Colin Gavan

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: Alright, Colin. Let's begin with when and where were you born?

GAVAN: Righto. I was born in Southland, raised in Southland. 

CRAWFORD: Southland is pretty big. Can you narrow that down for me?

GAVAN: Well yeah. Winton, Ryal Bush. Had a farm at Ryal Bush. Grew up on a farm. Used to go to the sea when I was a kid, just in the school holidays. Loved the sea. And because we were landlocked, I always wanted to get back to the sea for some reason. I hated sheep. And there was no way I was going be a farmer. 

CRAWFORD: When were you born?

GAVAN: 1954.

CRAWFORD: After the war, within six or seven years after the World War II. 

GAVAN: Yeah. And just after the Korean War.

CRAWFORD: You said that you went to the sea as a kid. Was that for family vacations?

GAVAN: Yeah. A couple of weeks. Learning how to surf, and learning how to dive, and play round the water.

CRAWFORD: When you went on those vacations, when you spent time on the coast, where did you go?

GAVAN: Mostly Riverton. Probably the safest piece of water you could go and take your kids to at any time. You’ve got your surfing, your rocks for diving. And it’s nice shallow water. 

CRAWFORD: When you say Riverton, you don’t mean right here at Colac Bay ...

GAVAN: No, no. I mean over the hill there.

CRAWFORD: Those trips to Riverton, did you have family there? Or were you visiting people?

GAVAN: No - with the family. My brothers and sisters, and me Mum and Dad. 

CRAWFORD: When you were growing up, from the time that you were in school - those trips to Riverton, were those were your first experiences spending quite a bit of time around New Zealand coastal waters?

GAVAN: Learning about the sea, learning about the water.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever have any part-time jobs, from the time that you were maybe a teenager, when you were working on or around boats? Or was that after you finished school?

GAVAN: No, that was after I finished school. I had a couple of experiences with friends down in Bluff, where we flogged a boat and went over to Ruapuke Island for a day. But we didn’t really get received too well back at the wharf, if I can remember right. 

CRAWFORD: For taking off?

GAVAN: Well, we weren’t meant to have gone in the first place. And I was meant to be at school.

CRAWFORD: Well, Ruapuke - it’s pretty exposed too. I mean for kids.

GAVAN: Yeah. That was my first experience on a boat. And then I suppose the big boat - the Waiarua that used to go over to Stewart Island. Had a couple of trips on that, and got horrendously sick. Yeah, it wasn’t my forte for a while. But then surfing. Go through secondary school, I had my rugby and my cricket, but I loved going surfing. I learned how to surf when I was a kid too. 

CRAWFORD: You learned how to surf from other people who were already surfing, or did you ...

GAVAN: We were basically the first to have ... well, it was just a plywood surfboard. It was actually a surf ski, but we made in into a surfboard. That's where we learned how to start riding these surfboards.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, when did you start surfing?

GAVAN: I would have been about ten years old.

CRAWFORD: During your vacations to Riverton?

GAVAN: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: You and your mates, basically making it up as you go? Building your own boards?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah. Well we had to, because there was no surfboard shop ne ... I think the closest was Christchurch. Back then they cost a lot of money, which we never had. Had to go a long way to get one.

CRAWFORD: And the previous generation, like your parents ...

GAVAN: There was no surfers prior to us here, no. But there were a couple of older guys that had surfboards, and we were just blown away at how they could ride these surfboards out on the waves. Yeah, that was my start of the surfing.

CRAWFORD: Did you surf continuously from ten until some age, and then you hung up your board? 

GAVAN: Surfed until I was ... well basically until I had an accident on the oil rig.

CRAWFORD: Which was roughly when?

GAVAN: I was about 23, 24. Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: After learning how to surf as a kid, what was the next thing that you did around the sea? Would it have been commercial fishing?

GAVAN: It was Pāua diving. We had to get Pāuas, mince them up, sell them, so we could get petrol to come out surfing to the beach. On the good days, we would go surfing. And on the flat days, we would go get some Pāuas to put in the petrol kitty.  

CRAWFORD: How old were you when you started Pāua diving? 

GAVAN: 12, 13. We used to find a mask and a snorkel and go out and get feeds.

CRAWFORD: In terms of the region, would this have been mostly based around Riverton?

GAVAN: Yeah, around Riverton, Colac Bay. All around this area. 

CRAWFORD: So, the region grew broader as you got older?

GAVAN: You got to go round more beaches. The more Pāuas you got, the further you’d go.

CRAWFORD: When you started Pāua diving, were you figuring it out? Or did you have people that were teaching you how to do it?

GAVAN: No. We had people that kept asking if we’d got some Pāuas. When we’d get them, they’d pay us. And we thought "Righto. We’ll do that." Then we got a knock on the door one day, and it was the fisheries guys. They decided that to carry on what we had been doing, we had to get a diving licence, so we could get these Pāuas. 

CRAWFORD: A harvesting licence? 

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah. A hand-gathering licence. I was probably one of the first down here to actually go and get a hand-gatherer's licence for Pāuas. Because all the other Pāua divers came from up North, and they had one. But I went in, and got one from down here. There was only about half a dozen that actually had Pāua diving licences here. Yeah, one thing led to another, and it just worked in perfect.

CRAWFORD: So, surfing and Pāua diving?

GAVAN: Yeah. And while that was going on, I was going to school. And wasn’t learning a hell of a lot. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: Right. But surfing and Pāua diving - they overlapped with school?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever work on a commercial boat or anything like that, while you were at school? Like during summer vacation?

GAVAN: No, not actually worked on any then. It wasn’t until after school. 

CRAWFORD: Once you finished school, I'm guessing you continued surfing and Pāua diving - but what was your first full-time job where you were on the water?

GAVAN: I had come home after being in Dunedin for two years after I left school. I was about 18, and I got a job on a boat, The Glennifer, which was fishing out of Milford Sound, Crayfishing. And I Crayfished on it all the way back down to Bluff over the rest of the season that I was onboard the boat. That was my first experience working on a commercial boat. And it was like a full monty of the west coast of New Zealand - in just about every type of weather and condition. We brought our pots from Milford Sound all the way down. Virtually fished most of the Sounds on the way. That was an incredible experience. A real good skipper. Yeah, he was a book of knowledge as far as the old ways were concerned. I learned a lot from him, and a couple of his friends. 

CRAWFORD: That was your first full-time job. How long did you do that for, the Crayfishing? 

GAVAN: It was only until the end of that season. Then I went back to the job in Dunedin that I’d been doing before - that was joinery. I helped different people rebuild parts of their boats. Did a couple of refits, turned them from pleasure boats into commercial boats. Yeah, there was quite a few of them.

CRAWFORD: When you were back in Dunedin the second time, how long were you there for roughly?

GAVAN: I was there for two years. Enough to do a machine operator's apprenticeship. 

CRAWFORD: For the two years in Dunedin, were you doing any surfing then?

GAVAN: I was surfing every moment I wasn’t at work.

CRAWFORD: And Pāua diving as well in that region?

GAVAN: Only a couple of places because ... yeah, we were spooky up there diving, compared to down here. 

CRAWFORD: Why is that?

GAVAN: Deep water and clear water, I suppose.

CRAWFORD: Clear waters are spooky?

GAVAN: Well, I’d seen a couple of Shark attacks up there so ...

CRAWFORD: Was that when had you seen the attacks? When you were working at the joinery?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah. That was when I first went up to Dunedin. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. We’ll come back to that, because I want you to tell me a little bit more about the Sharks up there.

GAVAN: But I kept my Pāua diving down here, where I knew there was lots of rocks, and you’re safe. 

CRAWFORD:
Ok. So that was Dunedin then, for a couple of years. What was next?

GAVAN: I moved back down - to Invercargill, where I worked as a joiner for a couple of different companies. And that's what I mean, I outfitted some boats while I was doing it. Then I got a chance to go for a ride on a boat up to Wellington, to bring this boat back to Bluff. I was having time off work, and brought it back down, and that was an incredible trip. But then with doing that, I also applied for a job on the oil rig, which I got. And I jumped me job as a joiner, and went and worked on the oil rig.

CRAWFORD: You said it was a heck of a trip?

GAVAN: Oh, it just opened my eyes to being out at sea, fishing.

CRAWFORD: I'm guessing that would have been the furthest that you would have been away?

GAVAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember roughly when you got the job on the oil rig?

GAVAN: I think it was 1976. And I was there for 18 months, I think it was. Until I had an accident on the rig. I had to go to hospital for quite a long time to get patched up.

CRAWFORD: When you got the job on the oil rig, was that just at the beginning of the project? 

GAVAN: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: What was the name of that rig?

GAVAN: Penrod 74. There were two supply boats. Another rig arrived later on to look for oil up the North Island. But it was only Penrod 74 down here. 

CRAWFORD: They shuttled the rig, or they towed it, over to Stewart Island?

GAVAN: Yeah. They put it up in Paterson Inlet. Big Glory Bay in Paterson Inlet. 

CRAWFORD: Where was most of the actual oil exploration?

GAVAN: I did mine out here on the edge of the Trench. 

CRAWFORD: On the western shore?

GAVAN: Yeah, just out off Codfish Island. 

CRAWFORD: Over what kind of depth? Do you remember?

GAVAN: Yeah, I do. I know the depth was the maximum diving-depth for the bell. Yeah, it was quite deep - 480 foot to the seafloor. That's how far down they had to drop the bell.

CRAWFORD: Please describe just a little bit about the operation, because this wasn’t just sending drills down - this was sending a diving bell down. What was the purpose of sending the diving bell and the divers down there?

