Gordon Leask

YOB: 1960
Experience: Commercial Fisherman, Fishing Tour Operator
Regions: Stewart Island, Foveaux Strait, Fiordland
Interview Location: Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island, NZ
Interview Date: 10/11 December 2015
Post Date: 04 July 2021; Copyright © 2021 Gordon Leask and Steve Crawford

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: I think you said you were born in Bluff?

LEASK: Born in Bluff, but here a week later.

CRAWFORD: What year?

LEASK: 1960.

CRAWFORD: When you said 'here a week later', 'here' meaning ...

LEASK: Stewart Island. Leask Bay.

CRAWFORD: Leask Bay is on the eastern shore of Halfmoon Bay. It's the one with a boat moored there? 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: A red and white boat - is that yours?

LEASK: That’s mine, one of them. Yeah, one of them.

CRAWFORD: Alright, so we’ll start with you as a kid, at home in Leask Bay?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: What was the first memory that you have of the Bay? The ocean in general? What was the first lasting memory that you have of the water?

LEASK: I always sailed on boats. Father was a fisherman, so I was always out in boats, always having picnics.

CRAWFORD: What kind of fisherman was your Dad?

LEASK: Blue Cod and Crayfish. And Pāuas.

CRAWFORD: So, depending on the season ...

LEASK: Depending on the season, they used to go Crayfishing until about Christmas. And Codding after Christmas.

CRAWFORD: As a kid, you’d go out on the boats with him?

LEASK: Yes. As much as I can.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember him or other family telling you, roughly how old you were when you started going out on the boats?

LEASK: I fell off one of his boats when I was two years old.

CRAWFORD: When you were two?

LEASK: There are photographs of me as a baby on his boats. I fell off one of them when I was two.

CRAWFORD: Obviously when you’re that young, you’re around the water - but not necessarily doing things. Or not necessarily observing things in the same kind of way as when you're older. When was the first time you remember spending time doing activities like swimming, snorkelling, or collecting?

LEASK: Well, I don’t really snorkel. When we were at school, we had swimming lessons. But we were always playing in the water, also from when I was two probably. Yeah, we were always allowed to go on boats and dinghies.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In terms of Halfmoon Bay, is that where you spent most of your time around the water? Or would family trips take you outside of the Bay to other parts of Stewart Island?

LEASK: Oh, all over the place.

CRAWFORD: Always on the go?

LEASK: Yeah, through to Mason's. Family had [sheep??] and stuff throughout Mason’s. So we used to go through there at Christmas and at other times. Just even small bits.

CRAWFORD: When you went to Mason's, you did the same kinds of things in terms of swimming or whatever, wherever you went?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let’s focus on swimming for a bit. You said you took swimming lessons when you were a kid?

LEASK: When we were at school, we had swimming lessons at the beaches. We used to go to the beaches, and we would have our swimming lessons there in the summertime. That was one of the main ones.

CRAWFORD: Sometimes people here talk about the 'beaches', and I’m not yet sure which ones they mean.

LEASK: Well, Bathing Beach is just the first one around past .. it's our main one. It’s the first one by Mill Creek.

CRAWFORD: Is that the one where there are ropes hanging from trees? When you walk up, on your way out to Ackers Point? 

LEASK: No, no. On the way to Horseshoe. On this side, on the left-hand side.

CRAWFORD: Oh, ok. So, there’s a rock point, and then there’s a beach ...

LEASK: There’s a beach, and then there’s a creek.

CRAWFORD: Right. I saw people when I was here in October. I saw two kids and a couple of adults, and they had big nets. Was that for whitebait maybe?

LEASK: Probably whitebait, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok, I think I know the place then.

LEASK: Mill Creek.

CRAWFORD: And there’s a little bridge?

LEASK: Yeah. But back around the other way, there's quite a steeper beach and a nicer beach. We used to go swimming there. A little steeper. There was a big rock up on top we used to sit on. Whoever was the Shark Warden.

CRAWFORD: That’s where swimming classes were?

LEASK: We had it there. If it was blowing easterly, we’d go over up to Paterson Inlet, to Golden Bay. Or others.

CRAWFORD: So, a variety of beaches - depending on the conditions?

LEASK: Yeah, the teacher just picked one along there, in the summertime. Bathing Beach was probably the most common.

CRAWFORD: Those beaches were where the swimming instruction took place, but they were also the most commonly used for recreational swimming?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. They would have been.

CRAWFORD: Ok. We’ll talk about Sharks specifically later on, but you mentioned something during swimming classes?

LEASK: We always had someone sitting up on the rocks as a Shark Warden.

CRAWFORD: A Shark Warden?

LEASK: Yeah. You had a whistle around your neck, and you had to keep an eye out for a Shark. They wouldn’t have the swimming down there unless they had someone watching.

CRAWFORD: That was always the case when you were taking lessons as a kid?

LEASK: Always. Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Would that have been for previous generations too?

LEASK: Well, there was Sharks used to come in Bathing Beach. We didn’t do it in Golden Bay. But Bathing Beach is right at the river, a lot of Skates and fish like that. So, Sharks were quite often seen at Bathing Beach.

CRAWFORD: But not so much at which other beaches?

LEASK: Well, [Ronica's Beach??]. And only if boats were cleaning, and dumping their offal, the Sharks would come around.

CRAWFORD: Obviously, there was a lot going on here. We’ll talk about that stuff later. Right now, we’re just trying to naturally block off periods of time in your history. So, from your earliest memories ...

LEASK: One of the biggest things we done at school was raising money for the swimming pool, because when all the new people arrived in about 1965 or 1966 ... it was Joe Cave, he caught three big Sharks round off Bathing Beach. And they had a big fundraiser to make a swimming pool, so we didn't have to swim at the beach. After 1968, was when the Lions Club really got behind building the swimming pool. And that was also when our population went from 300 up to 600, Stewart Island's population increased by lots. We had a lot of new people, a lot of new Crayfish boats - we went up to about 60.

CRAWFORD: So, the swimming pool getting built - that was all after Dunedin attacks?

LEASK: After that, our publican rode all the way up to North Island and back down [with a cutout of a Shark??]

CRAWFORD: There again, you see how the conversations here just naturally gravitate towards the Sharks?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: I’m trying to keep focus on your periods of time, and the different kinds of coastal activities you were doing through those years. So, from your earliest memory, you were out on the boats with your Dad and family? And as a young lad, you were out swimming from a very early age?

LEASK: Well, rowing more than swimming. I was quite keen on rowing and sailing. Since a very small boy - three years old - I could row. But where we lived, we got five beaches, very handy. Five minutes from where we lived. Any one of them were swimming beaches.

CRAWFORD: Right. How old did you say, when you started rowing dinghies?

LEASK: Well, probably from when I was about two. Dad just threw us right on. He would tie a rope on the dinghies, and we would go row around off the Bay.

CRAWFORD: At what age did you have the kind of independence where you could go out on your own?

LEASK: Probably about five.

CRAWFORD: From the age of five? Did you have your own dinghy, or access whenever you wanted?

LEASK: Pretty much access.

CRAWFORD: Ok. You said rowing, but also sailing? When did you learn how to sail?

LEASK: Oh, didn’t learn properly for years. But we used to have a clinker dinghy, and just had one sail on it. We could come up the Bay.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Was that pretty much young Gordon for a while?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. Got a yacht when I was about eighteen.

CRAWFORD: See, that’s one of those things. That’s a natural marker, because there are different activities before and after. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You talked about collecting. From the age of five onward, what kind of collecting were you doing?

LEASK: Well, I was always picking up Mussels and Rock Oysters. And when we’d go out camping, we'd eat [catsalls??], we’d eat all sorts of Limpets and Pāuas. Getting Pāuas was quite a big thing. Pāuas were pretty plentiful. Normally I’d be off with a Grandpa or someone like that, older Brothers, older Sister, plenty of Cousins around. At the time, there was about 600 people at Stewart Island. So, there was lots of kids around there, groups of kids.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In terms of fishing - other than shellfish or nearshore collecting - from the time that you were five, were you doing any fishing for fun, or fishing for food?

