Mania ray, escorted by diver and school a/remoras, swims through the waters 0/ .

HE GREAT JAWS of the white shark slid ing station beside three buoyed sperm trapped in an immovable cage waiting for Talong the whale carcass, open wide, whales caught the day before. Flensers the shark to perform, knowing that only chomping, mouthing, trying to sink its were working on three more at the factory. a short moment remained to capture on teeth into the broad surface. Now the teeth When the ramp was cleared, these three film this savage eating machine. locked onto the tough hide, jaws pushed would soon be hauled away. The shark had The shark sensed that his banquet was way out, horribly distended. The five­ less than an hour to feast on the banquet; to be a brief one. He ran his jaws along the meter shark shook its head violently, tail we had the same amount of time to film his slippery hide pushing, biting, impatient to thrashing, pushing, wrenching, and a frenzied feeding. tear the thick blubber away and get at the twenty-five kilogram bite of blubber came My inexperience with cages was re­ red meat. The great hulk of the whale slow­ away. vealed when I hurriedly jumped overboard ly slid past me, as if brought back to life We took a close look at the huge bite, to film the shark. This one overbalanced, and in motion again. The white shark then maneuvered the shark cage into the almost tipping upside down, and shoving plodded behind, gave an angry chomp at water between our boat and the sperm my legs well beyond the bars: not a com­ the disappearing fluke, then he too glided whale carcass. I had never filmed sharks forting thought. Eventually I righted the away into the gloom. from a cage before, but I would not enter cage and slipped deep inside. By the time We later discovered that inside one of these waters without one. This white shark I recovered one whale was being towed the sperm whales was a monster squid Was hungry, he had a whole whale to eat, away, and the tender boat was already swallowed whole, still intact. The squid's but would surely prefer a smaller-sized coupling up the second one. In a few min­ body, together with its shorter tentacles, meal, one that his jaws could encompass utes the third whale would be hauled measured four and a half meters. The two more easily. away too. long tentacles were missing, but they would We were anchored off the Albany whal- n was extremely frustrating to be have made the animal an amazing thirteen