GAVAN: Just to check the stack. Make sure all the pushrods and everything were working, and all that. They had a camera, a closed-circuit TV camera, they’d send down. But any time there would be something stuck or jammed, they’d send the bell down and the divers.

CRAWFORD: The bell would go over the top of the stack?

GAVAN: No, it’d just drop down - it was independent. It had its own way of going up and down.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But in terms of pressure for the divers ...

GAVAN: Oh, yeah. Phenomenal. They had their own decompression chamber and all that, up on board. Yeah, they had a decompression chamber, they had all these far-out tanks full of all the different gas mixes. There was a full American dive team on board. And they were all pretty well experienced. I helped them quite a bit of the time. Because of my experience diving, I was able to be as part of the crew that was helping them - getting their wetsuits and all of that sort of shit together. 

CRAWFORD: From when you started until your accident, that was a about a year and a half?

GAVAN: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And then you get laid up - for how long, until you got back? 

GAVAN: Until I could walk better. But I never got back to work out there. I built myself a boat in the backyard while I was in recovery. 

CRAWFORD: When you say ‘built yourself a boat’ - what kind of boat did you build? 

GAVAN: A 35-foot double-ender, wooden boat. Called the Elzer.

CRAWFORD: What was your plan for the Elzer?

GAVAN: I was going to go round to Fiordland. Catch fish, and become a fisherman. 

CRAWFORD: Be your own skipper?

GAVAN: I just wanted to get away, and do some hunting and fishing. So I built this boat. I thought it would be a step towards another boat. So I started gillnetting outside of Riverton. Out along Oreti Beach.

CRAWFORD: Was it setnetting?

GAVAN: This was setnetting, gillnetting, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was that?

GAVAN: About 1984, maybe. I’ve got it written down, the photo album ...

CRAWFORD: Alright. That begins your setnetting then in a big way. I'm guessing you were going out as a daily fisherman?

GAVAN: Well, we were going out when the weather was fine.

CRAWFORD: Right. But on a daily basis - weather permitting - as a full-time fisherman?

GAVAN: With the gillnets, if you set them out in the afternoon, you have to pick them up the next day. Otherwise the Sea Lice get into the dead fish, and you end up with a lot of stinking fish in your net. So, if you set them at night, you’ve got to pick them up the next day. 

CRAWFORD: Right. What were the target species, when you were commercial fishing?

GAVAN: Target species were the School Shark or Greyboys, Rig and Elephant Fish. And whatever else might pop into the net. 

CRAWFORD: Operations based mostly out of Riverton?

GAVAN: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Did you ever get up the east coast of South Island? 

GAVAN: I did some Pāuas up round there with the commercial boys from down home. Pāua dived in different spots round there. 

CRAWFORD: Did you even fish the Nuggets, the Chaslands? 

GAVAN: Surfed and Pāua dived the Chaslands - big beds of Pāuas there. There are point breaks in different places. Pāuas, different beds in different places. It’s all reefs and rocks.

CRAWFORD: Any other fishing up along that coast?

GAVAN: We went up to Kaikoura one year - gillnetting. We got that far. Loaded up with Blue Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Off Kaikoura?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah. Ended up with a boatload of them, instead of anything else. Took them back down, sold them, and went home again. It’s a long way, when you look at the chart.

CRAWFORD: It is. Other than Kaikoura, any other places up there that you've fished?

GAVAN: No, no. There’s nothing much round there. Set the nets everywhere round there and never got much. Got some salmon up here but it was only a couple. 

CRAWFORD: When you came back to Riverton, at that point in time did they have the unloading wharf?

GAVAN: Yes, because the Crayfishing industry was in full boom. Yeah, she was cranking.

CRAWFORD: There were a lot of boats coming in and out?

GAVAN: There were about 40-odd boats working. Registered boats, working out of Riverton. Some trawlers, some Cod boats, some Crayfish boats, and me. 

CRAWFORD: How long did you do that for?

GAVAN: A few months. 

CRAWFORD: And then what?

GAVAN: I went and sat my skipper's ticket. And got onto a bigger boat - a trawler. 

CRAWFORD: You 'sat' your skipper's ticket?

GAVAN: Yeah. Well I never had a skipper's ticket, so I was restricted in the size of boat that I could go out to sea on. So, I went and sat my skipper's ticket. Instead of settling for the commercial fishing ticket, I went for the commercial passenger/commercial fishing ... Well, it was an R.L.L ticket, and I had the fishing ticket endorsed onto the ticket that I sat. And yeah - started trawling. 

CRAWFORD: This was a bigger deal. When you went out on boats, they were bigger boats - with a crew of how many? 

GAVAN: One and two, depending on how good the trawling was.

CRAWFORD: Bottom-trawling?

GAVAN: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Primarily, or exclusively?

GAVAN: No, no. It was all bottom-trawling when I was on the 'Atlantis.'

CRAWFORD: The Atlantis was your trawler?

GAVAN: Yeah. Now the Atlantis, before it being converted into a trawler, is the boat that went down to the Auckland Islands to dive on the General Grant wreck. And got caught the second time going down - by the navy - and confiscated.

CRAWFORD: That’s an important story that I'd like you tell me more about, in a bit. But that boat you were skippering, as a trawler, that was the same boat that had gone down to the Aucklands?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alright, that’s all good. Takes us up to trawling on the Atlantis. How many years did you skipper that vessel?

GAVAN: That would have been a year and a half. It was about the time that they brought the Crayfish quotas in. Because I had one year in Crayfishing - prior to the Crayfish quota coming in. So that’s where you can get the dates. That's when the manager of the company got killed in a car crash, and they sold the boat and quota to someone else, who ended up getting a whole lot of work done. And another guy came in, and he ended up taking over the boat. And I ended up working on another boat. 

CRAWFORD: So, you switched boats. What boat was that?

GAVAN: I would have jumped on board ... was it either the 'Shangrila,' the 'Emerald Isles' ... it might have been the Emerald Isles. 

CRAWFORD: Another trawler?

GAVAN: No it was a gillnetter. Tuna boat. 

CRAWFORD: So, you were fishing for Tuna. Was it longlining?

GAVAN: No, we were handlining. We were trawling Albacore. But then I did a few seasons up the west coast, crewing on different boats.

CRAWFORD: Fiordland or further north?

GAVAN: Up here. Getting the Albacore. And then we were one of the first crew from the Bluff to go up and fish the Bluefin Tuna. I think it was four seasons, Bluefinning. This was all done with handlines. And then they brought the big longlines in. I never bothered going after that.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That's a completely different region. You were fishing Tuna from Jacksons Head up to where?

GAVAN: Oh yeah, we fished right the way up. Like all the way up here. 

CRAWFORD: All the way up to Cape Farewell?

GAVAN: Yeah. I did four seasons, Albacoring and Bluefinning along there.

CRAWFORD: That was a seasonal thing? 

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: What months were you doing that?

GAVAN: That’s the summer time, after Christmas. And all down here is your pre-Christmas and mid-winter fishing.

CRAWFORD: Crayfishing and setnetting down here in Foveaux Strait?

GAVAN: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: That kind of arrangement, that went until roughly when?

GAVAN: Until about maybe 25 years ago.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That was about 1990. Then what happened? 

GAVAN: I got my leg amputated, from a diving accident I had about 22 years ago. Which sort of put me back a bit. When I recovered from that, I got a job on a boat doing deer recovery around Fiordland. 

CRAWFORD: Doing what?

GAVAN: Deer recovery.

CRAWFORD: That's charter deer hunting?

GAVAN: Yeah. Probably a year and a half doing that. And then I saw there was a dollar in taking punters around there, and I started a charter - a hunting, fishing deal, which I’ve done for the last 17 years. 

CRAWFORD: Always with the Argus, or did you have another boat before?

GAVAN: No, the Argus I’ve had for the last 17 years. Prior to that I was on another boat owned by one of the Crayfish companies that sold out. So, we put a big ice box on it, a helipad, and went round and shot hundreds of deer. That’s when I knew there was a dollar in it. 

CRAWFORD: This charter - was it the commercial venison market?

GAVAN: That was different. It wasn’t meat hunting. I would take groups of hunters around to Preservation, Chalky Sound, and as far as Dusky. Some of them would want to catch fish. Usually there would be about four or five hunters on board that would take their guns. And with the damn Red Deer in just about every inlet, it didn’t take long for them to knock some deer over. Yeah, we’ve been quite successful with the deer recovery. Every year we’ve been up there, we’ve always had big shoots, big numbers. 

CRAWFORD: Are these the kind of trips where hunters and fisherman are staying on the boat?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: So, you can pick up and go to a different sound, you’re not constrained ...

GAVAN: We’re not constrained to a beach, in one little area, to walk from. Because we can nosey in to different areas. And I’ve got places set aside in those sounds where I can virtually guarantee a deer. Or if they don’t get one - they’ve missed it. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Ok. Primarily hunting, with some fishing. Was that pretty much the system for the 17 years that you ran the charter?

GAVAN: Yeah. And taking dive crews away. 

CRAWFORD: Recreational dive crews? 

GAVAN: No, commercial dive crews. So long as they had a registered dinghy onboard the boat, that the quota could be registered to. They could come onboard the boat, use the dinghy as another boat, and I’d just take them to some of the old places that I used to go. Some of the old beds of Pāuas. Everybody made a dollar. 

CRAWFORD: Exclusively Pāuas? Crayfish?

GAVAN: Kinas as well. But I never set the boat up for Crayfish. 

CRAWFORD: What about Stewart Island? To what extent have you worked around there?

GAVAN: Quite a few of the charter trips for past 20 odd years, I’ve taken families and Muttonbirders down to the bottom islands. 

CRAWFORD: The Southern Titi Islands?