LEASK: We used to go out [blade??], and they'd be out fishing. Especially when you’re [scarving??]. We used to get paid for any Cod we caught. As a wee fella, it was worthwhile. It was more than what we were getting for pocket money.

CRAWFORD: When you say 'wee fella', this was still in that five to ten year old period?

LEASK: No. Before I went to school, I was going out with Dad. Went to school, I was a bit of a nuisance. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: Ok, but I’m trying to peg the age category, five to ten - were you out helping him?

LEASK: Probably getting paid from five to ten. Getting money from five to ten. Before that, I would’ve been just a nuisance probably.

CRAWFORD: In terms of the places where your Dad would have been fishing ... was he a day-fisherman, based out of Halfmoon Bay?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: So, what kind of region of Stewart Island was he fishing?

LEASK: Mostly around Bench Island, and around these Islands out here. Most of this area. He used to fish up to ... well, up to Smoky sometimes. And down to Lords River. But ninety percent of his fishing would have been out around here.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, the northeast side of the Island, with the majority of it taking place ...

LEASK: Yeah. Ninety percent of it out around the Islands.

CRAWFORD: Did he do any fishing in Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: Lots of fishing in Paterson's Inlet. Windy days, they used to call him 'Hurricane Johnny' because he’d go out every day. But he’d go fishing up the Inlet, go fishing other places when the wind was blowing.

CRAWFORD: When he fished in Paterson Inlet - the same kind of gear, also looking for Blue Cod there? Or did he change?

LEASK: Well, he started off lining, and then later on, he sort of wasn’t. Until I was probably about ten or something, the first time he got Codpots. We started with elven or twelve - it was the first time that they got Codpots.

CRAWFORD: That’s important. For the time that you were five to twelve, so ’65 to ’72 or so, you were helping him. And it was mostly handlining then?

LEASK: It was mostly handlining, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alright. And it was this region - the northeast side of the Island, with emphasis on the Titi Islands. But also depending on the conditions, in Paterson Inlet.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Not only the switch to Codpots, but also you being twelve years old, that's different than being five. There are other activities you could be involved in. From the time that you were twelve onward, what were your experiences on and around the water? Were you mostly fishing?

LEASK: Yeah, I was. I bought an outboard when I was about eleven. A 5-horse outboard. We had a few Craypots. At that stage, we were allowed to have Craypots.

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts would you go?

LEASK: Just around the Bay itself.

CRAWFORD: So, Halfmoon Bay. You didn’t go outside of Halfmoon Bay?

LEASK: Leask Bay Point here, along that. Our main piece. Possuming as well, but Crayfish tails ... we caught a few Crayfish. We were only catching three or four, whatever. But we could sell them down at the Fish Shed.

CRAWFORD: How big was your boat?

LEASK: Oh, it was only 10-foot, 12-foot at the biggest.

CRAWFORD: Was that your number one activity during those years? Or were you also rowing or sailing for fun at this time?

LEASK: Well, once I got the outboard, I didn’t do a lot of rowing. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: You were a powerboat guy from there on?

LEASK: Just about, yeah. No, we still had some clinker boats, clinker dinghies and the big wooden dinghies.

CRAWFORD: I think what I’m trying to get at is, in terms of your time on the water during you early teen years, what percentage of it was fishing versus doing other things? Like playing around, or sight-seeing, or getting from A to B?

LEASK: We used to go camping a lot in the weekends. We’d take after him out somewhere, and we’d go camping.

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts did you go camping?

LEASK: Oh, all over the Inlet, to Kaipipi ...

CRAWFORD: All around Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: Yeah, around Paterson's Inlet.

CRAWFORD: All the way over to Big Glory? Past the Neck?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We camped all over, when we were young, yeah. [Papatoe??] was another place, that’s by the Old Neck. Just depending on the weather. Grandpa had a dinghy at Deep Bay. We would take it, and go camping in it. That was quite a big clinker dinghy. Used to go Possuming - Possums were quite a big part of our pocket money. We didn't actually get much pocket money. We had to earn it.

CRAWFORD: For that period, from eleven or twelve on, when you had your outboard, what was the split between fishing and camping or other activities? Was it 50:50? Or most of the time spent fishing?

LEASK: After school, we'd go out and lift the Craypots. Quite often, we'd have to catch our bait first. Just for six or eight wee Craypots. 

CRAWFORD: So, that was a daily activity, after school. Probably on the weekends, you were fishing too? Or was that when you would go camping?

LEASK: Quite often, the weekends we'd go away.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In general - in terms of the split - how much of the time that you were on the water were you fishing?

LEASK: Probably 30 or 40 percent, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And if it was 40 percent, what was the other 60?

LEASK: Exploring. Beach-timing. [chuckles] Probably less than 30 percent, when you think about it. We used to pick up Crayfish pots and stuff, we could sell them as well. So, beach-timing was a big part of it.

CRAWFORD: Ok. During those years, did you spend time in Horseshoe Bay as well?

LEASK: Yeah, we did. 

CRAWFORD: Anything further northwest, out along this coastline?

LEASK: Well, when Dad was fishing up there, or Pāua diving, or something like that, we'd quite often go ashore and run around.

CRAWFORD: So, if you were with your Dad, you'd go further?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: When it was you, in your boat, were you allowed to go over to the Titi Islands?

LEASK: No, no. Had to stay. And we'd have to tell them where we were going. You'd get told off if you didn't tell them where you were going.

CRAWFORD: Right. Ok. So, that's you at about eleven or twelve years ...

LEASK: I went to high school when I was twelve or thirteen.

CRAWFORD: When you got to your teen years, when you went out with your Dad at that age, what were the regions typically? Any overniters with him, or anything like that?

LEASK: Only one I remember going on. We didn't have a freezer.

CRAWFORD: So, you had to get your fish back that day?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Did you spend any significant amount of time during your teen years, around the other side of the Island?

LEASK: Spent a lot of time at Mason's. One Uncle had just sold this farm here. And my Great-Uncle had a farm down this end. 

CRAWFORD: Your family had some Sheep farms over at Mason's Bay. 

LEASK: Yeah. Just small farms.

CRAWFORD: So, you would shuttle over there?

LEASK: Normally, we'd go up the Freshwater River, and then walk. Or take horses and carts.

CRAWFORD: Sometimes you'd get to Mason's overland, rather than boating around past Codfish?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: But when you were there, did you spend any significant time around the water? Or were you mostly tending Sheep?

LEASK: Oh, no. Spent a lot of time down [the Gutter??] - a wee place down there. Just off the rocks, we'd get Crayfish and Pāua. 

CRAWFORD: So, you were fishing on the southwest side of the Island, when you were over there?

LEASK: Yeah. We'd get fish for food. And if the tides were low, we'd get Pāuas. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of fishing?

LEASK: Oh, just off the rocks. Normally we'd get Blue Cod and Trumpeter. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of gear?

LEASK: Just handlines. Just throwing them out.

CRAWFORD: As a teenager, how often would you have gone over to Mason Bay? Roughly?

LEASK: Well, I worked for [Joe Carson??] around there, when I was about fourteen. During Christmas holidays, we fished around here - Crayfishing. Went every six weeks. Joe was staying in the [Kilgroy House??]. Joe and [Alfie??]. And I was going out fishing with them whenever. We'd fish just down along this ... around Mason's Islands, and down towards Doughboy, was where he fished.

CRAWFORD: You'd be gone for a few weeks anyways?

LEASK: I went over there for the whole Christmas holidays. I think I might have gone over just straight after Boxing Day, or something like that. That was the first job I had. That was when I was starting to get properly commercial. 

CRAWFORD: And that's what I want to get to. That's a natural breakpoint.

LEASK: That's a breakpoint.

CRAWFORD: When did you start working, fulltime, as a fisherman?

LEASK: When I was fifteen.