MAY 1979 Text and Photographs by Ben Cropp 43 meters in length. We think of such great The stark outline of the Zuytdorp Cliffs cation of 550 whales, they only managed to creatures as mythical sea monsters. Here, stretched northward to disappear in the capture 87. As a result the International off Albany, they are very real. A second, gray dawn. In the half-light I could just Whaling Commission (IWC) banned the smaller squid measured eight meters long. distinguish the section of cliff where the hunting of humpbacks in the Southern H the bigger squid's tentacles were Dutch treasure ship Zuytdorp ran aground Hemisphere. stretched apart, the way we measure octo­ in 1712. Those few who survived soon per­ The battery of rusting boilers at Nor. puses, they would span an incredible ished on the inhospitable coast, leaving a wegian Bay is an ugly reminder of an ugly twenty-four meters. huge treasure of a quarter of a million sil­ business. Out on the lay the wreckage That night my colleague, Hugh Ed­ ver guilders in the pounding surf. The of one of their whale chasers, the Fin. Close wards, caught the whale-eating shark on treasure ship is protected by Australian by a tiny sand cay sparkled in the clear one of his four carefully set baits. It meas­ law, but the treacherous cliffs prove a water. The nesting terns swarmed by the ured five meters. The next morning, flash­ more formidable barrier. thousands to this Frazer Island as the Sun frozen, he loaded it onto a trailer and head­ While natural blowholes erupted along set. It was a beautiful living contrast to the ed for the Royal Show where it the rocky cliffs in regular geysers, it was history of slaughter in the bay. would be on exhibit. the spurts of spray to seaward we con­ Even if the shark had not been caught stantly monitored. A pod of humpbacks T WAS LATE IN THE DAY when we left the on Hugh's oversized hook, it would most was always in view, relentlessly pushing I group of whales and made for the an. likely have been his last whale meal any­ northward. chorage behind Cape Inscription. In the way. Thankfully, the last whaling station By noon we ran along Is­ fading light we almost ran over another in has finally closed down. Our land which fronts and protects the deep gentle giant. The white spots on a broad encounter with the hungry shark occurred indentation of Shark Bay. Off Cape In­ back and a ten-meter length easily dis. during the final days of whaling. Econom­ scription the whale pod changed course, tinguished a whale shark. Like the hump. ics and persistent from conserva­ swung in an arc closer to the coast, and back, it was on a migration north and feed. tionists had finally reprieved the magnifi­ slowed down. With my binoculars, I picked ing on the same planktonic diet. cent leviathan, freeing it to roam the Aus­ out more spurts of spray ahead; another Opposite the southern tip of Dirk Har. tralian seas unmolested. group of whales was already off the cape. tog Island is , the westernmost The sperm whales migrate north from I turned my boat Beva toward the swirl extremity of the Australian mainland. the Antarctic to the southwest corner of of disappearing flukes and tried to guess Huge swells crash with un­ Australia near Albany. On the edge of the where the monsters would surface. With­ believable fury against the sheer cliffs of continental shelf they dive deep for the out warning a fourteen-meter shape sud­ this well-known landmark. On the tip of giant squid, and huge sucker marks around denly rose up from the sea, bringing its this point we found more than a dozen their heads testify to the tenacious struggle great hulk alongside us before collapsing rock cairns clustered together. They bore between two ocean giants. The sperm in the water with an enormous -splash. scrawled names on bottles, rock, and wood whales appear to briefly touch the south­ Cautiously we approached the whales . of the intrepid modern explorers who had west coast, then curve seaward in a mi­ again, not wanting another breach so close. crossed Australia from east to west. One gratory loop back to the Antarctic. We let them get used to the boat, moved had succeeded on foot, others on bikes or Pods of orcas migrate with the whales, gradually nearer, and after two hours they four-wheel drive vehicles. Another, a girl, and the white shark we had met in Albany finally accepted us. had traversed the desert by camel. was an ocean traveler too. We know for It was a magnificent sight. The levi­ We had come the long way round. Beva's sure that the white sharks, which follow athans glided upward, long flippers out­ log now read 10,000 nautical miles since the dead whales to shore, are not local spread and almost touching Beva, bodies we had left home on the eastern end of ones. Hugh Edwards noted that each visi­ as long as the boat. A burst of spray from Australia eighteen months ago. We added tor was a newcomer, a pelagic creature twin blowholes formed a rainbow over two our own rock cairn, with an inscribed list diverted to Albany by the wake of a towed of the whales, which were so near that I of Beva's crew. and irresistible meal. had a problem framing both animals in Though we failed to meet the whale The humpback whale also migrates my wide-angle lens. shark again, we did encounter many other north from the Antarctic in the early win­ As the whales angled across Beva's bow, migratory giants. Twin wing tips of manta ter, and swings close to the coast off we throttled back. A great tail rose up, rays sliced the surface off Cape Inscription, Geraldton, heading north to its mating and poised momentarily with the water cascad­ and the dorsal fins of sharks cruised along calving area off Shark Bay. Reprieved from ing off, then down it plunged into the the beach edge, occasionally threshing into the harpoon in 1964, the decimated hump­ ocean depths. a school of pilchards.These pilchards also backs have slowly increased and returned Whaling was one of Australia's oldest migrate along the coast, continually har· to their traditional migratory route to re­ industries. During the peak year of 1845 assed by pelagic fish and the sharks. Above, plenish their species. some 300 sailing ships harpooned the the booby gannets and pied cormorants While filming the whaling and white whales off the south coast. By the 1960s the rocketed relentlessly into the chopping sharks in Albany, I realized I was witness­ humpback was commercially extinct off turmoil of fish. ing the beginning of a great story. What the west coast. The English buccaneer, William Dam­ happened at Albany is history now. Shark On the beach at Norwegian Bay stand pier, was observant when he named this Bay, the place where the whales come to the ruins of an abandoned whaling factory, migratory meeting place Shark Bay in mate, is the real fascination. In their urgent one of many along the northwest coast. In 1699. He stayed eight days and wrote of need to propagate, the humpbacks con­ 1956, this Carnarvon-based company har­ the strange jumping marsupials he de­ verge on this sanctuary: a crossroad where pooned over 1,000 humpback whales. Their scribed as a sort of raccoon and good to eat. ocean giants meet. 1963 season was disastrous. Out of an allo- Dampier was not a pirate at heart. He

