White Shark by Peter Benchley Read Free Book Online

natural and man-made, like massive fish kills, sudden algae blooms
and oil spills.
    His assiduous neutrality had paid off on
Thursday night, when a bluefisherman had phoned the Institute (he'd had sense
enough not to use his radio, which could be monitored by every boat in three
states).   On his way home, he told Chase,
he had seen a dead whale floating between
Block Island
and Watch Hill.   Sharks were already
feeding on the carcass, but they were school sharks, mostly blues.   The rare and solitary whites had not yet
picked up the spoor.
    But they would, those few that still
patrolled the bight between Montauk and Point Judith.   And soon.
    The word would reach the charter-fishing
boats, whose captains would call their favored customers and promise them, for
fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars a day, a shot at one of the most
sought-after trophies in the sea — the apex predator, the biggest carnivorous
fish in the world, the man-eater:   the great
white shark.   They would find the whale
quickly, for its corpse would show up on radar, and they would circle it while
their customers camcorded the awesome spectacle of the
rolling eyeballs and the motile jaws tearing away fifty-pound chunks of whale.   And then, drunk with the dream of selling the
jaw for five thousand or ten thousand dollars and blinded to the fact that they
could make more money if they left the shark alone and charged customers for
the privilege of filming it, they would harpoon the animal to death... because,
they would say to themselves, if we don't do it, someone else will.
    The would call it sport.   To Chase, it was no more sport than shooting a dog at its dinner.
    He and scientists from
Massachusetts
to
Florida
to
California
had been lobbying for years to have great white sharks officially declared
endangered, as they had been in parts of
Australia
and
South Africa
.   But white sharks were not mammals, were not
cute, did not appear to smile at children, did not ‘sing’ or make endearing
clicking noises to one another or jump through hoops for paying customers.   The were omnivorous fish that once in a while
— but rarely, much more rarely than did bees or snakes or tigers or lightning —
killed human beings.
    Everyone agreed that white sharks were
marvels of evolution that had survived almost unchanged for scores of millions
of years; that they were biologically wonderful and medically fascinating; that
they performed a critical function in maintaining the balance in the marine
food chain.   But in an age of tight
budgets and conflicting priorities, there was little public pressure to protect
an animal perceived as nothing more than a fish that ate people.
    Before long, Chase was sure, perhaps
before the turn of the millennium, they would all be gone.   Children would see white-shark heads mounted
on walls, and filmed records of them on the Discovery Channel, but within a
generation they wouldn't even be a memory; they would be no more real than the
dinosaurs.
    His first impulse after talking to the
bluefisherman was to collect some explosives, find the whale and blow it to
pieces.   It was the best solution, the
quickest and most efficient:   the whale
would disappear from the charter fishermen's radar, the sharks would
disperse.   But it was also the most
dangerous, for destroying a whale carcass was a federal crime.
    The Marine Mammal Protection Act was a
masterwork of contradictions.   No one —
scientists, laymen, filmmakers or fishermen — was allowed to get near a whale, dead or alive.   No matter that the entire save-the-whales movement (including the act
itself) had been born of the excellent films made by dedicated
professionals.   No matter that a whale
carcass could become an environmental catastrophe.   If you messed with a whale, you were a criminal.
    Chase's days as an environmental firebrand
were over.   Five years ago, he had made a
decision to work within the system rather than from outside it.   He