GAVAN: Yeah. I Muttonbirded there for about 15 years myself. I've been around Paterson, Scallop diving and Pāua diving round there. Hunting and Pāua diving all round the East Cape there, Masons Bay and down Doughboy, down around this area here where the anchorages are. There’s lots of Kinas down there. 

CRAWFORD: This was all in the last 17-year period when you were running charters?

GAVAN: Nah. This was over a longer period of time. I did different expeditions down there, on different boats for different divers and quota holders. Round the Solander Islands are amazing. I did a Crayfish season fishing there, and been ashore a couple of times. The Seals and the Crayfish are phenomenal. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Does that that basically bring us up to ...

GAVAN: Right where we are now. 

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS 

CRAWFORD: In general, to what extent has Māori culture and knowledge affected your understanding of the marine ecosystem? What kind of interaction with Māori knowledge would you have had in your lifetime? 

GAVAN: Well I’ve got three sons, and they’re Ngāti Māmoe Māori and European. Meaning I married a wāhine [Māori woman] of the Ngāti Māmoe tribe. I’ve got rights to harvest the Muttonbird around Stewart Island. So for 15, 16 years I lived with the family that used to go and harvest the birds from down on the Titi Islands. And I got to learn about life back in the old ways, because we didn’t bring in tvs and radios and stuff. I learned to do it all the old way, with the kelp bags, and how to preserve them, and prepare the other birds as well. There’s the change of life that they were quite adapted to. I brought my sons up to living the same way, because I was learning all the time from the old people that I’d go and sit and talk to. And they would tell me different legends and stories. Especially in other areas where the old people lived, so that you know to be aware and be respectful of the place. And there are several different signs he told me to look for. Another one told me of a couple of the greenstone trails - I’ve taken my sons on one. And I’ve got to pass it on to them, to let them know where the others are. And in doing so, they’ve got rights to go into places like Poison Bay and get the greenstone from there - they can bring it back, so I can work with it. So, I’ve got some knowledge of early Māori. Plus, my playground being Preservation and Chalky Sound. I’ve visited well over 80 caves that people have lived in by early Māori. So, I do know about what went on in there. And about the interactions with the Europeans when they first came with the Sealers. Then with the Whalers when they came to New Zealand. And the different stories that go from there. 

CRAWFORD: Good. To the extent that there is Māori contribution to your knowledge, whenever you feel that it’s related to Māori culture, Māori knowledge, Māori values - please feel free to describe that, if and when you think it's appropriate.

GAVAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Same question in terms of how you get to know things from another culture, but this time from Science. Did you ever take any kind of science courses or anything like that - past the usual kind of secondary school?

GAVAN: No.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever work with scientists? For example, did you ever have a scientist that chartered your boat?

GAVAN: Yeah. Atholl Anderson, he was head of the Anthropology for the South-Pacific Islands. He discovered a civilization that was in Norfolk Island that they hadn’t known about. There were other scientists onboard the boat. We went down to Pegasus, where we went to an ancient Māori site, which they got the carbon dating from the bottom of one of the middens in the cave, the overhang that they found. And it was the carbon at the bottom of the midden that they were looking for. But in doing so, they had hundreds of little sample bags - for years, that the people had been living there. What they’d eaten, how the bigger family was there. They were able to tell me different things about the people that were using the area on the way down to harvest the Muttonbirds. And I got a report back somewhere here, from that expedition. And it was quite fascinating, because the carbon dating goes way back beyond what history thought. It’s changed quite a bit of the dating and that. It also verified when the Kiwi arrived on the island, because they didn’t start getting the bones of the Kiwi until they were at a certain level of the midden. They just were able to explain so much from what they took out of these sites.

CRAWFORD: That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m looking at. You spent time with scientists doing science. And that kind of stuff rubs off.

GAVAN: Oh yeah. We found skeletons, we reburied them. We visited areas that hadn’t been visited before. I got shown a cave by this old Kaumātua [Māori Elder] that even now, I don’t believe the museum knows about, because the feel was that the roof had fallen in, and they didn’t want people going digging the remains up. And that cave used to be a spy hole for the people, when they were spying on the Whalers and the Europeans when they were mining down in Pegasus. Seeing is believing.

CRAWFORD: When was that expedition, roughly? 

GAVAN: It must have been about the year 2000, maybe. 

CRAWFORD: So, relatively recent?

GAVAN: Yeah. I can verify that with the report I got back from them. 

CRAWFORD: Did you ever have anything as substantial, when dealing with biologists?

GAVAN: No. 

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

CRAWFORD: Do you remember the first time you heard about White Pointers?

GAVAN: It was something, when I was a kid, I actually saw one on a trailer. I don’t even know how old I was. It was on a trailer after being caught somewhere. And I was told that it was a great big White Pointer. A Shark. I thought it was a Whale - but things were huge when I was a kid. 

CRAWFORD: When you starting surfing and Pāua diving as a kid, did anybody take you aside and tell you about the White Pointers out there?

GAVAN: People always said "Watch out for Sharks" and "There’s lots of Sharks and that out there." So, we were always aware that we may come across a Shark of some sort. But we had no real fear of it. 

CRAWFORD: Your parents knew as well?

GAVAN: Oh, my mother couldn’t understand why I would ever want to go out there and become bait for a Shark. 

CRAWFORD: But I mean in general, Sharks were just part of the whole ...

GAVAN: My mother couldn’t believe it. "Why are they trying to drown themselves? Keep falling off these boards."

CRAWFORD: Did you hear about other people seeing Sharks?

GAVAN: Yeah. At Oreti Beach, just out of Invercargill - they had a Shark spotting tower for the Surf Life Saving Club. Floats were being put out, and there was someone watching to make sure there was no Sharks, because you know Sharks were seen quite regular at Oreti Beach. 

CRAWFORD: I'm guessing Sharks were an important part of the surf community, and the Surf Life Saving community. They would have been keenly aware of the Sharks. Did you ever hear about Sharks specifically in the regions that you were surfing or Pāua diving in? Or did you see any Sharks there yourself - White Pointers in particular?

GAVAN: Way back then, we only went to Oreti Beach because it was within biking distance. Occasionally we came out here to Riverton. But the Shark bells would go, the alarms would go, and everyone would get out of the water. You didn’t actually get to see anything, because they had already been spotted. Everyone would get out of the water, and whatever it was out there would disappear. More than often, it was Dolphins popping up in waves, the Shark bell would go, and "Oh, nah. It's alright. It was a pod of Dolphins." 

CRAWFORD: Back in the day, if the alarm bell went off, everybody got out of the water, but did somebody go out to investigate it as well? Was that standard practice back then?

GAVAN: No. They had their life saving boats there, if someone got taken out in a rip or something. I don’t think they would be all that keen to go jumping in after a Shark ...

CRAWFORD: It’s a little bit different now from what I hear, because even if they see a Shark, the Surf Life Savers have to go out and investigate. 

GAVAN: Righto.

CRAWFORD: Does Riverton have a Surf Life Saving Club?

GAVAN: Not a Life Saving Club, not anymore. Used to.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Back to your early days - you surfing and Pāua diving as a kid. Sharks were around. You saw them from shore. When you were out there, surfing or diving - did you ever have White Pointers come around? 

GAVAN: Well, I wouldn’t have been able to identify a White Pointer anyway, because I’d have been that fast trying to get through the water. I’d be on the next wave. But the one that I saw that attacked that guy in Dunedin ...

CRAWFORD: We’ll get to that in a second, just hold onto that…

GAVAN: But prior to that, no. I never had a problem with them really. 

CRAWFORD: Not while you were Pāua diving either?

GAVAN: No, because ...  Jacques Cousteau, back then he was huge. He was like a god of scubadiving, underwater cameras, photography and that. I was fascinated with what he did. It was just remarks that he made about Sharks, different Sharks, and some of their habits. And he said Sharks don’t really like being in rough water around the rocks, because they don’t like getting damaged. Their skin, even though it’s tough to us - to them, it’s not that tough. They don’t like being banged around. What I’ve found with Sharks is they don’t like being beaten up. They don’t like being thumped. The ones that I’ve seen close underwater, like with the Greyboys and that, I’ve just given it a bit of a jab, and woosh - they’re gone.

CRAWFORD: You learned quite a bit from Cousteau?

GAVAN: I learned that way back, from when I was reading about a Shark's habits from Jacques Cousteau - yeah. Reef Sharks, now they’re different because that’s their area. But they’re still amongst the sand most of the time, around the reefs. But your open-water Sharks, they don’t like the rocky areas the same.

CRAWFORD: If we’re talking about Sharks in this region, and specifically White Pointers in this region, does that mean that you are more likely to see them in some areas and not in others? Based on the nature of the substrate - whether it's sand or whether it's rock or whatever?

GAVAN: Yeah, for sure. 

CRAWFORD: That’s an important issue. When you see White Pointers close to shore, what kind of shoreline is it that you’ll see them - or not see them?

GAVAN: Well the ones we’ve caught have all been on beaches. Sandy beaches. Not over where there’s foul. I’ve seen them out at Escape Reef, both at eastmost and westmost. And in the channel between Centre Island and Seal Rocks. But not close to the rocks. Out in the open, over deeper water. 

CRAWFORD: Getting back to your early history up at Otago Peninsula for a while ...

GAVAN: There were Shark sightings quite regular out off Dunedin. That’s why they put the Shark nets in at St. Kilda.

CRAWFORD: Was it the case that the Shark nets were put out in response to the attack at St. Clair?

GAVAN: Yeah, the attack and the number of sightings.

CRAWFORD: You were a part of the surf community there. You surfed those beaches. You and your mates, you knew there were other sightings. 

