Page 4 of Second Tide's the Charm
“Shit.” I lunge farther over the edge and grab the pliers before they sink out of reach.
“There goes that footage,” Gabe says from over my shoulder, but I know he’s messing with me. He’s been filming with us long enough to know that a few choice words come with the territory of working with wild animals. Nothing that can’t be fixed in editing.
The shark’s tail thrashes and droplets splash across my face. I swipe away the saltwater and glance over to find my cousin Marissa’s gloved fists clenched tight on the tail rope, intent on her task. A dramatic shark work-up would put a spike in our viewership, but that’s not the kind of clickbait we want. Our aim is to teach people about sharks, not create sensationalized content.
“Done?” Marissa’s question comes out as a grunt.
I shake my head. “Almost.” I take a firm grip on the pliers and return to my task. Time is of the essence, but taking out this steel hook could forestall potential complications for the shark.
My forearms flex with the effort of working quickly and carefully. Up until a few years ago, I’d never seen the inside of a gym, but the physicality of long days on the boat is less of a strain since I started lifting weights. What began as a hobby to distract myself from my absent girlfriend became a permanent routine when our six-year relationship fizzled out like a doused match.
Hope is never far from my mind, but with an effort, I push aside thoughts of the woman I lost my heart to, and this time I’m ready when an errant wave rocks the boat. For a moment, the sun slides behind a shifting cloud, and with the glare gone, I’m able to see what’s below the surface clearly.
The shark’s eye has the wide, curious look of a cat, the white of her underbelly fading into a sandy brown. I latch onto the hook in the corner of the shark’s mouth and tug the piece of metal free. Winded by adrenaline more than exertion, I drop the hook and pliers on the deck with a clatter. Releasing the shark will be tricky without another assistant. “Can I get a hand?” I ask Gabe, and when he doesn’t answer right away, I turn to find him frowning from behind the camcorder. “Leave it.” My words come out curt, but while filming is important, the animals are our top priority.
Gabe isn’t a shark researcher, but he has a background in wildlife biology and has grown more comfortable working with sharks since we hired him. Setting down the camera, he comes to lend a hand.
Despite a brisk breeze, the early morning air is already warm, and I’m sweating under my long-sleeved tee. A wide headband holds back my locs. One hand on the sleek dorsal fin, I check in with Marissa, her expression serious but calm. “Ready?”
She gives a brief nod. Working in the field isn’t her favorite. Not like Hope, who lit up every time we brought in a shark. Three years since she left, yet her absence still stings like saltwater in a wound. But the dull thump of the shark’s caudal fin against the hull reminds me now is not the time to dwell on what’s lost. Hope’s not coming back, and I need to learn to live without her.
Feet planted wide, my knees flex with the boat’s motion, the shark’s sandpaper skin rough against my palms as I slip off the rope. Marissa does the same and we guide the animal away from the boat and let go. My heart pounds for a breathless moment, and next to me, Gabe is tense.
“C’mon, lady,” Marissa says. We’re all focused on the shark, willing her to swim away. “You got this.”
After a dazed beat, the shark propels herself forward, churning the surface into a white froth, then arrows downward, no doubt eager to put as much distance between herself and humanity as possible. My eyes remain fixed on the water until the shark disappears, the brownish gray of her back an excellent match for the water of the bay.
Gabe heads over to check on his camera, and Marissa rises to her feet, grinning. “Another successful tag.”
I nod but can’t muster a smile. Despite the result, I’d feel more comfortable with another marine biologist onboard, but all my colleagues are busy with their own research. We’ve had some luck getting grad students to help out, but we made the decision to spend the summer filming too late in the year and haven’t found anyone available long-term.
“Would be nice if Gabe didn’t need to keep stepping in.” I turn toward him, realizing how that might’ve sounded. “Not that we’re not grateful.”
“No arguments here. I’d rather be filming.” He hoists the camcorder. “Just wait till you see the footage I got of that Carolina hammerhead earlier. The internet is going to eat it up.”
I hate when he anthropomorphizes the internet like it’s a sentient being, but when he tips the screen toward me, replaying the footage, I can’t help but agree. Viewers will devour this like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Gabe’s been instrumental in taking the quality of our videos to the next level. He reached out to us last fall after stumbling upon our socials, and helped me grasp the far-reaching potential of our platform.
An accidental viral moment sparked our decision to start the channel. Footage of me maneuvering a blacktip shark back into the water after a novice fisherman pulled it onto a crowded beach went viral with the hashtag #SharkSavior. A matter of right place, right time, and I’m just thankful my years of education and experience kept a tricky situation from getting worse.
My instinct was to hunker down and wait for the unsolicited publicity to pass, but Marissa is a conservation biologist, and she convinced me to leverage my momentary internet stardom into an opportunity to make a lasting impact on the public’s perception of sharks.
Stepping in front of the camera was a big change from teaching classes, and even further from working in the quiet confines of a lab, but I’ve adjusted to life as one of the prominent faces of shark research. Learned to tune out the trolls and stay focused on our mission. Haven’t quite broken the habit of scrolling through comments searching for one from Hope, though. Impossible not to wonder if she’s watching. If she misses this kind of work. If she missesme.
Ten years ago, I never would’ve guessed the serious girl with the quiet sense of humor I met on the first day of our internship would become the most important person in my life. She was stoic as we loaded the equipment on the boat, but didn’t bother to conceal her excitement as we set off, her eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. I noticed they were the bright copper of a new penny, and when she smiled at me, it felt like a gift.
Our first day tagging sharks had ended with us exhausted and giddy, sharing a melted protein bar on the dock, instant friends but nothing more. My heart was bruised from a recent breakup, and she was being pursued by a lanky grad student who thought “Hopeless”was a cute pet name. I hated him.
She confessed one night that she thought romance was a sham and love was a distraction, right before she kissed me. Ignoring the voice that told me I was headed for heartbreak, I fell hard and fast and expected her to dump me at summer’s end when we left to start graduate studies—she to the University of Miami and me to Duke—but instead she held me tight and said, “I never expected to feel this way.” Her lips pressed against mine, soft and bittersweet, then she pulled away and told me, “You’d better be able to go the distance, Hollis-Parker.”
Our relationship flourished on long weekends and during sun-drenched summers, the sporadic, inseparable moments together carrying us through long months apart. We’d save up for plane tickets and spend the holidays with each other’s families, meshing our lives even as we lived apart. Our love story felt inevitable in the most unexpected way. We were meant to be. Until the day came that we weren’t anything to one another, besides gone.
Sharks and Hope were the two constants in my life. I thought she felt the same. Turns out I was wrong about a lot of things.
But I need to keep pressing forward. Not dwell on what might’ve been. I lean toward Marissa, raising my voice to be heard over the wind. “Any leads on finding someone to join our team this summer?”
“Actually, yeah.” She’s hauling the buoy in, hand over hand, the line dripping with water tinged with the faint scent of fish and seaweed. “And she has immediate availability.”
Her voice is pitched suspiciously high, and I tilt my head, on alert. “Is she qualified?”