CRAWFORD: Working for somebody else? Or working for yourself?

LEASK: I went up the coast with an Uncle. But for a start, I went up to Dusky Sound.

CRAWFORD: Up in Fiordland?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: What was your Uncle's name?

LEASK: {Bruce Nielsen??].

CRAWFORD: What kind of a vessel did he have?

LEASK: He had the [Mystral Armor??], a steel 40-foot boat. It's tied up at the inside wharf at the moment, actually. We went up and started at Dusky. Ended up fishing around Chalky. 

CRAWFORD: You were fifteen years old, this was roughly 1975?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Obviously no longer dayfishing. How long were you gone for?

LEASK: This trip, I think it was five weeks.

CRAWFORD: Multiple weeks. Was it always Fiordland?

LEASK: Well, we were Crayfishing. So, we had Craypots up there. You pick your pots up and work. We started at Dusky, and then shifted down to Chalky.

CRAWFORD: What time of year was this? The Crayfishing season?

LEASK: Start June, July. We used to Crayfish right through to March.

CRAWFORD: Ok. You'd be up to Fiordland for five or six weeks at a time. Come back with your catch. Now, this was before ...

LEASK: Freezing tails. This wasn't whole Crayfish.

CRAWFORD: When did that happen - the switch from frozen?

LEASK: It was the market that changed. We were selling all our tails - they were going to America. Live fish were all going to Japan, originally. Japan started it. That would have been '80-something, maybe '84.

CRAWFORD: Back then, when the Crayfishing season was on - that was your primary target?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And then you would do other things, other times of the year?

LEASK: Well, Bruce was mostly Crayfishing.

CRAWFORD: And most of that was Fiordland?

LEASK: Well, the first year. I went working with him for another year, and we went down to Broad Bay. Might've been two years after that. I went and fished with my Father, after we finished in March or April. Probably done three months Codding with him. Crayfishing with [Norm McClellan??]. Didn't last very long there. And then I went back with Bruce, and worked down at Broad Bay.

CRAWFORD: When you talk about 'Codding' - was this handlining still? Or had the switch been made to potting?

LEASK: They had moved to pots, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Was Crayfishing in Fiordland a one-off? Or did you have experience for a stretch of five years? Ten years?

LEASK: Different times, I've gone back up and I've run a boat between Dusky and Breaksea. That was me later on. But I crewed with a whole bunch of people, yeah.

CRAWFORD: You said something before about getting a sailboat at some point in time. I didn't want to skip over that.

LEASK: Oh, that was later on too. We just bought an 18-foot yacht. That was when New Zealand was going for the America's Cup the first time.

CRAWFORD: What year was that?

LEASK: Oh, I'm just trying to think of the kids. Be about 25 years ago, anyway.

CRAWFORD: You and I are both 55, so you were mid- to late-twenties at that point. Were you working for yourself then? Or crewing for other people?

LEASK: No, I was still crewing for other people then.

CRAWFORD: In general, you were doing a variety of different things, for a variety of different people?

LEASK: Mostly Crayfishing.

CRAWFORD: Some of that in Fiordland ...

LEASK: It ended up mostly southern Stewart Island. Some Stewart Island, Snares Islands. I spent five years down the Snares.

CRAWFORD: When did that shift take place? Roughly how old were you, when you started spending more time down toward the southern end of Stewart Island?

LEASK: Oh, sixteen or seventeen. But we would still, after Christmas, go back up to Dusky sometimes. Yeah, Fiordland was still ... everyone would get a trip up there, and we took it. It was a favourite area.

CRAWFORD: That kind of pattern, as you go through your late teen years, early twenties - it's variable year to year, depends on who you're working for, conditions, and all sorts of things?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: What was the next major change in your experience? Was it you getting your own boat - that kind of thing?

LEASK: Yeah. Getting my Skipper's ticket, probably.

CRAWFORD: When did you get your ticket? Roughly?

LEASK: '82 or something.

CRAWFORD: Did you get a boat of your own, when you got your Skipper's ticket?

LEASK: I worked boats for people for quite a wee while.

CRAWFORD: Ok. You were the Skipper on somebody else's boat - but it was still you running that vessel?

LEASK: I was Skippering the boats, yeah.

CRAWFORD: That was your mid-20's?

LEASK: 23, 24.

CRAWFORD: When you started Skippering, what size of boat were you working?

LEASK: Oh, I started off with the one I bought now, 38-foot. Went to a few dayboats for a start. Then we had a faster 45-foot we worked up at Preservation. Yeah, mostly around the 40-foot boats.

CRAWFORD: When you made the shift, and you were Skippering - was the pattern of your fishing still the same? Were you still Crayfishing up in Fiordland?

LEASK: Well, the second or third year I was fishing, we went up and worked out of Preservation. The south shore. I did do quite a bit of fishing along that shore too, with different people.

CRAWFORD: What makes that southwest shore of South Island such good fishing? Either good for the Crayfish, or good for the Crayfishing?

LEASK: I think the westerly currents bring a lot of food through Foveaux Strait. We get a lot of nor'west, a lot of it brings food. The Crayfish migrate - they come down from the east coast, they come around Stewart Island ...

CRAWFORD: They don't necessarily come through Foveaux Strait?

LEASK: Not necessary, no. Normally, they seem to go past. Fish have been tagged up the east coast, they're normally caught back down. And sometimes around here too, but mostly around here. Some have been tagged up around Dunedin, and have gone right up the Sounds.

CRAWFORD: Because I don't know much about Crayfish, how long would it take them to march from Otago Peninsula, round Stewart Island, over to the south end of Fiordland?

LEASK: Oh, it'd be three or four years. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: It's a longer-term thing.

LEASK: The fish sort of seem to move in waves. 

CRAWFORD: And the Crayfishermen keep a close eye on whether the waves are going to make for a strong year or a weak year? Do you have those kinds of variations, year to year?

LEASK: Yeah, but normally you're committed anyway. Whether it's a bad year or a good year, you're committed to doing it anyways.

CRAWFORD: Right. From your Skipper's ticket, and running other peoples' vessels ... at some point there would be the next natural breakpoint in your experience. Different regions, different gear, maybe a boat of your own. What's next in your history?

LEASK: I had a couple of years, I went Tuna fishing. Moving up, and worked out of Greymouth and Westport. On other boats. One of them was a boat I had been Crayfishing, and we took it up Tunaing.

CRAWFORD: Tuna fishing grounds up here, off the northwest of South Island?

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Those Tuna trips - would they have been for a couple months at a time?

LEASK: Two or three months, yeah. Stayed up too long, each time. [chuckles] Lots of drinking. They were very heavy drinkers.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, how many times did you go Tunaing?

LEASK: Just the two years.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What was next?

LEASK: After I got married, I gave up fishing for just a wee while. We had a daughter. And then I started fishing back out here, and I bought a boat. That was probably the next thing.

CRAWFORD: Ok. When was that gap? Roughly?

LEASK: She's 24 now. It would have been 22 or 23 years ago when I bought the boat.

CRAWFORD: Early '90s?

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Then, when you came back into fishing early to mid-'90s, you were fishing a boat of your own?

LEASK: Yeah. I went fishing on this boat, and I was quite happy. The crew I was working with - him and his Wife split up. I bought the boat, and bought meself a job. 

CRAWFORD: You already had your Skipper's ticket from before. To a certain extent you had a bit more freedom, because if somebody else wanted you to fish their vessel, even though you were the Skipper ... But when it's your own boat, it's completely up to you. 

LEASK: Yeah, but this type of boat - it didn't have a freezer. She was a dayboat, anyways. I did go on overnight trips. I used to fish down at Port Adventure. Worked out on the Chatham Islands.

CRAWFORD: What were you doing out at the Chathams?

LEASK: Scampi fishing. We'd go down to the Auckland Islands, and get our purse seining done there. Might've been two months or so.

CRAWFORD: It was a prolonged trip, once?