GAVAN: Yeah. And at a place called Blackhead, just round the corner from St. Clair, there were sightings. And Tomahawk Point. The bay always had sightings, because the effluent used to go out there and there were Shark sightings there a lot too. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. We've got a couple of different things that I want talk with you about. With regard to the frequency of sightings ... are we talking about like one Shark sighting per month, or one per year?

GAVAN: It would be per month, yeah - at different stages. It used to be quite regular.

CRAWFORD: Was there a seasonality to it?

GAVAN: I think they had seasons for them. When they’re migrating. It’s basically the same thing, isn’t it?

CRAWFORD: Ok. What's the seasons for surfing? When does it start?

GAVAN: When the swells come up from the south, the southerly swells. 

CRAWFORD: When is that, roughly?

GAVAN: Autumn and spring, yeah. Mid-summer and all that, you’ve got flat conditions, warm conditions.

CRAWFORD: So, the season starts around October, November?

GAVAN: No, no. There’s been Shark sightings ... I don’t think it matters to them. When the waters are warm, I think that’s when they come into do their breeding or having their young.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But when does the water here warm up?

GAVAN: In Dunedin, it’s through the summer time. Down here it’s cool all the time. 

CRAWFORD: So, November? Right about now?

GAVAN: Yeah. Starting to warm up I’d say.

CRAWFORD: And it will stay warm until roughly when? July?

GAVAN: Until the southerlies come again, after the summer period. 

CRAWFORD: How do you reckon the White Pointers respond to that seasonality?

GAVAN: Well, all the fish have got their different feeding times, they all migrate. Like huge shoals of Greyboys must migrate all the way up here at different times, because there’s different times that you set your nets inshore. And there’s times that you put them way out, because it’s the other end of the scale. The fish move all around, all the time. The Crayfish all move this way, and then they’ll move way up here, then they disappear across to Tasmania. But they very rarely ever go up here. They just follow the contours round here.

CRAWFORD: Sometimes you’ll get resident populations, and sometimes you’ll get migrating populations. Do you think that the White Pointers for South Island of New Zealand, are they resident or do you think those animals have some type of migration route?

GAVAN: Oh, of course they have. All fish do. All fish return to their place of origin, that I know of.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What do you reckon is the pattern of migration that White Pointers have for South Island of New Zealand?

GAVAN: Well, you’ve got to understand the currents and the tides underneath here. You go way out into the Pacific ... way out here - they call it the Chatham Bight, where there’s a huge eddy. And it’s created from the currents coming up here. And it creates a huge feed eddy. And this is where the Muttonbirds and all that head. And a lot of migrating fish will feed up here, before they spew out past the Chathams into the Pacific. A lot of the fish that lay eggs, and their young and all that around this area ... we’re talking Flounders, we’re talking all the different types of Sharks, we’re talking all your Crayfish, and all that - they lay all their eggs through all the shallow water here. Remember they need shallower water to lay their young, so there’s no implosion on their eggs and what have you. They must have the gravel banks. So, all these eggs from the Crayfish turn into these little plankton - little, little, miniature things. And they get blown by the sea current way out here, where they grow and they fall down onto the sea floor. And from that point on, they start moving back to where they came. And they use the currents and the contours to get there, the different depths. And they will come back to here, and we’ll start catching them as juvenile Crayfish. But this is an area where the mothers, even after they’ve gone back out, they'll come back here too, to carry on with their breeding. They come to here, and they migrate back to Australia. And we’re catching these fish as they're migrating back to Tasmania and those areas over there.

CRAWFORD: What about the White Pointers? What do you reckon is their pattern?

GAVAN: Well, White Pointers are the same. They’ll go back to the areas that they were breeding in.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that this region - Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island - is this a place where they have courtship and sex? Or is it a place where they pup? 

GAVAN: I would say both. I would say this is just one community of them. You’ve got another community that lives over in Australia. You got another community that lives in the Falklands. You’ve got another community that are living up around California. You’ve got huge communities of these Sharks that will all go a way up to do their breeding, and then they’ll come back. Well, the ones in Cook Strait will come back to here. 

CRAWFORD: Do you think that this population or this community of White Pointers down around Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island is a different population, or is connected to the population up in Cook Strait?

GAVAN: I would say they are all part of the population of this area. We’re only an island, remember. This is only one populous area here. I do know one of the stories of the people running Muttonbirders for years before I did it. There was a Shark called 'Ruggedy Jack' - he was given the name. He was seen regular in Cook Strait. But he was also seen down here, at the Ruggedies. That’s why he got the name 'Ruggedy Jack.' I believe I’ve seen him, big split dorsal fin. It was a few years ago that we had this big Shark come up, and just cruise along with the boat. And he had a big split dorsal fin, which I would like to think that it was him. But in saying that, he’s got to be an old fish, because it was an old fella that told me about it years and years ago. And he was saying that it used to be seen by different people. There was still a whaling station in Marlborough Sounds until the ‘50s wasn’t it? Well Ruggedy Jack used to be seen there, as well as down here. 

CRAWFORD: That torn dorsal fin on Ruggedy Jack - that could have come from a number of different things. It could have maybe come from a propeller ...

GAVAN: Well, I was told he got blown out with an elephant gun of some sort.

CRAWFORD: It could have been somebody shot him. It could also have been from another Shark's bite, or something else. I've heard a different times that some people - just on principle - if there was a White Pointer out there, they would either set nets for it, or take a gun out and try and shoot it. 

GAVAN: What the hell for? Because there would be no gain. 

CRAWFORD: Maybe just to kill something that big for adventure. Or maybe because they feel like they’re protecting their families. Have you ever heard about that?

GAVAN: Yes. In fact, we had a joker on board the boat who went up and pumped a whole round of bullets into a White Pointer one day.

CRAWFORD: This was on your charter boat? 

GAVAN: Yeah. It was before I could say anything about it. And I went "What the hell did you do that for?" He said "Well, to kill it. Catch it." I’m going "Even if you did kill it, it would sink." And I said "What a waste of bullets." But there was no blood or anything. He shot it, mostly at the fin, I think. 

CRAWFORD: Have you ever heard of people who have gone out shooting to cull, to specifically kill off the population?

GAVAN: No, no, no. They’d have to be stupid if they did. Well, maybe there are a few stupid people around that have tried doing it. But I mean to keep it ... it’s dead weight. We’ve had it wrapped up in the setnets - that's how we’ve caught those White Pointers - they’ve been in the gillnets. And I mean, it was lucky I had a trawler. 

CRAWFORD: Who was it that made the connection between Ruggedy Jack being down here in the Foveaux Strait-Stewart Island region and also up in Marlborough Sound?

GAVAN: These were fisherman.

CRAWFORD: Commercial fisherman?

GAVAN: Yeah, commercial fisherman. Different fisherman up here. They saw the big White with the split in it, Ruggedy Jack they called it. I heard about it a long time ago. "Keep an eye out, because he’s seen most years." Well, you see a lot of White Pointers when the Muttonbirding's on, because of the amount of food that's in the water. 

CRAWFORD: In general because there’s an explosion of food in the region?

GAVAN: Yeah, there’s an explosion of food. 

CRAWFORD: And the Titi happen to be there as well?

GAVAN: They’re feeding on the food, too. That’s all part of the big feed up thing. 

CRAWFORD: Getting back to that torn dorsal fin on Ruggedy Jack ... at first I was wondering about what could have caused that - boat prop, another Shark. Then you said you'd heard it was from a gunshot. But I was also wondering if something like an Orca could have done that. Are there Orcas in these waters?

GAVAN: Every now and then we’ve had Orcas come round. They hooked into the Greyboys one year, only a couple of years ago. Round in Te Waewae Bay. They came right around, chased all these Greyboys in, and played Mary Hell with them.

CRAWFORD: The Orcas did? 

GAVAN: Yeah. That was a couple of year ago. And I do know that the Orca will kill a big White. In fact, there’s very few predators for them, the Great White. I’d say a Giant Squid would make a meal of one. And I do know that they go into the territory of the Giant Squid, because they’ve been known to swim around about 3,000 feet down by these gadgets they get put on them. So, they do deep dives. I’d say yeah, they’d be more than a meal for a couple of Giant Squids in the area. 

CRAWFORD: Anybody ever see an Orca-White Pointer interaction around here?

GAVAN: No. Most of them are seen down around the edges here. 

CRAWFORD: Most of the Orcas?

GAVAN: The Orcas, yeah. They come down - it must coincide with the Tuna. I’m not sure. Because about that time they were here, there was a lot of Tuna out here. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to the idea about populations. Yes, these are islands, and these Sharks could be swimming up or down the length of the South Island, not a big deal necessarily ...

GAVAN: Hell, no. It’d probably only take them a couple or three days.

CRAWFORD: Any other thinking about why you would think that this would be a single, common population? Anything else about the patterns of distribution or abundance for these White Pointers?

GAVAN: You’ve got to look at where the commercial trawlers are working from. And then you’ll get a good idea of where the White Pointer's feeding grounds are. Where they get the big Hakes and the Hokis and that. And when they can get the Hakes and the Hoki down here, there’s going to be a lot of White Pointers. You’ve got all your Gropers and all that running down there, along the deep water, with the big shelf. Well with Groper fish down there ... if you saw the amounts of Groper at different times of the year, easy feed for the White Pointers. Come round to here, and for two weeks, we watched Groper - shoal after shoal going past the TV camera on the oil rig. Just day after day, just swarms of Groper going past it. And this is way down - about 400 odd feet. Then you’ve got the shallow areas, for the White Pointers to breed in. All the way up. All around there. Beautiful breeding for having their young. Because they’ve got to live birth their young, and they can’t be doing it in deep water. Same as your Whales and things.

CRAWFORD: Go on, please. Explain a little bit more about that. 

