California Coast & Ocean

The tiger shark’s fins flare wide as the animal rises from the deep, swimming directly toward me. Seawater pushes through the pass in the limestone reef, boiling with the forces of the ebbing lagoon, carrying fish and my friends along with it out into the deep coral drop-off. Known in French Polynesia as the mascaret, the current piles up in standing waves, and creates spinning vortices and back-eddies far beyond the atoll out into the blue Pacific. Camera rolling, I can count the stripes and see the fine scars along the shark’s muscular flank as it glides by. I sailed from San Francisco to the remote atolls of the Tuamotus with my friends from Trillium Films to make a documentary on sharks called Sharks: Stewards of the Reef. On this small coral island inhabited by a few hundred people we have found the sharks--or the sharks have found us.

From the bottom of the narrow pass, a shadow takes shape, then another and another as more sharks arrive. Soon scores of reef sharks join the tiger, all gliding effortlessly in the currents, banking sharp and sweeping back like 747s in holding patterns. A fin’s breadth away from the lens the shark rockets ahead to swallow up a preoccupied snapper. Clouds of colorful fish dart and delve into the niches among the coral. It is near nightfall and it is feeding time: the planktivores and the herbivores, the predators and the voyeurs, all combining in this explosion of tropical ocean life. This is the ocean in its most resplendent and complete form, from the apex predators like sharks down to a vibrant coral reef. This is wildness.

Yet even here, human impacts are evident: plastics washed ashore, a tangled fishnet on the reef, and fishing boats speeding past from the sea to the village. In search of a pristine coral reef to film, we set sail the following day for less impacted islands and more sharks.

Our friend Tuare guides our sailboat, the Bluefin, to an uninhabited atoll to the southeast, deep into this island group known by mariners as the Dangerous Archipelago. There are no beaches here on Tepoto-iti, no safe harbor, and the entrance to the lagoon is so shallow and narrow that even our inflatable dinghy can enter only during the mildest of surf. We anchor Bluefin in the deep water of the island’s lee, set up camp on bare coral rock beneath the palm trees, and prepare for the day’s diving. Penetrating the blue waters, we expect to see swarms of large sharks, but our dives reveal that large sharks are entirely absent, and even small ones are far fewer than at other islands.

"They were here last year, but today there are not so many sharks," says Tuare. "The commercial fishermen put out the longlines. They catch the tuna but they also catch the sharks." By evening, we are tired and hungry, and disappointed. The water is crystal clear, the reef is healthy and undamaged, and small fish glitter in the sunlight, but we have seen only a few sharks. As we organize our new base camp, Tuare tends the driftwood fire built in a ring of coral rock. Palm fronds clatter in the tradewinds over the constant voice of the sea. "The longliners are not permitted to fish here," Tuare says with a shrug, "But there is no one to stop them. There is no enforcement." He nods his head. His golden earring glitters in the firelight, but his usual smile is absent. To the north, a 50-foot boat hangs on the horizon, its bright lights outshining the stars’ reflections. Tuare pokes a steaming package of reef fish wrapped in palm leaves, and as if drawn by the odor, the lights creep sideways to the reef’s edge like crabs, but it is not the odor of fish they chase: it is the smell of money.

"That boat is killing sharks." Tuare points. "They catch them in the currents between the atolls. They take them for the ailerons, for the fins. Pas bon." He shakes his head. "No good." The foreigners come in large ships and kill Pacific sharks by the thousands.