LEASK: It was two trips, but it was back-to-back trips. Just a one off.

CRAWFORD: When was this?

LEASK: Well, I still had the Gypsy - my first boat - I still had it. I was pretty good friends with one of the Scampi-boat Skippers, so I went away for a trip as a crewmate. Auckland Islands, for a start. And even further south. Couple hundred miles further south. And then out to the Chatman Islands. 

CRAWFORD: How long, roughly, around the Aucklands?

LEASK: Three weeks, four weeks. 

CRAWFORD: And over at the Chathams?

LEASK: About the same. About two months, it took.

CRAWFORD: Did you spend any time around the Otago Peninsula, Marlborough Sound, anyplace like that?

LEASK: Just taking boats. Took a boat up to Timaru. Boats up to Dunedin to be painted, a few times. Port Chalmers in Dunedin. Took different boats and went up there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's get back to when you started dayfishing with your own boat here at Stewart Island. How old were you, roughly?

LEASK: When I bought the Gypsy?

CRAWFORD: Yeah.

LEASK: I must have been about 28 ... no, might have been 30 even.

CRAWFORD: You were based out of Halfmoon Bay?

LEASK: Yeah. Still on Leask Bay.

CRAWFORD: Please describe the regions you fished then.

LEASK: I started off working just down at East Cape, but I ended up working around Port Adventure and Breaksea. That was where I fished the most.

CRAWFORD: Crayfish?

LEASK: Yeah, Crayfish mostly. And Codding. Codding was the same as Dad. Sometimes we'd go down to the Cape, we'd go out here.

CRAWFORD: At this point your Codding was all Codpotting?

LEASK: Yeah. And we were carrying ice, so we could stay a few days.

CRAWFORD: If you had to describe, at that point, the mix between Crayfishing and Codpotting - would it have been 50:50?

LEASK: Oh, Crayfishing mainly - 80 percent of the money. Three months of the year, normally.

CRAWFORD: Which three months were those?

LEASK: Normally after Christmas.

CRAWFORD: So, January to March?

LEASK: Yeah. April, May.

CRAWFORD: When you were Codpotting the rest of the year, was that the Titi Islands?

LEASK: Yeah, but sometimes we'd go down to the Cape. Quite a bit around Mason's. 

CRAWFORD: So, you had expanded. When you were Codpotting, you could be anywhere around Stewart Island?

LEASK: I could be, yeah. Once we started carrying ice. Once we had ice, it gave us a lot more ... that was a big difference for us.

CRAWFORD: If you were fishing down around the southwest corner of the Island, and you had freezer capabilities with ice, would that have made for week-long trips - there and back?

LEASK: No, no. It would be three or four days, normally. Go down when the weather was fine. Always when you're Codpotting, because you had your pots on board - you always went somewhere when it was fine. It was all weather-dependent, where you went.

CRAWFORD: Right. But now you had the capability, depending on the weather, you could fish the west or the east side of the Island?

LEASK: I was back crewing with my Brother then, because there was quotas. When I was working with him, we'd go up the coast.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Did you ever spend any time Codpotting over on the northern side of Foveaux Strait? Or was it pretty much always around Stewart Island, Titi Islands, that kind of region?

LEASK: Well, we went on a Codding trip up to Dusky one time, with Bruce and them.

CRAWFORD: On occasion?

LEASK: On occasions, yeah. Normally, the Codding was sort of to keep you out of the pub. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Ok. After you got the Gypsy, when was the next time your activities changed? At some point did you change or add boats?

LEASK: Well, I still had that, and Dad had his boat. Dad hit a rock and sank his boat - and we salvaged it, and we done it up. It's the [Lymeth??]. The one that's on the slip there. I started taking out passengers, doing fishing trips. I was getting sick of the quota, so I done two years. 

CRAWFORD: When did that start? The charter operation? Roughly?

LEASK: It was probably about 17 or 18 years ago, I suppose.

CRAWFORD: '98 maybe? Something like that?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And you said it was only for a couple of years?

LEASK: I done a couple of years, and then I got a Skipper on it. We still owned the boat till two years ago. I bought another boat.

CRAWFORD: When you were running the charter operation, was that pretty much fulltime?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You were out of fishing, temporarily - and into charters for two years?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: What was the nature of the charter operation? What kinds of things were you doing for the charter, and where were you going?

LEASK: Mostly around the Islands.

CRAWFORD: The Titi Islands?

LEASK: Around the Titi Islands. Depending on the weather, same thing as fishing. Back to handlining. 

CRAWFORD: For people who want to get a feed of Cod?

LEASK: They want to get a feed of Cod, and we done a lot of scenic trips. A lot of people would want to go somewhere, just on a scenic trip - and birdwatching.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, what would have been the split between handlining fishing trips and scenic trips?

LEASK: Probably be about 50:50 at that stage. 

CRAWFORD: Not so much along the coastline of Stewart Island? 

LEASK: Yeah, mostly out there. A lot behind the Neck here. Just because of the westerly, depending on the weather. Same thing - you don't want to take people out when it's too rough.

CRAWFORD: Right. Any significant amount of time in Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: Some, yeah. In the rough weather and that, I'd take the people up. And a lot of sightseeing up there. Up to the Whaling base, across Little Glory and that.

CRAWFORD: That was for two years?

LEASK: Two or three, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Then what happened?

LEASK: Then I got offered a Crayfishing boat, and I ran a boat for [unknown name??] up in Dusky - the third sound up. Dusky and Breaksea, and I worked between the two of them

CRAWFORD: Why Dusky? Why that place, as opposed to anyplace else?

LEASK: I just like it. Dusky's a really nice place. You get a wee bit better weather there, than you get down [someplace??] - it's quite a lot more windy.  

CRAWFORD: So once again, that's you as Skipper making the call about where you want to go fishing?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Dusky was a preferred location for you?

LEASK: Yeah. On that boat. That was [Seven Starritt's??].

CRAWFORD: When did that start?

LEASK: Oh, it started when I still owned the [Lymouth??]. Late '90s, beginning of 2000 maybe. Then I bought another boat - bought the [unknown name??], and went back Crayfishing and then Codding.

CRAWFORD: So, a little bit of back and forth for a couple of years, and then back to Codding fulltime? Or Codding and chartering?

LEASK: Just Codding, yeah.

CRAWFORD: That was early 2000s?

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Back to dayfishing?

LEASK: Crayfishing at Port Adventure. And mostly dayfishing and overnighting. I'd go away overnight, or maybe two nights. Done a lot of fishing around Smoky and Masons.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, it was still mostly the northern half of the Island?

LEASK: Northern half, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Still split between Crayfishing and Codding?

LEASK: For a start, yeah. Then fulltime Codding.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Does that bring us up to the present? Or have there been other things that have changed?

LEASK: Well, I think I had five Crayfish seasons I've worked with my Brother now.

CRAWFORD: That went up to 2010 or so?

LEASK: Yeah. And then quotas and the Crayfish and stuff. I wasn't making a lot of money, and I went back crewing with my Brother for the last five years. And bought another tourist boat.

CRAWFORD: Which boat do you have now?

LEASK: The [Rawhiti??].

CRAWFORD: Ok. From 2010 to the present, how much of your time were you fishing with your Brother?

LEASK: Oh, we're either Crayfishing or Codding, so we're working most months. With 60 to 70 percent Crayfishing.

CRAWFORD: Same regions as before?

LEASK: No, no. Up along this shore here.

CRAWFORD: Southwestern South Island?

LEASK: Yeah, Sou'west Corner, they call it.

CRAWFORD: That is the preferred location?

LEASK: That's our Crayfishing area. That's where he goes Crayfishing, the last five years.

CRAWFORD: And when you're not Crayfishing there, you're Codpotting ...

LEASK: Around the East Traps a lot. It's a bigger boat. We go further out. 

CRAWFORD: That's an important thing. The size of the boat determines where you can go. When you're fishing with your Brother, your range would be all around Stewart Island, including North and South Traps?

