Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
As a freelance journalist and avid naturalist, I write often about faraway places, immersing myself in worlds and communities that are not my own: I’ve journeyed along the greatest river of Colombia, fallen asleep to the sound of yelping penguins in a remote corner of Patagonia and rumbled through the forgotten American countryside on an Amtrak train.
Of course, traveling to the ends of the earth isn’t exactly feasible during a pandemic, and most journalists have turned to more local stories that can be reported in a safe and socially distanced way (if not by phone). So last month, while reporting on a group of recreational fishermen who catch sharks from the beach, I didn’t quite expect that I’d find such an unfamiliar world — and an adventure to match it — just an hour’s drive from my house, in a place I’ve known since I was a kid: the South Shore of Long Island.
My most useful tool for the assignment was not a notebook or tape recorder, but a yellow kayak that I bought back in high school. For years, I’ve used it to explore the waters off New York City, with its miles of coastline and dozens of uninhabited islands and lighthouses. Perfect, in particular, for a pandemic isolationist like me.
One weekday morning in August, I strapped the boat to the roof of my 2004 Prius and set off for Long Island soon after daybreak; when the last of the sprawling suburbs fell away and the familiar coastal wetlands widened to the horizon, I knew I was nearing the South Shore.
My destination was Tobay Beach, just past Jones Beach, a childhood summer stomping ground where I still often went to swim. It could have just as easily been Fire Island, or Robert Moses State Park, or any other beach on Long Island, for that matter — make no mistake, the sharks are everywhere.
And yet, while fishing for them from shore is pretty widely condemned by scientists and many other conservationists, it surprisingly didn’t seem to bother beachgoers too much. (Shark attacks on humans are extremely rare). In fact, it’s almost become an attraction by now — people running down the beach, cameras in hand to watch a fisherman with a shark on the line. These anglers are considered local celebrities, if not trusted fishing companions. And with sharks always swimming close to shore, unlikely to bite, catching and releasing them poses less of a hazard to swimmers than to the injury-prone creatures themselves.
The photographer Mark Abramson and I were right to think that this would be a hands-on assignment: two 12-hour days and seven big sharks later, we were exhausted trying to document all that went on. When a rod lurched forward and a fight was on, there was lots of running and yelling and quick-thinking on the part of the fishermen — not to mention the mere seconds Mark and I had to get a good glimpse of the shark itself, thrashing in the shallow water.
While Mark was busy flying drones out to sea and crouching in the surf to get the best possible pictures, I found myself paddling through the crashing waves to get a full sense of the anglers in action. (They fish from the beach but use all sorts of strategies to get their bait to deeper water, including their own drones and “bait cannons,” and more traditional casting and kayaking.)
Even during the long periods of waiting that are inevitable during any kind of fishing, I barely had enough time to get the answers to all of my questions scribbled down on paper; there was just so much going on.
For Mark and me, it was a viscerally shocking experience seeing large sharks, five to eight feet long, hauled out of the ocean. For the shark fishermen, it was just another day at the beach. But it was during the evenings when I most felt like we were reporting from another world. We drove down a 4x4 beach to a more isolated spot, bouncing around in the bed of a pickup truck as it wove its way through ruts of soft, dry sand. Terns and laughing gulls raced by, and a lone osprey with a fish in its claws soared overhead.
My favorite part of it all was the view from my kayak, 300 yards out on the water. As dusk fell with the small, fiery sun dipping behind the dunes, families up and down the coastline lit small campfires and grilled dinner.
The distant sound of an acoustic guitar drifted in from somewhere, and it was hard to imagine that I was only 30 miles away from home and one of the biggest cities in the world. It was a brief and beautiful respite from the chaos. At last, I didn’t have to worry about wearing my mask and could take a deep, free breath of the cool ocean air.
The thrill of sea kayaking is all in the timing, cutting deftly through the threatening waves until you reach more placid waters on the other side of the sandbar. So I stole a few seconds out there for myself, bobbing peacefully in the swells, before setting off back toward shore.
Jordan Salama’s essays and stories have appeared in National Geographic and Smithsonian. His first book, “Every Day the River Changes,” will be published in 2021.
"freedom" - Google News
September 06, 2020 at 04:00PM
https://ift.tt/3i4jzUx
Off the Shore, Finding Sharks and Freedom - The New York Times
"freedom" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2VUAlgg
https://ift.tt/2VYSiKW
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Off the Shore, Finding Sharks and Freedom - The New York Times"
Post a Comment