Poseidon Adventure: In Search of Sharks

“I want to face my fears,” one woman declared. “I came because I’m scared to death of boats. I’m scared to death of the ocean. And I’m scared to death of sharks.”

She had also come because she won a radio contest.

I had come because I like free stuff. And because my honeybunch had won a radio contest.

She and the woman who wanted to face her fears were two of 10 lucky listeners who faxed their Why I Want to Swim With the Sharks notes to Burbank-based KYSR-FM--better known as Star 98.7 to all you folks out there in Radioland. Those 10 and their guests were invited to join Shirley, Star’s first-name-only, first-person adventure reporter, on an overnighter at sea with a shark maven who used to work with the late Jacques Cousteau.

It all felt like fate. No sooner had I accepted my sweetiekins’ invitation than I found myself staring at a man-eating shark in a company newsletter. Now, every company newsletter has such photos, but this one was a genuine fish. Staff photographer David Bohrer’s extraordinary shot of a mako shark had been reprinted to remind everyone just how extraordinary it was.

David’s shark story is much better than mine, so I might as well tell it. His occurred the day that he and reporter Claire Vitucci accompanied a “Shark Adventure” class conducted by Hydrosphere--the same outfit, as it turned out, that hosted the Star 98.7 mission.

First David tried to get his photos from inside the metal cage that floats near the water’s surface and protects people from the sharks. Frustrated by the crowd, David talked Hydrosphere founder Yehuda Goldman into letting him shoot from the boat, called the Zodiac, that accompanies the 64-foot Pacific Explorer on its outings.

Goldman, David said, figured it would be OK because he hadn’t seen a mako shark in several weeks, just blues. Blue sharks are scavengers and aren’t known to attack humans. Makos are hunters and aren’t so discriminating.

So David was hanging over the side of the Zodiac for about 20 minutes, with one Hydrosphere crewman holding his feet and another holding a rope tied to David’s chest. From the Pacific Explorer another member of the crew handled a line baited with a large hunk of dead fish. The Hydrosphere crew captures, tags and releases sharks as part of an international effort to study the decreasing shark population.

David saw a shark far below and got one shot. In the second or two it took him to advance the film, he got the next shot, the one accompanying this story. The third showed the mako thrashing with the bait.

“Mako! Pull him!” Goldman yelled.

That’s why David’s fourth shot showed nothing but blue sky.

Goldman, who worked as a diver and field producer for Cousteau before starting Hydrosphere five years ago, said he’s known shark enthusiasts who strived to get a shot like that for years with no luck.

Nope, my shark story doesn’t compare. Because Shirley needed a very early start to reach her drive-time audience, we met Tuesday night at the Southern California Marine Institute headquarters on Terminal Island, were treated to a cookout, watched some of the shameless propaganda that is “Jaws” and got a lesson on local marine life. Then we bedded down in the tri-level bunks. At 3 a.m., the engines rumbled to life and in a couple of hours we were seven miles from Avalon.

Bedding down, alas, is not the same as sleeping, and there wasn’t even enough room to toss and turn. The roll of the ocean tossed and turned some stomachs, however. My sunrise, my sunset, my everything would later bend over the railing not once, not twice, but five times.

She had come to face her nausea.

A few hours after the chum went into the ocean we saw our first shark of the day. In our wetsuits, masks and snorkels we crowded into the cage and got a good look at a sleek 5-foot blue shark that was curious enough to pass within a few feet of we tourists. When he, or maybe she, came toward me, I let go of the cage, lest he decide to nibble on a finger.

The experience was mesmerizing. We wanted more sharks, but settled for oohing and ahhing at the porpoises, much larger than the sharks, that broke through the water a couple of hundred yards from our boat.

Later, another blue shark visited. The crew hooked this fish, brought it on deck, released the hook, checked its sex (female) and size (45 inches) and tagged it. We stroked her iridescent blue hide, smooth from nose to tail and like sandpaper the opposite direction. With a plastic underwater disposable camera I got a shot of Goldman kissing her before releasing her back into the ocean.

I told you my shark story isn’t as good as David’s. It’s not even as good as Shirley’s jellyfish story.

The sharks had yet to arrive when she broadcast underwater Wednesday, but she did manage to get stung by a jellyfish. Shirley, whose last name is Lester, was with Goldman outside the cage but she told me she was more frightened a couple weeks back when she put her head in a lion’s mouth for a story about Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Another morning she reported while feeding a rat to a boa constrictor that was wrapped around her body. Frankly, I thought she’d have been more frightened by her decision to cross the Teamsters by making deliveries for frustrated UPS customers. For one customer she delivered human eyeballs for medical research, for another she delivered a batch of porno films.

Some reporters have all the fun.

But before I end this, I’d be remiss if I failed to note that a certain special someone deserves credit for making the first sighting of the second shark, even ahead of the Hydrosphere crew.

Of course, she had a lot of experience looking over that rail.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.