GAVAN: Well, the different atmospheres. I know there’s one at 60 feet down, but there’s a couple before, believe it or not. But if you start dropping a fish that hasn’t really formed yet, down through an atmosphere, it’s going to take twice as much effort to fill out. But go through another atmosphere - it’s just dead weight, and it will sink. Especially fish that need to finish their forming. Now a White Pointer pup, it comes out, but it hasn’t completely finished forming. It hasn’t got its breathing and all of that right. So, it's laid on the sand, so it can work its way back out to the deepwater itself. You’ll find this with your Albies, your Rig, your Schoolies, your Greyboys. A lot of fish do it the same way. They’ve got to have that shallow water to drop their young into. Otherwise like a Craypot, they’ll just implode. 

CRAWFORD: Let's go back. We talked about White Pointers having birth, but in terms of a male and a female mating, having sex several months prior to that ... Where do you think these White Pointers are actually having sex?

GAVAN: Well, I would say they would be hanging around waiting on them to give birth, then probably half-a-dozen boys would be waiting around somewhere to sort out the girl. 

CRAWFORD: It would take a little time for her to come back into shape, especially if she’s so drained after birth.

GAVAN: Yeah, but you know ... like a Crayfish has sex when it loses its shell. It’s like a piece of jelly. Other fish, animals do the same thing.

CRAWFORD: With some species of Shark, there is courtship behaviour where the males clamp onto the female's fins, and you get scarring on the female. Have you ever seen or heard of White Pointers that have that type of scarring?

GAVAN: No, no. None of that.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Of all the places around New Zealand, what would be the top three places to find White Pointers? 

GAVAN: Well, number one, any time - down here.

CRAWFORD: Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island?

GAVAN: And below, out on the Solander Trench. The Solander Trench, because of the amount of fish that use that as a passage into shallower waters. And the amount of fish that actually used to get trawled down there. 

CRAWFORD: That region used to get fished, but no longer? 

GAVAN: Well the joint venture boats don’t come anymore. I think because they found easier fishing. You know, it’s pretty mean seas down here. So, they leave it alone. But it’s a huge fishery.

CRAWFORD: You’re talking about offshore, over very deep water?

GAVAN: Deep water coming into shallow. Gradually. 

CRAWFORD: You reckon lots of fish in that region, so lots of White Pointers?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah. I believe so.

CRAWFORD: Where else would be aggregations of White Pointers?

GAVAN: I’d go to Cook Strait. Only from seeing the photos - and hearing the stories of the Cook Strait Whites. But that could well be a thoroughfare for them, from the Tasman into the Pacific. 

CRAWFORD: Where did you hear these stories from? Other commercial fisherman?

GAVAN: Yeah. There are people that were involved with the whaling back in the old days, when they had the whaling stations. Photographs. A couple of jokers had photos of the old Whale, where they used to pull them up the slip - and the White Pointers would come up and chase the Whales right up out of the water. I’ve seen photographs of them. Coming up the slips, hanging onto the Whale!

CRAWFORD: Do you remember where you might have seen those photos?

GAVAN: Yeah, a guy Dennis - don’t remember his last name, lived in Picton. His grandfather was working on the whaling station. We were up there visiting, and he brought out this old photo album. God I was blown away with these huge Whities skidding up the ramps.

CRAWFORD: If I drive up to Picton, and I go poking around, and talk to some of the old-time commercial guys, maybe they’ll know. Those pictures could be in the museum, or down at the pub, or whatever?

GAVAN: Yeah. The Devines. 

CRAWFORD: Was that Dennis' last name?

GAVAN: No, but that was his neighbour. Jackie Devine. He’s got rights to the Muttonbird Islands.  

CRAWFORD: He’s Māori?

GAVAN: The guy Devine is. But Dennis - his ex - she's got rights to go down to the Muttonbird Islands. It’s his wife that had rights. That’s why we were there, we were visiting, it was Marama’s cousin. And just out of the blue he just said "I’ve got some photos of the old man's."

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, we've got down around here, and the Solanders, we've got Cook Strait. Any place else around North Island there would be a lot of White Pointers?

GAVAN: No, I don’t know why, It’s just too warm up there. There’s not enough fish stocks up north. Although you see them on the TV catching all the bloody Snappers and all that. You never hear of any White Pointers. They get other species of Sharks up there. 

CRAWFORD: What about the Chatham Islands? In terms of commercial fisherman that have experience out there, do you know anybody? 

GAVAN: Nah. No one personally. 

CRAWFORD: Just from word of mouth from guys down at the wharf, have you heard anything about White Pointers out at the Chathams?

GAVAN: I’ve had some Pāua divers from the Chathams diving Pāuas over here. And they’ve been yady, yady, yady, yady.

CRAWFORD: OK. I said I wanted to get back to food. White Pointers eating fish. Do you figure that they’re generalists - they’ll take anything that is the right size? 

GAVAN: I’d say they’re pretty fussy. They catch things that they can shoal up. But as for chasing individual fish? Nah, nah, nah. They can never keep up. We’ve just got a lot of fish down here that can be herded into packs. We’ve got a lot of Squid. Huge fishery of Squid out here, and out off the Chatham Bight. At times we’ve got a huge fishery of Groper that can be rounded up really easily. But individual fish would find it hard in a lot of areas, because they don’t have to be looking for the odd Seal. But most of the time the White Pointers would fish in a group, round their feed up, have a pig out, and then carry on looking for the next lot. 

CRAWFORD: You made reference to ‘the odd Seal.’ Do you figure that New Zealand White Pointers are feeding mostly on fish and Squid and other kinds of things in a school? Is it more fish, than Seals?

GAVAN: The Seals are just the unlucky ones, I think. But same thing - they know to get in between the Seal and the land. They’re clever.

CRAWFORD: Ok, but what I’m still trying to get at ... Do you think that the White Pointers down here are feeding mostly on fish, rather than Seals?

GAVAN: Oh, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Do you figure that the White Pointers are feeding on Seals only infrequently? Or only at certain periods of time? 

GAVAN: Only if there’s nothing else around, and they see the odd Seal - they’ll go and make a meal of it.

CRAWFORD: This brings in the issue of places, because you don’t find Seals just anyplace.

GAVAN: No, you got colonies. See, I never liked Pāua diving on Codfish, because of the Seal colony there. Because it’s quite deep water just off where you get the Pāuas. We went a couple of times, and got what we could. But it was always the fear of looking over the shoulder in that area. Because there’s Seals swimming around you. 

CRAWFORD: And the fact that the Seals are potential targets and there’s deep water ...

GAVAN: And you look like a Seal at times.

CRAWFORD: In terms of White Pointers taking an adult Seal versus a Seal pup ...

GAVAN: No, I think just a morsel ... they’ll eat a Penguin, they’ll eat whatever they catch. They’ll pull a bird out of the bottom, they’ll come up and hit a Mollymawk or a bird siting on the water. Especially at night time. But the old bird, he’s pretty clever too. He knows when they’re around. 

CRAWFORD: How do you know that the White Pointers take birds?

GAVAN: Seen the remnants of them. Where do the birds go? Somethings got to eat them. I mean you get billions of birds born every year, so you’re going to get billions of birds to die every year. To keep the balance. So how come there’s not billions of birds floating around? Plus, I know that Tuna eat birds - because one of their favourite lures is bird feather. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to habitat ... Some of the surfers that I’ve talked to have said that the very best waves, tend to be on or adjacent to rocky points. 

GAVAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And that rocky points tend to be places where Seals haul out. 

GAVAN: No - rocky bays. You won't get them on rocky points. They’ll go into the bay, and go ashore in there. But they won’t come ashore on a point.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But what you said before about the White Pointers avoiding rocky shorelines - they’re not going to be chasing these Seals right on to the rocky shoreline.

GAVAN: No. They’ll go round, and they’ll sit outside the bay that the Seals have gone into. It’s got to be pretty deep. They don’t like it shallow. That I do know. 

CRAWFORD: But they will come in closer over sand?

GAVAN: If it’s sandy bottom - yeah, they don’t seem to mind. They’ll come in a bit shallower.

CRAWFORD: I’ve seen surfers here working the breaks, coming into both rocky and sandy shorelines. Is there a preference for sandy shores just because it’s safer? Or it’s a better break? Or it’s more convenient?

GAVAN: Oh, no. You’ve got two different breaks. You’ve got a beach break with the sandy bits. And you’ve got a hard-barreling point break on the rocky point.

CRAWFORD: If there was an interaction between surfers and White Pointers, would it be more likely on the sandy beaches?

GAVAN: In the bay, yeah. But there's got to be a reason for them to go in there in the first place.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to the idea of social behaviour. Have you ever heard of anybody else talking about White Pointers in packs?

GAVAN: A few others have seen that experience. One time without even realizing it then, there was a big Shark caught up in the Shark net out in front of St. Clair - this was about Christmas time. And they went out in the Shark boat, and hit the brakes, and started coming back the other way. It was a monster White Pointer in the net - 27-foot long I think it got measured. That evening, someone shot out there and cut it free and cut the jaw out of it at the same time - it got washed up over at St. Kilda.

CRAWFORD: This White Pointer was already in the net when it was first seen?

GAVAN: It was wrapped up in the Shark net. But underneath the net, there were two more big ones circling around. And that was told by one of the divers that went out and cut it loose. 

CRAWFORD: The boat that turned around and high-tailed it back to shore ...

GAVAN: Oh, that was a surf club boat - they only had rowers. [chuckles] Yeah, they didn’t want to take any chances. But I’m pretty sure they saw one of the other ones that was hanging around this big Shark in the net too. But it was huge. 

CRAWFORD: I'll be interviewing some of the guys who were contracted by the Dunedin City Council to work those Shark nets. One of them would have had to have lifted that net. 