LEASK: Yeah. And up the west coast, as far as Dusky when we're Codding sometimes too. Weather depending.

CRAWFORD: And that, if I'm reading you right, brings us up to the present?

LEASK: Yeah. Last year I bought this tourist boat, and I took some time off from the Codding, and was running tourists from last year.

CRAWFORD: So, last year - what was the split between fishing and chartering?

LEASK: I think it was 60% fishing, and did the charters January, February, March.

CRAWFORD: Are the charters now the same as before? Sometimes handline fishing, sometimes sightseeing or birdwatching?

LEASK: This time it seems to be more fishing, than sightseeing and birdwatching. People want to go out fishing. I did do quite a few trips last year out to the Shark boats and that. To Edwards Island.

CRAWFORD: Because people charter you, and they say "Can we go out where the Sharks are?"

LEASK: There's a lot of advertising for the things that people want to go out and see. I think 99% of the time actually, we would go out and see the Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Matt Atkins said the same thing. He was running sightseeing charters, and the people said "Where's the cage diving happening?" So, he took them over to show them ...

LEASK: Yeah. I wasn't actually advertising the Shark things. But people ring up and they say "Can we go out and see a Shark?" And that would determine where we went. We done it just last weekend, actually. Took some people out - they wanted to go.

CRAWFORD: Mike Haines has already started up this year. He's been out, I think maybe four or five times. ...

LEASK: Yeah. And Peter just came into Bluff yesterday.

CRAWFORD: Yes. I texted him. He's just getting his cage down tomorrow. Ok. That brings us up to the present for your personal history?

GL. Yeah, yeah.

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

CRAWFORD: To what extent has Māori culture and knowledge contributed to your understanding of the coastal ecology around New Zealand in general, but also maybe including the Sharks? Very Low, Low, Medium, High or Very High?

LEASK: Reasonably High for me. A lot of Māoris around here. Like Bruce, my Uncle, was a Māori. I'm farming on Māori land. That's the other thing I do as well, I've got a wee farm that I look after. Muttonbirding, and other things. I'm not a Māori, but I have been Muttonbirding with quite a lot of people. My Cousins, and different ones.

CRAWFORD: Yeah? Southern Titi Islands? Northern Titi Islands?

LEASK: Well, this wee island was the first one - that's just outside Pegasus. Quite a bit on the islands out here. 

CRAWFORD: That's what I meant, about that kind of cultural exposure. When you're with Māori, their ways of thinking, and the knowledge that they have from previous generations, it all starts to come in.

LEASK: Quite a few years, everyone thought I had Māori rights, because I'd gone Muttonbirding with them quite frequently. I go out to Ruapuke, very strong Māori culture. 

CRAWFORD: What were your connections on Ruapuke?

LEASK: Good friends. My Great-Great-Grandmother was brought up over there. Her Father was a Captain on a boat [before her Mother died??]. Her and her Brother were brought up there. She was living on Ruapuke for quite a while. Just very good friends over there. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Thank you for that. I'm going to ask you the same question for the way that Science has affected your understanding of marine ecosystems around New Zealand.

LEASK: Oh, Medium. To a wee bit more, maybe.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What kinds of interactions would you be thinking of that would put it at that Medium or higher level?

LEASK: With fishing and that, there's all sorts of studies going into them. So, we mix with Scientists quite a bit. The DOC people, when they're doing the Shark tagging and all that. I was mixing with them a lot. Kina, I know him quite well. 

CRAWFORD: Kina Scollay?

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Did you ever go out on any of the DOC Shark tagging projects?

LEASK: No, no. But I've been out alongside them quite a bit. And watched miles of footage of DOC feeding them. And Peter Scott - I watched miles of footage from that. What I basically think we know about these Sharks is ... bugger all. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Well, you'll have an opportunity to describe that in the next section of the interview. Did you ever get to any of the DOC community meetings, here on the Island?

LEASK: I did. But I was at standing at one end, sort of not opposed to the tagging and diving. It was getting to the stage where I couldn't go into the pub without getting into a fight, sort of thing, for a wee while.

CRAWFORD: Well, I'm guessing that some of these ideas will come up later in the interview as well.

LEASK: Yeah.

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

CRAWFORD: Tell me about back in the day, when you were a kid here in Halfmoon Bay. What did the old-timers say about the White Pointers?

LEASK: There used to be a big derrick on the wharf, when we were kids. People would sometimes hang a big Shark up. You'd pull it up block and tackles - pull it up at the wharf, hang it up. I remember some of the old guys "Now, what the hell would you do all that for?" One old guy pulled his teeth out, and said "I'd probably lose my mouth, if someone tried to catch me just for the teeth." [chuckles] Because all of a sudden, the teeth were worth a lot of money. That was probably in the late '60s, it would have been. 

CRAWFORD: Alright. You have just opened up a new path for this conversation. Thinking back to when you were a kid, and thinking specifically about what the old-timers would have said about White Pointers in the region. Whether it was Halfmoon Bay, or the northeast side of Stewart Island, the Titi Islands or anywhere else around the Island. Did they ever say there were some places or time when the White Pointers were more common? You've sort of brought this up already, but as a kid listening to those old-timers, what did they say?

LEASK: Well, the ones that were fishing around Mason's, the old ones that were fishing around that area ... often they'd be losing lines, or often they'd have Sharks seen around them. Compared to what we had. Right round. Up around Ruggedy. 

CRAWFORD: That stretch - Mason's, Codfish, Ruggedy - that was an area typically associated with more White Pointers?

LEASK: There was probably more Sharks getting caught by Bluff people, for some reason. They fish around here too.

CRAWFORD: White Pointers caught by ...

LEASK: Well, people trying to get them for their teeth.

CRAWFORD: Let's talk about that. Was it the case that, back in the '60s, people were specifically targeting White Pointers as trophies - one way or another?

LEASK: I think so, yeah. There's photographs - well before that, like turn of the century. Sharks hanging up on the wharf. 

CRAWFORD: But when you see a picture of a White Pointer hung up on a wharf, it doesn't really tell you much about the motivation for how or why that fish got caught. You know - was it accidentally caught, or intentionally targeted?

LEASK: Oh, they were targeted. People ... Maureen's Father, and different ones like that ... Dad got a big eye welded onto one of the old petrol drums, and had a hook. Lost the hook, ended up straightening out - we had a hook and a chain. That was the only time the Old Man had a go at trying to catch them. But other people had been trying to do that quite a bit.

CRAWFORD: Let's start with a more local context. When your Dad was fishing for a White Pointer with a drum, and a baited hook and chain - approximately where was this?

LEASK: Oh, just off Deadman's.

CRAWFORD: Very close to the fish cleaning station?

LEASK: We'd been seeing them ...

CRAWFORD: And he gets the idea "If I can catch one of those Sharks ..."

LEASK: "Its teeth are worth the same as what our load of Cod is."

CRAWFORD: And this was back in the '60s?

LEASK: That was back in the '60s.

CRAWFORD: Was there any other part of a White Pointer that was valuable, for sale or for use?

LEASK: I don't think so. Joe Cave buried some one time. I don't think there was. The livers, and stuff like that, in recent years - when they were catching them just before the closure. 

CRAWFORD: But not so much back in the '60s?

LEASK: No. Even the Shark fishing, we used to catch Greyboy, School Shark. We used to catch them on hooks, with longlines. Up to 400 hooks, 500 hooks on them. Then everyone thought nets are more efficient. These boats ... I worked on them too, we had net rolls. You'd have a half mile of net, or more. You'd set them there, and then they started catching them.

CRAWFORD: Started catching what?

LEASK: Catching the odd White Shark in these nets. Originally it was just the teeth, but I think they started getting good money for the livers as well, at one stage. They were saving the liver - which is about a third the weight of the Shark.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, at what point in time was that - saving and selling the livers?

LEASK: Oh, halfway through the '70s. Late 70's. It started out when we were longlining for School Shark.

CRAWFORD: Where would you go for this longlining?