44 OCEANS Left.' Green turtles mating. Right .' Leathery turtle evades shark attack by turning on its back and thrashing wildly. [Lynn Patterson] Below.' Snorkler strokes the back of a thirty-five foot whale shark which swims lazily along the swjace. The whale shark, a plankton feeder, is quite harmless.

MAY 1979 45 had an irresistible longing to travel, to see Besides the migratory ocean giants that blurred big shapes up ahead. 1 dived alld strange lands and the people and animals feed on the plankton or the migratory fish, quietly moved over the bottom, fingels that lived on them. However, on his long Shark Bay still supplies an enormous lugging at waving seaweed as I craWled exploratory voyage in the Cygnet, his crew amount of food to the indigenous marine closer. Though I kept low among tbe wav. was less honorable. They had decided if the life. Deep inside Shark Bay are a series of ing fronds of tbe algae, camera running food ran out, Captain Swan, a fat man, long and shallow indentations with in­ the nearest dugong stopped browsil1~ was to be eaten first, then Dampier, though glorious names such as Useless Loop, when I was two meters away. he was thin and wiry. It is recorded in his­ Hopeless Reach, and Disappointment Two ofthe dugongs had fat calves SWim. tory that "The pirates were spared a bout Reach. Possibly to the navigator they were ming close alongside. One calf ceaSed n~. of indigestion!" Perhaps the kangaroos so, but for the marine inhabitants they ing on the tiny nipple hidden under tire and the captured sharks at Shark Bay saved provide a rich source of estuarine nutrients. stubby front flipper. Now it sJipped onto Dampier. Captain Swan was able to joke It is a vital and complex ecosystem, a nurs­ the back of its barrel-shaped mother and later, "Ah Dampier, you would have made ery swarming with the juveniles of all the perched, rather than clung, with its little them a poor meal." larger fish species. Bi,ppers squatting on her broad back. 'JIhe We were two miles off Steep Point, In Freycinet Estuary we were exploring parent flipped away fhe calf remained in sweeping the deep water for whales or along the beds of seagrass, viewing the its piggy-back position, carried smoothly whale sharks, when a splashing of water abundant juvenile marine life when I no­ along by the bow wave. caught my eye. I ran Beva over, and was ticed some wreckage ashore. It proved to I grabbed a quick breath of air and sunk surprised to see a large leathery turtle on be part of a significant chapter in Austral­ prone on the bottom in the weeds again. its back, wildly thrashing with all four ia's brief contact with the enemy during Mother and calf went up for air too, then flippers. Now it flipped and rolled over World War II. together they dived and approached me. several times, dived briefly on an erratic On November 19,1941, the HMAS Syd­ The calf was till astride its mother's back, course, then surfaced and continued the ney fought a desperate battle with a Ger­ but as he inqui Hively came closer, the thrashing and tumbling. man raider, the Kormoran, off Shark Bay. little one lipped off and hugged her blind I thought it was crazy-until I spotted Both ships sank, the Sydney with all hands. side. the shark. It was a big white, a silent shad­ From the Kormoran, 317 German surviv­ The mother weighed at least five hun· ow circling under the turtle. Fortunately I ors reached Shark Bay, and this skeletal dred kilograms, a cylindrical brown bulk was able to film this extraordinary tactic. wreck was one of their lifeboats. over three meters long. She stopped barely It is rare enough to meet a sea turtle, and Along the seagrass beds we spotted a meter away, her little pig-like eye watch· this evasive tumbling behavior had never many dugongs, surfacing briefly between ing. before been documented. their feeding forays. Around the tip of It seems impossible that this ugly crea­ The great white nosed