GAVAN: It had a huge hole in it. I know that. It was cut out. And he got washed ashore at St. Kilda. 

CRAWFORD: Yeah, I get what you’re talking about. And it's important to note that there was a pair of White Pointers, hanging around a Shark net - with a dead White Pointer in it. But we can't know if the two free ones were separately responding to a common cue, or if they were actually together as a social pair, or what.

GAVAN: Well, only a few months ago we came across a Whale just over there. A Whale carcass. It was all white because ...

CRAWFORD: Over where?

GAVAN: Over there. Just out off Smoky Beach. And it looked like an up-turned boat from a distance, with a whole bunch of people. But the people actually turned out to be those big black Nellys. We pulled up beside it, and down the water you could see the Sharks swimming around underneath. And there was a couple of big ones down there, and then around the front of the carcass, come this monster of a Shark. And I’m telling the boys that are busy buggering with the camera "Don’t worry about them under there. Look at this big one!" And this huge White Pointer came round the corner, come right up alongside this carcass, and then his tail comes round the corner, and like wow! He was a whopper. Just made me even grab hold of the hand rail. He was big. But there were smaller White Pointers too, swimming around underneath the carcass. That was only a few months ago, down over here. So yeah, when you see one, there’s always more than one there. 

CRAWFORD: We need to be thinking of the possibility that they could be travelling around in these social groups or packs. That reminds me - you had mentioned something before about the relationship between White Pointers and stranded Whales in shallow waters.

GAVAN: The Blackfish, or your Pilot Whales, that end up getting beached on these bays around here. I’ve popped in on a couple of different ones. The ones at Ringaringa, and the one down here at Doughboy. And you’re driving past these White Pointers sitting, waiting on the carcasses to float back out. They do it regular.

CRAWFORD: The White Pointers know there’s been a stranding ...

GAVAN: No. They’ll chase the Whales in there. They feed on them.

CRAWFORD: How do you know that the White Pointers have chased the Whales into the shallow water?

GAVAN: Because of the Shark bites that are on some of them, before they actually go on the shore.

CRAWFORD: Really?

GAVAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: How do you know that the bites were before they stranded though?

GAVAN: Well, the Sharks aren’t going to climb out onto the beach and bite them. Yeah, the odd one has the odd nip out of it. And you know that they’ve been herded in. It’s like a dog rounding up some sheep, and giving the odd one a nip. They’re not going to go jump onto the beach for nothing. They just haven’t got anywhere else to go. 

CRAWFORD: So, the White Pointers are waiting for the tide to bring the Whale carcasses back out?

GAVAN: Well they'll puff up in the sun, tide will be ebbing, floating them back out. It was just before they said that you weren't allowed to catch the White Pointers - Whitey from the Bluff, he went down and caught a big one after a stranding. He just went down, and set a Shark-net down at the entrance of Doughboy, and pulled out a big one. Ripped the jaw out - took it to Aussie for a while. Yeah, you get a Whale stranding and you want a White Pointer? Just go and set a setnet where they’re pushing them ashore.

CRAWFORD: In this case, roughly how many Whale carcasses were there at Doughboy? 

GAVAN: There was about 400 of them on the beach.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember what kind of Whales they were? Pilot Whales?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah. Pilot Whales in Doughboy. But the other ones have also got markings - like they’ve been herded as well. 

CRAWFORD: The other ones? the other species of Whales? 

GAVAN: The Whales through here - Ringaringa and Masons Bay, and the ones down at over there at Smoky Beach. See they would have been rounded in there by the Sharks. Otherwise, what were they doing there in the first place?

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back toshark-human interactions for a minute. Some people have talked about seeing White Pointers with hooks in their mouths. 

GAVAN: Try and catch one! That’s what I tell these silly buggers on the boat. When we do have one come by, they get the hook out, they throw it out, try and catch it, and I’ll go "There’s a couple of tonne of fish there. These hooks are only little hooks, what are you doing?" So eventually they’ll rust out. But there’s not many White Pointers caught on your drift lines and that, because their teeth are just so sharp, and it wouldn’t take much for them to cut through.

CRAWFORD: But in terms of recreational fisherman, big Shark fisherman in particular, is there a recreational Shark fishery that you know of around South Island? Or is that more of a North Island thing?

GAVAN: No, no, no. Most of the big Sharks you would catch out here would be White Pointers.

CRAWFORD: And if you hooked a big White Pointer, your chances of bringing that fish in are slim to none?

GAVAN: I would say absolutely nil. 

CRAWFORD: Because of its weight? Because of its muscle? 

GAVAN: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you reckon there's been a change in the abundance of White Pointers in this region over your lifetime? Or pretty much the same?

GAVAN: They were Endangered before all this information started coming in about them. And once they would become protected, people started noticing them more and more. And I believe they are on the increase.

CRAWFORD: Why do you say that?

GAVAN: Well, you take away some of the elements out of the food chain, and you’re left with gaps. And the biggest one has got to be the one that is looked after the most. There are people look at different things being taken out, but they don’t realize that it will be the White Pointer that will survive in the end - more than anything else. And it will survive because of its numbers. 

CRAWFORD: You figure the numbers are going up?

GAVAN: Oh, heck yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you figure that?

GAVAN: Because there’s more sightings now, like I say. And because they've been allowed to breed. They’ve been allowed to get all over it. Although they weren’t being targeted in the old days, that didn’t matter. I don’t know why they’re increasing. Just better conditions for them. I don’t know what’s happening down South. See, I’m only looking at what’s going on around here. They’ve got a huge mass of expanse out there. And there’s probably hundreds of White Pointers feeding around the Whales down with the Krillers, round Auckland Islands and that. I know there’s lots of Sharks at the Auckland Islands. 

CRAWFORD: All you’ve got to do is think about the attack that took place on Campbell Island in 1992.

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: That surprised the hell out of everybody - that the White Pointers were even down there. Ok. Let's talk about southern distribution of these White Pointers. You were talking before about it being a big ocean. It’s not just out east to the Chathams, or just northwest to the Great Barrier Reef, but south from New Zealand as well. What do you know, what have you heard or seen, about White Pointers south of Stewart Island?

GAVAN: Well, I knew that they were down south round the Auckland Islands, Campbell Island - that area, because of the diving on the General Grant. When I took over the Atlantis, it had been converted from a gold recovery vessel into a trawler. Prior to that, it had an A-frame on it - I believe one the first Shark cage built in New Zealand. And it was on its second trip down to the Auckland Islands, to get the gold that had fallen off the General Grant when it had capsized down there. These guys had made a trip down there before that, and brought back bits and pieces of the General Grant - which I know were of the General Grant, because I helped put some of the different things in a wall in a house to try and keep them out of sight, out of mind. And the reason they came back and cut their trip short, was the amount of White Pointers that were down there. While they were down hunting around on the bottom, in places they thought they might have found the wreck, they looked up and there were just Sharks everywhere. All coming to check out the bubbles coming up out of their dive gear. They didn’t like it. I know this from the divers, because I was yarning to them about it. So, they came back and got J.K. Stevenson's to build a great big round Shark cage, so they could go down with the bottles [scuba tanks]. It was a pretty clever set-up they made. With hydraulics and winches and that. They could put the bottles in it, and they were in a cage with mesh, and they were able to go out - and if too many Sharks would come around, they could zip back to the cage. They could go from being on the bottom - and they didn’t mind being down on the bottom - it was when they were coming up, they didn’t want to go through all these Sharks that were messing around. So yeah, they brought the Atlantis back. But on the second trip down, they were arrested by the Navy - probably halfway between the Snares and the Auckland Islands. They were towed back to Dunedin and put under arrest, because they were way down there illegally. And that was the end of it.

CRAWFORD: It wasn’t just that they were there - it was that they were salvaging?

GAVAN: They were salvaging illegally, yeah. So, they got arrested. They played cat and mouse with them down at Masons Bay. Took the boat through a passage that the Navy didn’t know about, and didn’t see them do it. When they went in to arrest them the next day, they found they’d gone. They were almost at the Auckland Islands by the time they caught up with them, because the guys on the boat thought "They won’t know where we’re going." But they did. They picked them up, and put them in the brig, and towed the boat back to Dunedin. And that was the end of the expedition. 

CRAWFORD: Do you know what ever happened to that Shark cage? 

GAVAN: Yeah. It was at Todd's Auctions - in the Invercargill auction rooms. It sat there for months. No one wanted to buy it. No one really had use for a Shark cage. It finally got auctioned off to some farmer who must have bought it for a bale holder. 

CRAWFORD: Any word that anybody ever tried again to salvage off Auckland Island - hunting for the General Grant?

GAVAN: Yeah, there has been lately. But I think they’re all barking up the wrong tree. They were looking at what you would think would be the logical thing, whereas it doesn’t always happen that way. When boats sink, they drop down - but not always where they actually started off. A few other shipwrecks have been the same. Instead of debris being strewn this way, they find that actually the debris went back that way because at the time, the tide might have been doing something else. The boys went down, took a note of the dates and all that, worked out what the tides would have been doing at that time of the sinking, because they come to either mid-day or mid-night. The drift of the current at the time underneath, not necessarily on top, because the currents can go one way on top, but down below it’s actually heading the other way. It’s understanding these things. The portholes that they brought back ... well, they’d come off a big ship. And the General Grant probably would have been the biggest one that had been down there, at the time it sunk. So yeah, I think they got onto the actual wreckage. But they had to have the Shark cage for safety to retrieve the gold - if they were to find any.

4. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - DIRECT EXPERIENCES

CRAWFORD: While you were being a kid out there surfing and Pāua diving, did you even see any White Pointers?

GAVAN: We saw the odd one. But it was from the shore. It wasn’t while we were out in the water. 

