los Angeles-area inner-city schools as they rushed excitedly to encyclopedias and science books and then took pen in hand.

But there were visions of something altogether different swimming through their stomachs when it came time for winners to claim the prize.

“Uhhhhgghh!” moaned seasick 14-year-old Adriana Angel, her head resting on a table aboard a boat rolling in ocean swells 11 miles off San Pedro. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”

Marisol Gutierrez, also 14, clutched a deck railing. “I’ve never been on the ocean before. My stomach feels kind of queasy--it’s going up and down,” she said.

The pair were among seven students from Stephens Middle School in Long Beach aboard an 80-foot boat named Mako on Wednesday. Like eight other winners from Hollenbeck and Berendo middle schools in Los Angeles who set sail Thursday, they were there to help catch sharks for a research project conducted by the state Department of Fish and Game.

The essay contest was devised by department Director Boyd Gibbons to lure youngsters into careers in marine biology. Sharks caught on poles by the teen-agers and on a 91-hook line stretching a mile behind the boat would be tagged and then released.

“We’re trying to learn more about the behavior and distribution of mako and blue sharks,” Gibbons explained. “This isn’t pretend research. This is real.”

Eighty essays were judged by Fish and Game marine biologists Juan Hernandez and Paul Gregory.

Fourteen-year-old winner Nicole Elliott wrote that the shark’s appetite for humans has been exaggerated: “They mainly eat seals that are injured. That’s good because we don’t want dead seals hanging around.”

But Greg Wilterink, 13, started his essay by describing how a fisherman is gobbled up by a great white shark after he accidentally cuts himself and then slips, knocks himself out and tumbles into the water.

“I just made that part up,” Greg explained. “I figured just putting in the facts about sharks would be boring.”

The teen-agers had taken motion-sickness tablets before shoving off. But Greg was one of the few who felt like fishing when the boat stopped in the middle of the Catalina Channel.

Since the state’s shark study began 11 years ago, about 4,400 small sharks have been tagged, marine biologist Melodie Palmer said. About 3% of them have been caught later by fishermen who reported the tag numbers to Fish and Game officials in exchange for a small reward.

Most seem to stay in local waters, but one blue shark was hooked by Japanese fishermen 3,200 miles away--2 1/2 years after it was tagged near Los Angeles.

Only one would be hooked this day, though. And Greg was the only student watching the action when a yellow plastic strip was attached to it with a stick-like dart.

The outing also failed to hook the Stephens students on careers in marine biology.

Ashen-faced Ronald Sararana, 14, shook his head “no” when asked if ocean work was in his future, moments before Hernandez led him back into the Mako’s cabin.

Said classmate Limpee Chheang, 14: “I’d rather be on land.”