LEASK: A lot around Mason's, and around that area. Sometimes around Broad Bay.

CRAWFORD: Were they catching White Pointers on longlines down there?

LEASK: We never caught one on longline. We'd get half a School Shark - heads especially. But when they started using the nets, was when they seemed to be getting more. Like there was [Olaf Nielsen??], and [Roger Hecks??], and different ones. They all ended up getting them, when they changed their fishing from the hooks to the nets. 

CRAWFORD: Did you get the sense that there were fishermen out of Bluff, that were coming to Stewart Island - with nets - specifically to catch White Pointers?

LEASK: No. School Shark is what you're actually trying to get. It was a by-catch.

CRAWFORD: Right. But if they got a White Pointer in their School Shark nets, it still had some value?

LEASK: Just take the teeth, for a start.

CRAWFORD: You had said, even back in the '60s, the teeth on a White Pointer would have been equivalent to the value of a day's Cod fishing?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: We're both almost old-timers ourselves now, Fluff. But back in the day, what would you have got for a day's catch of Cod - or the teeth from one White Pointer jaw?

LEASK: Oh, two or three hundred dollars? I can't remember what we were getting a kilo for those fish. Sixty cents a kilo, or something. 

CRAWFORD: But you also said that the other parts of the White Pointer, back in the day, were not being taken. They would bury it, or dump them ...

LEASK: Normally dump them at sea. But there was some that Joe ended up getting bulldozed. They just literally dug a hole, and buried them. 

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts?

LEASK: In Butterfield's. Got them off Bathing Beach, cut the teeth out ...

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's get back to what you had heard from the old-timers when you were young. If I heard correctly, the old-timers said there were more White Pointers on the northwest side of Stewart Island, than over here on the northeast side?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Anybody talk about the southwestern, southern, or southeastern region of Stewart Island as being sharky?

LEASK: Pegasus ...

CRAWFORD: Occasionally?

LEASK: Yeah, occasionally at Pegasus.

CRAWFORD: Was there still a community down at Port Pegasus in the '60s. Or had it been relocated prior to that?

LEASK: No, no. That was in the '30s.

CRAWFORD: So, for all the time that you have lived here, Halfmoon Bay - what some now call Oban, has been really the only major community on Stewart Island? Halfmoon and Horsehoe Bays?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's talk about the northeast side of the Island, specifically. Were there certain regions there that White Pointers were known to be more prevalent?

LEASK: They always said "Don't go swimming near a Seal rookery!" [chuckles] That's a general rule. 

CRAWFORD: That was the old-timers? Their common knowledge?

LEASK: That was an old thing.

CRAWFORD: Was it because of the Seals themselves?

LEASK: No, not because of the Seals. No. Because there would be Sharks hanging around them. The Fur Seals ... I don't know, they might give divers a wee nip. Sea Lions will sometimes grab someone's flippers, or something like that. Might knock the mask off one of the divers. There wasn't that many Sea Lions around out the Bay in the early days. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's talk about Seals, back in the day - the '60s and '70s. I gather that the abundance of Seals has changed rather remarkably in your lifetime?

LEASK: It's increased a hell of a lot, yeah.

CRAWFORD: When you were a kid, it was not common to see Seals?

LEASK: Oh, no - you'd still see them, out at Bench Island and that. Pāua diving, and things like that. There'd be hundreds of them. But now if you went out there, I think you'd be counting in the thousands. 

CRAWFORD: Back in the '60s and '70s, where were the Seals in greatest numbers? Back then?

LEASK: Around Bench Island there was a Seal rookery. Most of the Muttonbird Islands, there would be somewhere with a stony beach that they would go on. And these Muttonbird Islands down around this area, as well. I've got a wee farm on the end of the Neck, there. We used to see ten or a dozen Seals, where sometimes now you might see bloody hundreds around the same point. So, they have really increased over the years.

CRAWFORD: Back in the day, did you or anyone else, see White Pointers taking Seals?

LEASK: Other people had. But we sometimes used to shoot it, the Seal. You'd watch it while they're getting torn to bits. Flat Rock was one of the places we'd do that. 

CRAWFORD: Why would people have been shooting the Seals?

LEASK: Oh, if you were netting or doing other things, they were a bit of a nuisance. 

CRAWFORD: So, pest control?

LEASK: Yeah. Muttonbird Islands - they start to hang around your huts, and make a hell of a mess. People didn't like them around. 

CRAWFORD: Pest control. They weren't shooting the Seals for harvest?

LEASK: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: And it wasn't an attempt to try and manage numbers at the population level - it was just controlling what were perceived as individual, local, pest Seals? If these Seals were harassing the gear, or getting in the way?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: But you were about to say something about shooting Seals that had already interacted with White Pointers?

LEASK: I had some people out to Flat Rock, some friends. We'd actually seen some Sharks around there, a wee bit earlier. We wanted some bait. So that was the reason I done it. But we didn't really see much of the Sharks that came round. They could have been Sevengillers. We get quite a lot of different Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: But you've spent a considerable amount of time on the water in this region, over your lifetime. Have you ever seen a White Pointer take a Seal? Or try to take a Seal?

LEASK: No. Well, I've seen the Seals panic and that.

CRAWFORD: Where have you or others seen that kind of panicking by the Seals?

LEASK: Especially along the back of Edwards. There were these Seals and they were all swimming there, and then all of a sudden they're going everywhere. Obviously, they are running from something. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly how far from the shore when this happened?

LEASK: Oh, pretty close.

CRAWFORD: Fifty metres or so?

LEASK: The Sharks will go right in very shallow there. The Sharks go in very shallow water. 

CRAWFORD: The point is, that you've seen what you have a pretty strong idea is escape behaviour by the Seals - in a place, at a time, that it could very well be in response to White Pointer hunting behaviour?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: But have you ever seen a White Pointer submerged, semi-submerged, or breached - in what appeared to you to be an attack on a Seal?

LEASK: No.

CRAWFORD: Have you ever heard from other people, about any other observations of an attempted or successful attack on a Seal by a White Pointer?

LEASK: Over at the Neck, I've had Seals come ashore with big bite marks out of them. There was one over at the Neck. Wrapped around a rock, it was still alive, making a hell of a noise. I went down, and its guts had a great big bite out of it. Had to have been a big Shark.

CRAWFORD: And had to have been pretty recent, because a Seal is not going to survive very long with that kind of an injury.

LEASK: No, no.

CRAWFORD: And very likely to have been in that immediate region ...

LEASK: Just off the end of the Neck, yeah. When they had those tagged Sharks, with the acoustic buoys ... there was a hell of a lot of Sharks between the Neck and Native Island. There was few Sharks that come in between Ulva and there. They had buoys out at Bunkers and different places, but the Neck was one of the places with the most Shark tags recorded. It might have been the Native Island buoy.

CRAWFORD: We're talking at the mouth, and just inside, of Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That's a situation where the Science culture and knowledge system starts to inform the Local knowledge system. Because you've got Clinton Duffy and Malcolm Francis - their hydroacoustic tagging program, either being presented to the community or you heard about it otherwise. My understanding is that there were a lot of people who were very surprised to find out how many White Pointers the received was recording at the mouth of Paterson Inlet. 

LEASK: Yeah. We were up there one Christmas, right up here on the Mud Flats.

CRAWFORD: At the head of the Inlet?

LEASK: The head of the Inlet. They were setting nets for Rig. 

CRAWFORD: Who was?

LEASK: This was Colin Topi - one of our friends. He ended up getting this quite big White Pointer, right as far as there. That would have been 1980, or something like that. 

CRAWFORD: 1980? This is the first I've heard of that.

LEASK: Yeah. Might have even been before that. 

CRAWFORD: And it was one of the Topis?

LEASK: Colin, yeah.

CRAWFORD: He was fishing for Rig up in Paterson Inlet by the Mud Flats?