CRAWFORD: When you were on the shore, what would you see?

GAVAN: You'd see a shadow. 

CRAWFORD: How would you know it was a White Pointer then? You would know it’s a Shark ...

GAVAN: Well, the fin. The fin's a giveaway. Every Shark's got different shaped fins. The little Blue Sharks - they stick out about yea. But you know a White Pointer fin. It’s a good solid-looking thing. And it’s usually got a tail fin following it. 

CRAWFORD: Some people have said that it’s easy to confuse a Basking Shark with a White Pointer. 

GAVAN: Oh, no, no, no, no. I’ve run into a Basking Shark. We were on a boat when we run into a Basking Shark. Huge difference.

CRAWFORD: Give me an example of some things that are hugely different between them.

GAVAN: Well the shadow for a start. That goes with the Basking Shark - it’s enormous. The fins are a lot bigger. And it’s brown, not grey. The White Pointer’s fin is usually a pretty dark grey colour. 

CRAWFORD: What about the shape of the fins?

GAVAN: I’ve only ever seen the one Basking Shark. The one we hit with the boat. No, the Basking Shark - I think it's got a lot bigger fin than the White Pointer. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let’s move from you being in this region, to when you were up at Otago Peninsula - and your experience surfing there. Did you ever have any observations or encounters with White Pointers?

GAVAN: Yes. The first encounter was when I first went to Dunedin. I can’t remember what year it was. But we went out surfing at the Spit - Aramoana Spit. And where the carpark is, the surf wasn’t so good out in front, it was alright further along, where there’s a bit of a rock point. And we were surfing. While we were there, there was a group of skindivers. I presume they were skindivers, doing some exercise out in front of the carpark. And we heard them yelling and screaming, "Shark!" So, we came running along the beach to see what was going on.

CRAWFORD: You were on the shore at the time?

GAVAN: We were out surfing. Yeah, we were waiting on a wave. 

CRAWFORD: So, you came into shore ...

GAVAN: We came into shore. But by the time we got to where they were, the guy [Graham Hitt] was dead. And there was nothing. The Shark had bitten a whole piece clean out. So, it was not a very nice thing to see. And everyone was hysterical. And we were going "Oh my God … We were just out there when it happened." They were out in a line, and the guy out the end said "There’s a Shark!" Whatever it was had come up to him. And the guy in by the beach, he made a break for it. And that’s the one the Shark went after. Bang! He went in on a wave, and it hit him, made a big splash, and then it went back out again. And I believe he spat what he bit off - back out in the water. And then that was my lot for surfing for a couple of months at least. It took me a while to get over that. But then in the future ... St. Clair Beach, seeing those waves. I couldn’t help myself. Away I went back in again. Which goes to the second time. I was working and actually cut my thumb on a saw. So I got compo ...

CRAWFORD: Wait. When and where was this?

GAVAN: That was when I was working for Naylor Love, in Dunedin. I had a day off work with a cut thumb. I was just waxing the surfboard down, and my mate Butler said "Hey, there’s a Dolphin or something out there." And I looked up, just as it went Bang! Hit this guy just out in front of us. On the leg and the board. And he snapped the board in half, then ripped the end - the tail piece - away with him. And the guy was able to get the front piece and come in on the next wave. So, we rung the Shark bell. There was about four or five people out on the point at St. Clair, that the Shark had to have come around past, to come in and bite that guy that was just about to get out of the water. It’s quite amazing. They all crashed into each other trying to ... because the Shark had headed back out. And then as they’re coming in, they’re seeing this big thing coming out! They were all trying to dodge it. And yeah - poor guy. I think he got about 90 odd stitches on the back of his leg. Very, very lucky. 

CRAWFORD: Was that another hit, and then gone?

GAVAN: Yeah, well once it had bitten the board it took off. Before I moved to Dunedin, a friend of mine - Gary Barton - on Christmas day he got attacked at St. Clair. And it was a Great White because of the size of the teeth in his board. You could slide a 50-cent coin down each tooth hole, virtually. Yeah, that was at St. Clair. But it knocked him off his board first, and then went back and bit the board. So, he was real lucky. But he had already punched it in the eye. I think he reckoned he just about lost his fist in its eye socket. Because it came right up beside him and looked at him, before it came round and bit him. 

CRAWFORD: That was at St. Clair? 

GAVAN: That was at St. Clair too, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And that was in between the other two attacks?

GAVAN: Yes. That was after the first one I saw at Aramoana. Then Gary got bit. And then, yeah the other guy got attacked.

CRAWFORD: So, that's the at least two recorded attacks, plus maybe one which might or might not have been reported?

GAVAN: They had the board. There were photos. It was documented somewhere. 

CRAWFORD: But see, that leads me to the question about attacks that never get recorded. Where people see things, or they have interactions with White Pointers ... and maybe it’s nothing. I’ve heard of one guy that said that he was out on his board and this big White Pointer comes underneath and it was ...

GAVAN: Like that surfing competition not long ago, where that guy had that Shark come up beside him while they were filming the heat ...

CRAWFORD: Mick Fanning?

GAVAN: Yeah. How often have you got a camera watching that live. I mean, wow. 

CRAWFORD: But also, how many other incidents where people had seen White Pointers, but there wasn’t a hit. There wasn’t a bite. There wasn’t a broken board.

GAVAN: Yeah. Pāua diving ... like, ok you don’t have a problem with them around the boat. But if you're swimming for Pāuas out in the deeper water. A couple of times the boys have had a look while they were down under the boat, and seen the White Pointer on the other side, sort of heading their way - just before they got out of the water. That’s happened three times down over here at Ruggedy.

CRAWFORD: Hold on to that - we’ll get back down there in a second. But up at Dunedin, where there’s a lot of surfing, you personally had one near-miss and two hits - one of which was fatal. You as a surfer, hearing other stories from other surfers ...

GAVAN: I’ve seen a lot of Sharks, but never actually come into contact with them. Everyone's seen them. They sort of come prowling in, but they’re more inquisitive, looking around ...

CRAWFORD: Do you think White Pointer attacks on humans are mistaken identity?

GAVAN: Totally, yeah. They’re not looking for humans. It’s the effect they get from people, that when they’re splashing, when they’re carrying on - that would give them a reason to go and attack that individual - in preference to somebody who’s just calmly paddling along. 

CRAWFORD: You think that mistaken identity is a Seal? Maybe a Seal pup?

GAVAN: I believe a Seal or a Penguin. Yeah, anyone that makes that splashing noise. 

CRAWFORD: Do you have any reason to believe that White Pointers would under any circumstances hang around place where humans are common? Like beaches or surfing breaks?

GAVAN: Only if they were desperate for something to eat. But they would be more curious, I think, than to do it by hunger. I don’t know how they think. 

CRAWFORD: As a kid when you were surfing down here in the Oreti Beach-Riverton region, did you ever have any swim-bys?

GAVAN: No.

CRAWFORD: When you were older, surfing around the Otago Peninsula, did you have any swim-bys there?

GAVAN: Not that I saw. Only what we’ve heard. Other people have seen them nearby, and we’ve gotten out. 

CRAWFORD: So, it did happen. But it wasn’t necessarily very common?

GAVAN: No. 

CRAWFORD: Have you ever been on a board when you saw a White Pointer just kind of swim by you?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah. It just keeps going ...

CRAWFORD: Would you get out of the water, just having seen one?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Where have you been, out on a surfboard, where you’ve had a swim-by?

GAVAN: Blue Cliffs is one. And Oreti Beach. 

CRAWFORD: And in both cases it was just an animal swimming by?

GAVAN: It was just a big animal swimming by.

CRAWFORD: It didn’t deviate much?

GAVAN: Nah. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. As a Pāua diver - have you ever seen a White Pointer?

GAVAN: Yes. Once, I believe it was a White Pointer. I can’t possibly identify it because it was quite a way off.

CRAWFORD: Were you on board a boat?

GAVAN: I was underwater. I was down. I think it was just a big fish coming to be nosey. 

CRAWFORD: [Discussion about project classification levels for human encounters with White Pointers: Level 1-Observation, Level 2-Swim-By, Level 3-Interest, Level 4-Intense]

GAVAN: That’s happened a couple, three times.  

CRAWFORD: What has?

GAVAN: Swim-bys, yeah.

CRAWFORD: In any of those situations, did you ever have any kind of deviations - where the fish started to behave a little different? 

GAVAN: No. I was backing off very quietly, back into the rocks. And I've also been Crayfish diving at the times these have happened. I had bottles on.

CRAWFORD: When you were Crayfish diving, another swim-by?

GAVAN: Yeah. It was basically when I was going over the ledges to have a look down the sides of these places for Crayfish ...

CRAWFORD: Where were you roughly?

GAVAN: One of them was up in Dusky Sound. One in Chalky Sound there. And one over here at Stewart Island. 

CRAWFORD: Crayfish diving there as well? 

GAVAN: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And in each of these three cases you saw White Pointers while you were scubadiving for Crayfish?

GAVAN: Yeah - we’ll say 'bigger than usual Sharks go past.' 

CRAWFORD: You can’t be sure that they were White Pointers? They were just biggish Sharks?

GAVAN: The visibility for those areas is a long way. You can see for…

CRAWFORD: 100 feet?

GAVAN: Oh easy, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But in all three instances, at Stewart Island, and the two sites off Fiordland, you thought these were swim-bys?

GAVAN: They were swim-bys. They must have come in, heard me swimming around there, or something. I do believe they knew I was there, because they sort of swum along, and carried on going. You get that feeling. 

CRAWFORD: For all the time that you spent on commercial boats, did you ever have White Pointers that behaved in unusual or extreme ways? You know - coming in, banging around, biting the boat, doing any unusual stuff?

