Three Fins | Pt. 2

Vineyard Haven

Chief of Police, Ryan Riley, was sweating profusely over a staggered pile of unpaid parking tickets while sucking down her second mocha iced coffee of the morning. She was desperately trying to resume control of the situation, but the chaos of the barrage of phone calls made it difficult for her to gather all of the facts. If swimmers had been bitten, and killed by sharks, she would be forced to evacuate every beach on the entire island. Public and private. On top of that it was Labor Day weekend, which meant the island was packed with thousands of vacationers, and beach goers.

First, she needed to contact the Oak Bluffs fire department and scramble a team of search and rescue divers. Second, she had to alert, and notify, Animal Control, The Steamship Authority, State Police, and the Coast Guard that the Martha's Vineyard coast line was now an active hunting ground for great white sharks. As her caffeinated fingers began dialing the first number on her call-list, she prayed that it was all just a false alarm.

Emery Kekoa, a 19 year old Marine Biology student from Kauai, Hawaii, and the head lifeguard for State Beach this summer was hastily fueling up his red Jeep Wrangler at Phillips 66 when he saw the caravan of police and fire rescue vehicles barrel down Lake Ave towards Ocean Park. Thank god, he thought to himself as he shoved the gas nozzle back into the pump. The cavalry is on its way.

Emery climbed back into the driver’s seat, inserted his key, which was adorned with a purple Vineyard Vines keychain, locked the shifter into drive, and peeled out of the gas station like a race car driver reentering the track. Speeding in the opposite direction of the rescue caravan, Emery turned west onto Lake Ave and headed towards Vineyard Haven. During the chaos of the incoming onslaught of panicked phone calls at the police station, he wrote down the bleak details from a hyperventilating elderly woman of a possibly related, yet isolated incident at the Tisbury Town Beach.

The call was from a woman named Cynthia, who wanted to inform the police that her grandson saw a large, gray dorsal fin weaving between the anchored boats in the Vineyard Haven Harbor, then two more near the shallows of the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club. Not wanting to add any further stress to the already swarmed plate of Chief Riley, Emery decided to keep this call to himself, and investigate it on his own. If the woman’s grandson had indeed spotted a white shark in the harbor he would have no choice but to immediately alert the Chief, but if it turned out to be a false alarm he could calmly resolve the situation on his own. He prayed the boy had been mistaken.

After sitting in ten minutes of evacuating traffic on Beach Road, Emery finally rolled into Vineyard Haven. Turning sharply onto Main Street, he pointed the nose of his vehicle in the direction of Tisbury Town Beach. A few moments later he took one final right turn onto Owen Little Way. It was a narrow, quiet road that led directly to the Vineyard Haven Yacht club, and ended at an overgrown, private walking trail which flowed straight into the soft sand of the private beach.

He parked his Jeep off to the right, on a dried patch of course land, grabbed his binoculars, walkie-talkie, Rescue Can, and the Oak Bluffs Police Department’s Nikon D750 DSLR Camera - with a 24-120mm Lens - and hustled his way through the overgrown path. At the mouth of the growth Emery scanned the beach. He was hoping to find the old woman who made the call, and her grandson who allegedly made the discovery, to be waiting for him. Ready to point him in the direction of the sharks. Prepared to show him proof of the lurking fins. He found no one. He was alone on the beach, sinking into a hole of dread and confusion. She was probably back inside the club house, drinking a comforting glass of alcohol. The grandson was most likely inside the clubhouse as well, watching television or playing video games. He tried to convince himself that the truth was definitely one of the best case scenarios he was creating inside of his mind, but the worst case scenarios always seem to be the easiest ones we give power to.

Last September, Emery moved from Hawaii to Los Angeles and began pursuing a degree in marine biology at UCLA, with a focus on the evolution of sharks. During his freshman year, while stressfully trying to balance his academics with a part-time job as a lifeguard, one of his classmates from Boston informed him of an awesome summer internship in Cape Cod. He easily convinced Emery that if he truly wanted to learn all he could about sharks, especially white sharks, then Cape Cod was where he needed to be. Later that night in his dorm room, he went online and filled out the application for The Summer Student Fellow Program at The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The following summer he found himself on an airplane bound for Logan Airport. During his time at the institution, he learned the harsh, depressing truths about the rapidly rising temperatures of ocean water, the harrowing dangers of overfishing and salmon farming, and the side effects each of these plagues have on our oceans. Every other week, his particular group of interns would board the fast ferry out of Falmouth with their class instructors, and take the thirty minute boat ride to Martha’s Vineyard. They would stay on the island for five days gathering extensive data on the changing water temperature, documenting migrating species, possible nursery locations for seals and sharks, and they would also frequently test the mercury levels in the different sectors of the island.

Since Emery also had a background as a lifeguard, to earn some extra spending money, he acted as the head lifeguard for State Beach in Oak Bluffs during their five day stay. He was mainly here to study the majestic nature and evolution of white sharks, and find out why their numbers have recently been drastically increasing in the Northern Atlantic waters. The last thing he thought he’d be investigating, although never truly deeming it as being an impossibility, was a deadly shark attack.

He was about to leave the vacant beach behind when he spotted an aggressive splash of water about forty meters out. Shifting his Ray Bans to his sweaty forehead, he lifted the binoculars hanging from his neck, jammed them into his eye sockets, and peered out through the lenses. His mouth slowly started to drop as he watched three, large dorsal fins breach the water, torpedoing the attached bodies deeper into the heart of the harbor. With his newly acquired knowledge about the anatomy of sharks, Emery was able to confidently observe that these fins were too small to belong to dolphins. These were white sharks, and they were heading straight towards the bustling marina.

He dropped his binoculars, ripped the walkie-talkie from his waistband, and radioed Chief Riley.