upward, a grace­ Heirisson Prong, just past the huge salt ture could be responsible for the myth of ful but ominous threat to the poor reptile. works at Useless Loop, we ran into dozens the mermaid. Only a dugong could find a We gunned the motors and cut the shark of dugongs. They were all heading north dugong attractive. Not in my wildest off by running alongside the turtle. We had out of the shallow estuaries and curving imagination could I see one human female successfully tried this before when a tiger around into South Passage. attribute in this ponderous animal before had harassed a green turtle to the point of Fisheries Inspector Derek Blackman, at me. The legendary mermaid must have de· exhaustion. the tiny township of Denhem, explained veloped through distorted tales that sailors The shark brushed the port side of Beva that the dugong herd here numbered told and retold over the centuries. From and dived straight down. On the starboard around a thousand, probably the largest this legend, scientists named the species side the leathery turtle went into another group surviving in Australia. "sirenians" . violent burst of tumbling and thrashing on Because dugongs are normally shy of These gentle herds in Shark Bay are a the surface, yet the shark had gone. I real­ people and generally live in dirty water, no naturalist's dream, where their little-known ized the turtle was regarding the boat as a one has filmed them underwater before. behavior can be studied at close quarters. new predator. By instinct it continued to Derek told me that the dugong herd I saw Unlike the brief imaginative glimpse by a perform its frenzied evasive maneuvers. was heading for the entrance to South Pas­ medieval sailor, or an indistinct shape sur­ The leathery turtle is another migratory sage. Opposite Steep Point on the southern facing from tropical muddy water, here, at giant. This one had traveled far from the end of Dirk Hartog Island is a tongue of Shark Bay, we have a clear view of the duo closest known nesting site at Trengganu in reef on which ocean swells crash heavily. gong character. It is a shy, inoffensive, pon· Malaya. The next rookery is in Fiji, and The sheltered clear water behind this reef is derous creature, a homely, ugly "mer· there is another at French Guiana in South the favorite winter meeting place of the maid"! America. The leathery is the largest of all dugongs. The bountiful waters of Shark Bay har­ marine turtles and is classified as a criti­ We used the Beaufort rubber dinghy to bor all the marine animals necessary to cally endangered species. It is not known run in behind the thundering swells as they sustain life. It is an unspoiled ecosystem. to nest in Australia, and feeds principally surged across the shallows and dissipated From tiny plankton to large fish, Shark on a jellyfish diet. This one must have been above the dugongs' feeding ground. A Bay nourishes the ocean traveler-the some two and a half meters in length, and dozen brown shapes rose on the swells, crossroad where ocean giants meet. iii weighed about 500 kilograms. Unlike other sucked in air, and went down again. We anchored the dinghy fifty meters away and turtles, the outer covering of the leathery Bell Cropp is {/II Australiall photographer alld carapace is not composed of scales but quietly slipped in with our cameras. writer who has authored a number of books rather of a thick skin. The white shark is Visibility was good. Every crevice was about the sea alld produced more thaI! a dozell perhaps the only predator of the adult filled with the bristling antennas of cray­ color underwater films for illternational tele­ turtle. fish, but our interest was now only in the visioll.

46 OCEANS Top: Forty-foot humpback dives beside author's boat on its migratory route from the antarctic to breeding grounds off northwest Australia. Below: Australian dugongs, mother and calf, swim through the clear waters ofShark Bay.