GAVAN: Oh, swimming around, some of them have shows they put on. You chuck them out a lump of fish or something, and they come up and do some you know, they put on a wee bit of a show for you, if you want them to. You get one on a hook, and he gets up and gets a bit pissed off. But no, the ones that I’ve seen are just basically cruising around, checking you out. They’re not swimming and looking for something to eat. Their diet, I’m not sure ... it must be Squid and most of the other big fish that they eat. But like I say, they’d have to have more than one to be able to find them in the first place, and then to be able to round them up in the second place. And they’d have to follow them. They'd have to know the patterns to all the other things that they feed on. 

CRAWFORD: You had mentioned before that you'd caught some White Pointers accidentally in your setnets. Tell me about those, please.

GAVAN: The first one we caught, we actually had to tow into Riverton, and get a crane to come and lift the bloody thing out and put it on a trailer. Then when we found out that you weren’t allowed to sell the stuff, had to take it to the tip. What a wasted effort. What a waste of money. 

CRAWFORD: You had to dump the carcass it at the garbage tip?

GAVAN: Yeah. All that effort and we couldn’t do anything with it anyway. The one we pulled up, we did get the jaw off that. The one we took into town - this is a tooth out of it. 

CRAWFORD: That was one caught in a setnet?

GAVAN: This was one of the first ones I caught in a setnet. 

CRAWFORD: The one you’ve got a picture of on the Argus?

GAVAN: Yeah. That one there we sent the jaw away to get sold. And the person that it got sent to, I don’t know - we got ripped off big time. But the meat we sold to a fish shop after bleeding it. Made beautiful White fillets. We cut them in strips about this long. The fish shop that we sold them to wanted more, they wanted the White flesh. People kept coming back for more. 

CRAWFORD: And how many times have you brought in White Pointers in your setnets? 

GAVAN: Three. And I've been with a couple of others that have brought them in as well. They’ve all been caught in the setnets. 

CRAWFORD: Where?

GAVAN: Oreti Beach. Over here at the Escape Reef. Where was the other one? Over in Masons Bay we caught one. 

CRAWFORD: They were all dead when you got them?

GAVAN: Well, they were dead when we lifted the net.

CRAWFORD: That's what I meant. And you had to tow one in?

GAVAN: It was the earlier one, because I was on a smaller boat. We towed that in. Just wrapped its tail around, and started puttering in. The one after that, we were down at Masons Bay and we could only get half of it onboard. We gutted it. Then we got it on board, pulled it in. 

CRAWFORD: For the three White Pointers that you got in your setnets, I’m guessing that you gutted them to find out what they'd been eating?

GAVAN: Oh yeah, definitely. 

CRAWFORD: And what did you find? 

GAVAN: It was just fish. 

CRAWFORD: Blue Cod? Groper?

GAVAN: Flounder and Gropers, yeah. That’s how I know that they feed on the Gropers. There were quite a few Hāpuka, Groper, in them. The big girl that we got, she never had any food in her - hardly at all. That’s why we thought "Well, she was either hungry, or just had got rid of her babies." Because she was all real flabby you know? It must have just gotten rid of her babies.

CRAWFORD: And where did you catch that female?

GAVAN: That was at Oreti Beach as well.

CRAWFORD: What’s the smallest White Pointer you’ve either seen or heard about?

GAVAN: We had one onboard the boat, and it was probably about seven-foot long. 

CRAWFORD: Where did you catch it? Where was the boat at the time?

GAVAN: We were down here off Lords River, Stewart Island. And it was just out the mouth of the river. In reasonably deep water. Pulled this baby White Pointer aboard.

CRAWFORD: This was out of the setnet?

GAVAN: No. This was on a line. Couldn’t believe our eyes. 

CRAWFORD: Where else have you seen or heard about the little ones?

GAVAN: Oreti Beach. Picked a few up in the gillnets. 

CRAWFORD: Same size? Smaller? Bigger?

GAVAN: Well six, seven foot long, yeah. They’re a good-sized fish but ...

CRAWFORD: But they’re a good-sized fish when they come out as newborns too.

GAVAN: Oh yeah, yeah. Well they looked like they were fairly ... It was what this one did, when it came onboard the boat - it just went completely stiff. Banana-shaped on board.

CRAWFORD: This was the first one - off Stewart Island?

GAVAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sort of like it had freaked out. It didn’t flap its tail or anything.

CRAWFORD: The ones at Oreti Beach, were those over sandy bottom?

GAVAN: That's all sandy bottom, yeah. All through Foveaux Strait, it’s sandy - except for where the reef goes through. But that’s only a narrow strip of rocks. 

CRAWFORD: Have you heard of anybody who has seen what they thought was a female White Pointer giving birth?

GAVAN: No. But like I said, I believe one of the White Pointers that we got in the net one time was one that had just given birth. 

CRAWFORD: And specifically why do you believe that?

GAVAN: Because it was so skinny. And its guts were all flab. 

CRAWFORD: Way skinnier than any other female?

GAVAN: Yeah it was a female. 

CRAWFORD: And where did you catch that one?

GAVAN: Oreti Beach.

CRAWFORD: Ok. 

GAVAN: Whereas that one [in a photo], that one was a male. In a completely different shape and size. It was full. 

CRAWFORD: You mentioned something the other day about packs of White Pointers?

GAVAN: When I first figured that they hunted in packs, was when I was working on the oil rig out off Codfish.

CRAWFORD: Deep water?

GAVAN: Deep water. We had the hole down, we were just circulating this morning. Beautiful slick. I was just dreaming away, and I was looking at this fin floating around just off the rig. And I thought it was two fins, and I thought "There’s a couple of Sharks down there." But it wasn’t, it was one Shark. And then we counted them. By within about an hour, there was - I can’t remember, 12 or 15 White Pointers all around the rig. And they went from being about 12-foot to about 25-foot in length. Most of them were about 15-foot length, I suppose. And they were there for ages. They were there for half a day. To the point that the American dive crew, when they saw them, they verified that they were White Pointers, Great Whites. They went and chucked their jobs in, because it wasn’t written in the contract that these fish were here - let alone in that quantity.

CRAWFORD: The dive crew had already shipped down, were working on the rig, then the Sharks came around?

GAVAN: And they packed their bags. "We’re off." So, we had to wait for two weeks for a team from England to come. They'd been working in the North Sea. We had to wait on that crew to arrive before we could carry on drilling, because you had to have a dive crew on board. 

CRAWFORD: Was it the case that British crew, nobody told them about the White Pointers, they just brought them in?

GAVAN: They just reckoned that they would take their chances. I think they were offered a pretty good dollar for it. But yeah, for ages we watched these huge fish working together, came around the rig ...

CRAWFORD: How do you know they were working together? 

GAVAN: Well, you could see they were all communicating. They would be swimming, and then they would all move at once. And they would come right round the rig, and then they would all come back round again. One of the tool pushers wanted a harpoon made up - so we could harpoon one, and haul it up with the crane. But we couldn’t tempt them in close enough to get a harpoon into one. But they were there for ages. Back then we never had cameras or anything onboard, otherwise it would have been beautiful photos of them. But it happened twice. It was the second time, it was a couple of months later. Same conditions, oily slick ...

CRAWFORD: Oily slick. Oil from the rig?

GAVAN: No, no, no. Slick just meaning beautiful calm. Calm water, grey sky. And out of nowhere, there was eight of them this time. And they all came up, one after another. 

CRAWFORD: Were they below the surface? Were they breaking the surface?

GAVAN: They were breaking the surface, yeah.

CRAWFORD: They weren’t behaving in any type of anxious or edgy way? 

GAVAN: No. Slowly cruising around. The odd one would come in, and then they would go back out, and have a wee bit of a congregate, and move back around. 'Unbelievable' - that's the word. I went "Woooah." 

CRAWFORD: Out at the rig, did you ever see White Pointers just as individuals? Or when you saw them, you saw a bunch?

GAVAN: No, no. I saw a bunch each time, yeah. But when we were fishing for Cod, we'd get a White Pointer come and visit. Then I'd wonder if there was another one around. And there would be another one, a bit further away. That's when we really clicked it. They’re not solitary fish at all - they do move around in pairs and three’s and bunches. It sort of made it easier to figure - with Squid and that, to round up a ball of Squid, to have a feed from, that would be easier than trying to swim through a shoal to get one. Like the Whales do. So, fish being fish, they probably all do the same thing. 

CRAWFORD: This thinking about pack behaviour from the White Pointers - was that stuff that other commercial guys had thought of as well, or was this…

GAVAN: No, no. This is just me, from what I’ve seen. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Well, sir - thank you so much for taking the time with me. I greatly appreciate it.

GAVAN: There’s a wee story I’ve still got to tell you. I had a couple of mates that were Pāua diving, Kina diving over at the Island. 

CRAWFORD: Stewart Island?

GAVAN: Yeah. Bob was the guy on the outside, he went down to fairly deep, and popped back up, and there was a White Pointer there. He went to brush it aside, and it come past, and bit both his hands off. He started looking around for Bill, and when he found him he said "Bill! There’s a Shark! Swim!" Bill looked around, headed off, paddle, paddle, and the Shark bit his bloody flippers off! Just snapped his feet clean off at the ankles. So, they had a right dilemma there. Bill told Bob, "Bob, you get on my back, and I’ll use my arms to swim. You've got good legs, you can kick." So, off they went, and they got ashore. Bill says "Geez, I’m feeling [screwed] Bob." And Bob said "Well, it was the only way I could hang on." ... Yeah, take it as you want. 

CRAWFORD: That was a gewd one. Thank you.

Copyright © 2019 Colin Gavan and Steve Crawford