LEASK: Yeah. He had his kids - [Tristan??] and Jack. They were after Rig - they call them Gummy Sharks or something. Different from School Shark, smaller. There's a lot of shellfish up there. They had this whole set of nets on board. They did setnets up there, and they caught one. 

CRAWFORD: Do you remember Colin saying how big that White Pointer was?

LEASK: Oh, I think it was around fourteen or fifteen foot, or something. It wasn't massive, but it was still reasonable. 

CRAWFORD: It wasn't a juvenile either - it was an adult. Did the old-timers ever talk about White Pointers up in Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: There wasn't any old-timers that were good swimmers.

CRAWFORD: Regardless of whether they were swimming.

LEASK: No, no. The reason they weren't good swimmers ... there was a wee bit of background fear. People weren't keen to get into the water because of Sharks, even when we were young. That's why it was such a big thing to build the swimming pool and other stuff. Make us better swimmers. When they done the Mātaitai up the Inlet, after that there was a guy that setnetted by Thule, and he caught a young White Pointer. But he caught that around by Thule, just past Golden Bay wharf.

CRAWFORD: When was this?

LEASK: It was probably ten years ago now, I suppose. It would be a good ten years since we had the Mātaitai up there.

CRAWFORD: But you said it was a small White Pointer?

LEASK: It wasn't a very big one. Eleven, twelve feet. But it was definitely a White Pointer.

CRAWFORD: Let's get back to those old-timers. The idea that swimming was not really their thing for them. It sounded like maybe they were put off by it? Do you think some of that was directly because of the White Pointers?

LEASK: There was a lot of them that couldn't swim. I don't know if they just never felt they needed to. 

CRAWFORD: Wasn't necessarily because if the White Pointers?

LEASK: No, no.

CRAWFORD: A lot of them were just not swimmers.

LEASK: A lot of them, like my Grandfather and different ones, they could swim. But they weren't good swimmers. 

CRAWFORD: Your family has been on this Island for a long time?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: How many generations, do you reckon?

LEASK: Probably about six.

CRAWFORD: So, we're going back to the mid-1800's?

LEASK: Yeah. 1840 for the [Bauschleaga??] side of it; 1960 for the Leask side of it.

CRAWFORD: I don't know much about those times, but I know that Māori were on this Island and the associated smaller Islands, prior to contact, prior to colonization. But after contact, the first major wave was the European and American Sealers, followed by a second major wave - the Whalers. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: In terms of your family connections, do you have people that date back in this region, Stewart Island, back to the Whaling days?

LEASK:  Yeah, yeah. It was my Uncle [Stanford??] and [Buddy Willard??], they went Whaling down to the Ross Sea along with a few other Stewart Islanders. 

CRAWFORD: So, they were part of the broader Whaling culture and community. Were they also Whaling around these parts? 

LEASK: Not particularly them ones, but before that - like [Paddy Gilroy??] and all these ones. And a lot of those, they were in Port William because they used to go and try out the Whales. Take the fat out of them, and render them down. Port William was an all-weather harbour. They quite often towed the Whales back there, and rendered them on board the boats in there. They reckoned the Sharks used to hang around the Whaling Station. 

CRAWFORD: Where would those Whales have been caught?

LEASK: The Solanders out here. But all this area between there and here. This trench here, they reckoned. 

CRAWFORD: The Solander Trench?

LEASK: The Solander Trench was a real major place. That's where the Squid boats were doing really well in the '70s and that. They reckon that was a main ground for [Paddy Gilroy??] and the American Whalers.

CRAWFORD: For Sperm Whale?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. Sperm Whale, and Right Whales as well. They worked up around [Dresker??] and Dusky. 

CRAWFORD: So, Port William was an all-weather harbour for Whalers. Do you recall what other Whaling stations were on and around Stewart Island?

LEASK: At Mason's, down at the house here at Leask Creek, there's still two try pots there. And Leask Bay, in our bay, there's try pots there - they rendered them down a couple of times. 

CRAWFORD: Did Paterson Inlet have a Whaling Station?

LEASK: That was for repairs though. 

CRAWFORD: There weren't any processing stations within the Inlet then?

LEASK: No, no. That was for repairs and maintenance. The Norwegians had factory boats. 

CRAWFORD: What about down here on the eastern side of the Island. Any Whaling stations along there?

LEASK: No, I don't think so.

CRAWFORD: So, basically there was one big Whale processing facility at Port William?

LEASK: Well, Port William - there's try pots ashore as well. But that was more of an anchorage. They were doing the rendering on the boats. Some of them boats, it would take them two or three days to cut up and render down a good-sized Whale. They wanted the barrels of oil.

CRAWFORD: The bases were more for loading and off-loading provisions?

LEASK: Well, it was just someplace for them to try - to render the oil out of the Whales. While the Whales are over the side of the boat, they'd flense meat off into chunks, you know - to pull up, and board, and all that sort of thing. Because they didn't have good winches on most of these boats. Just blocks and tackles.

CRAWFORD: So, the Whale was tied off next to the boat at sea?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. And there were lots of tales about Sharks around then. Taking pieces off the Whales while they were tied up.

CRAWFORD: Or taking pieces off the Whalers, if they fell into the water?

LEASK: Yeah, they would have.

CRAWFORD: There's part of an exhibit in the Invercargill Museum that talks specifically about that - with footage from the Yankee Whalers, I think. [hyperlink]. About how, occasionally when these people fell off the Whale ...

LEASK: Yeah. Because everything's crazy. That's what they said. Every bit of you ... when you're cutting these Whales down, it'd be like cutting a fatty old sheep, or something. When you're cutting it down, every bit of you got covered in this ... this, basically wax - which made it slippery. So, there would have been accidents. People going in.

CRAWFORD: Not only that, but Whale - especially fresh Whale is at the very top of the list for what White Pointers prefer to eat. 

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Based on your knowledge - yours, the old-timers, anyone you trust - have there even been Whale carcasses in the Stewart Island - Foveaux Strait region, with White Pointers working on them?

LEASK: We seen one floating down off Centre Island. We were coming down the coast, 

CRAWFORD: When was this, roughly?

LEASK: '80-something ... '84 maybe. It was this Whale, and it was just blubber. It was a pretty calm day, there was lots of birds and that around. Māui's Dolphins - they were hanging around. But this Whale carcass was just bobbing up and down. Something was ripping away at it. We didn’t actually see a Shark, but there was big bites out of it - and bits of blubber floating around. 

CRAWFORD: Did you think that was a relatively new carcass at the time? Or was it an old carcass?

LEASK: I think it had been in the water a fair while. There was no skin left on it. Just this floating blubber.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That's one observation you've seen yourself. Have you seen any other Whale carcasses with White Pointers in this region? Or Whale carcasses without them?

LEASK: No. Well, we’ve seen Whale carcasses up on the Fingers and places like that - up above Dusky. Seen carcasses there, but they've actually been washed up on the shore itself. That was the only floating one I've seen.

CRAWFORD: In terms of Whale strandings, have you seen these in the Stewart Island region?

LEASK: The Blackfish ones. False Killer Whales - they're like a big Dolphin. They’d be 20-odd feet long. I've seen the results of strandings, I've seen the dead carcasses up on the beaches. 

CRAWFORD: Wherabouts?

LEASK: Up along Dusky - the Fingers.

CRAWFORD: So, southern Fiordland. Anywhere around here?

LEASK: There was a Whale on Mason's Beach there, last time I was through. There was a Whale carcass up there. But it was just blubber, you know? Even the Blackbacks were having problems getting anything.

CRAWFORD: I'm told that sometimes the Blackfish strand in groups?

LEASK: Yeah. Big groups. Hundred and twenty of them at once.

CRAWFORD: Where have you seen Blackfish strandings?

LEASK: Back of the Neck. [Māori Beach??], but they were spread. Might have been after the tide, they actually went up on [Cow Island??], but they were spread right around here. 

CRAWFORD: When was that?

LEASK: That was probably within ten years, I'd say. [Māori Beach??] - that was probably fifteen or twenty years ago. Mason's - twice I've seen them around there, I was sixteen one time. Doughboy's had two - lots of them go in there.