MAY 1979 47 ceans

The membership journal of the Oceanic Society. 3 The Whales' Best Friend by JOHN KOSTER The Oceanic Society is dedicated to the protection James Waddell, Confederate captain who would not surrender of the world's oceans through research, education and conservation. 8 StUdying the Sea from Space by IGOR LOBANOV Seasat's fleeting glimpse May-June 1979 14 A Constellation of North Stars by EDWARD PASAHOW Volume 12, Number 3 66th Issue Navstar Global Positioning System 16 Lexicon for Landlubbers by ROBERT HENDRICKSON Keith K. Howell, Editor Eponymous etymology Dugald Stermer, Designer Lindsay Beaman, Associate Editor Laddie Dumont, Associate Editor 18 Australian Waters Ann L. K. Chung, Editorial Assistant Cottrill, Charlotte P. Mastrangelo, 20 A Patch of Green in a Sea of Blue by CARL ROESSLER Assistants to the Editor Beyond the barrier reef Francesca Bator, Assistant Designer 24 Giant Clams by SOAMES SUMMERHAYS CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Flamboyant host of the coral reefs Irvin Ashkenazy, John Dillon, James F. Hunt, John E. McCosker Ronn Storro-Patterson, Nicholas Rosa 29 The Myth of the Moray Eel by WADE DOAK 32 Dutch by JEREMY GREEN CIRCULATION AND PROMOTION Tire redoubtable discovery of Martin Rosinsky Dinah Lowell, Associate 38 Great White Shark by Predator that doesn't eat people MEMBERSHIP DEPARTMENT: Oceanic Society, 43 Where Ocean Giants Meet by BEN CROPP P.O. Box 10167, Des Moines, IA 50340. Near Shark Bay. Australia, migratory paths cross

Use this address for all membership dues, remit­ 48 Australian Dugong by GEORGE HEINSOHN, HELENE MARSH and tances and changes of address. Regular mem­ PAUL ANDERSON bership dues: $15.00 per year in the United States Sirenians of the southern seas ($3.00 additional for Canadian and foreign orders). When sending notice of address change, please include your Oceans address label and 53 Stromatolites by ROBYN DAVIDSON allow six weeks for change to become effective. Among the first life forms to cross the sea/air interface For information about membership status and change of address call, toll free, 800-247-5470. 56 Wind Rider by MICHAEL MODZELEWSKI Single copy $4. Obtainable from Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA 94123. Sea Sense

Oceall~' is published six limes a year (January, 57 Maritime Sur~ei1lance by DONN C. WALKLET March, May, Ju'ly, September, November). Editorial offices: Port Mason, San Francisco, CA94123 (telephone: 415-441-1104). All edi­ 58 Scratching the Surface of the by DAVIS R. KING lorial correspondence should be sent to this address. Not responsible for unsolicited manu­ 60 Defusing the PCB "Time Bomb" by LAWRENCE E. JEROME scripts, photographs, or other editorial material. All queries and submitted material should be accompanied by a self-addressed and stamped 63 Washington Report return envelope. Copyright ©1979 by the Oceanic Society. All rights reserved. No material may be 64 Calendar reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission from the publisher. Oceans is indexed in The Readers's Guide to Periodical 65 Expeditions Lllerawrc. Social Sciences Index and General Seil/nce Illdex. Second cl ass postage paid at San 66 Oceanic Society Log Francisco, California, and add itional mailing Offices. Publishing No. 402580. 68 Reviews A[>VBRn [NO OFfICES: East Coast : Richard West, 72 Letters Harbor Mcdia Services, P.O. Box 163. Westport, CT 06880. 203-226-3208. West Coast : Arlcigh G. Hl1PP n , Hl1PP/Co Media, 2400 Michelson Drivc, Suite 100. P.O. Box 19605. Irvine, Cover: Loggerhead turtle, Caretta caretta, with remora about to attach itself for a ride. Photographed CA 92715, 714-752-6808. among the oceanic reefs in Allstralia's Coral Sea. [Carl Roessler]