CRAWFORD: When?

LEASK: One was within the year, just a wee while ago. It was a big lot about ten years ago. A couple hundred, I think. 

CRAWFORD: Is it the case that when you see a stranding, there are White Pointers?

LEASK: Normally, I think. Yeah. Stu Cave went and caught three Sharks after there was a stranding at the back of the Neck. And it does sound like at [Māori Beach??] there were Sharks there.

CRAWFORD: Stu set nets specifically next to the strandings?

LEASK: To try and catch some Sharks.

CRAWFORD: To catch them for harvest?

LEASK: The teeth, I think. He hates Sharks with a passion. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly how long ago was that?

LEASK: How long they been protected? It was just before that. Ten years they've been protected.

CRAWFORD: Were there other instances when people would go to a stranding and intentionally set nets to catch a White Pointer? Or was that kind of an isolated incident?

LEASK: That's the only one I know of. But I know when they're around at Doughboy, these Blackfish were just getting ripped to bits as they were drifting off.

CRAWFORD: Did you see this?

LEASK: No, no. I heard about that from guys that were fishing around there at the time. They said there was quite a lot.

CRAWFORD: If I remember correctly what you said before, the old-timers said there were more White Pointers along that southwest coast of Stewart Island, than up here along the northeastern coast?

LEASK: When we're cleaning fish in Waituna - this bay here - we quite often seen them there too. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's get back to distribution and abundance, before we move on. Back in the '60s and '70s, do you remember White Pointers coming into the Bays? Halfmoon Bay and Horseshoe Bay?

LEASK: Oh, yeah, yeah. We often seen them ...

CRAWFORD: What does 'often' mean in this case?

LEASK: Every year you'd see them at some stage, somewhere.

CRAWFORD: How far into the Bays would they come?

LEASK: Oh, right in by the wharf there, sometimes. Swim right around the Bay. Over at the Neck there, about two years ago, there's a photograph this girl took - sitting up on the hill, looking down in the clear water, and you've got this perfect impression of a Shark. It was just swimming around in the Inlet. 

CRAWFORD: Time out on that story, because I'm interested in it. But you jumped to present day, and I was asking about back in the '60s and '70s.

LEASK: When we were school kids, if you were the Shark Warden sitting on top of the Hill, you'd see them in the shallows around there. We actually thought they were getting Skates, the Flatfish.

CRAWFORD: That the White Pointers were coming in to get the Skates?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. We thought that was the main reason. So, if you were sitting up on the rock ... we'd have a whistle with us. It was meant to be a punishment, but some of us quite liked it [laughs].

CRAWFORD: Did you ever have Shark Wardens when it was just kids swimming for fun? 

LEASK: Nah. Normally, we'd have an adult with us, if you're down the Bathing Beach or somewhere like that. The adult would be on the beach, they'd be keeping an eye out. 

CRAWFORD: So, even if it was recreational swimming, there was usually someone watching. Not necessarily a Shark Warden with a whistle ...

LEASK: No. It would be someone's Mother or something like that.

CRAWFORD: But for school, you liked being the Shark Warden - up there high, with the whistle ...

LEASK: Yeah. [John Perry??], one of my friends, went up there and kept me company. 

CRAWFORD: If you had to guess the total number of times you went swimming for class or were Shark Warden during a class, how many times roughly? Are we talking ten times, or fifty times, or what?

LEASK: Oh, we done it quite a bit. But I think there was only about two or three times we actually ever seen a Shark.

CRAWFORD: We'll get there in a second. First I'm trying to get a sense of how many times you were associated with a school class that typically had a Shark Warden keeping an eye out.

LEASK: Oh, probably a hundred times over a few years.

CRAWFORD: Ok. And of those hundred, roughly how many would you have been the Shark Warden for?

LEASK: Ten or a dozen or so.

CRAWFORD: How many times - when you were a swimmer - did the Shark Warden blow the whistle?

LEASK: Once or twice.

CRAWFORD: And of the roughly dozen times you were Shark Warden, how many times did you see a Shark?

LEASK: I think it was only once. Two Sharks, just outside the break. And we were all made to march over to Golden Bay. We got out of the water there, we went over, and we finished our swimming lesson in Paterson's Inlet. 

CRAWFORD: You had been at the Bathing Beach? That was typically where the swimming class went, wasn't it?

LEASK: That was the closest one. It was a deeper-water beach. Teacher could stand on the rocks, and actually be not too far away from you there.

CRAWFORD: How frequently were the swimming classes?

LEASK: Three times a week, for the summertime. 

CRAWFORD: Generally, during the '60s and '70s, when a White Pointer did come into the Bays, word would get around?

LEASK: People we know, like the Hamiltons - I used to knock around with them. Their Uncles were fishing out there and different ones. They'd always mention "There's a couple of Sharks out there."

CRAWFORD: And by 'Sharks' they meant White Pointers?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Was there some kind of general community response?

LEASK: No, no. Most people just sort of ignored it. They wouldn't go swimming sometimes at Bathing Beach and that, because there had been a Shark sighted.

CRAWFORD: Because somebody heard that somebody else had seen a White Pointer?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Was there a seasonality to this? Were the White Pointers seen in the wintertime?

LEASK: I think it was always sort of the summertime. Normally, it's just about always the summertime when they seen them, I think. When Peter Scott started trying year-round, he was saying there were still some there in the winter. But we wouldn't notice them. And during the winter, we were Crayfishing - so, we were doing a different type of fishing too. 

CRAWFORD: Right. And you wouldn't necessarily see them in the winter, even if they were still here?

LEASK: No. You're throwing over Crayfish bodies, rather than Codframes.

CRAWFORD: So, just to sum up from the '60s and '70s ... the White Pointers would come into the Bays occasionally, typically during the summertime, somebody might see them, and then word would get around. Some people have said that there was a standard response - that if the White Pointers came into Halfmoon Bay or Horseshoe Bay, people would try and kill them.

LEASK: Oh, that was probably later on. Later '60s, just the beginning of the '70s and that. Newer people had arrived. I think a lot of people came down for the Crayfish boom. And there was some people just had a bit of a hate on them, you know? Whereas other people ... they were just part of Nature.

CRAWFORD: I'm talking in a very general sense. Some people have said that, at least at some point - White Pointers were spotted, and the Shark nets would go out.

LEASK: The planes quite often used to ... because the amphibian plane used to land on the water, in Halfmoon Bay. They'd be flying around, and they'd quite often see the Sharks from the plane. I remember [Jerry Field??] and Joe and different ones, setting nets when they heard that. That'd be late '60s, early '70s. Just a few people that really targeted them at that stage, I think.

CRAWFORD: And the idea was protecting swimmers?

LEASK: I think so. Well, that was what they said.

CRAWFORD: You said something important. That there was a change in the ...

LEASK: Community. 

CRAWFORD: Well, a change in the values regarding the White Pointers. That before there wasn't so much this idea that you killed White Pointers on sight. 

LEASK: No, no, no.

CRAWFORD: But that changed over the late '60s, early '70s ...

LEASK: There was pictures, turn of the century - a big Shark on the davit down there. My Grandfather and different ones like that. People would try and catch them. Probably just for the jaw. 

CRAWFORD: That's why the motivation is so important here. It could be a targeted harvest, or it could be that the intention was to remove the animal - for the sake of Human safety.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 CRAWFORD: If I'm getting you right, based on your experience and your knowledge, the shift in the late '60s early '70s - that there was an increase in the idea of killing White Pointers to remove a safety issue?

LEASK: I think so, yeah. I think, like with the Seals increasing, everyone thought the Sharks were increasing. And they probably are with the protection. 

CRAWFORD: Back in the day, when you were a kid, were there people who shot White Pointers in the Bays - on sight?

LEASK: Sometimes. We just about always had a rifle on the boat, for shooting Deer and other things. Sometimes you'd see a Shark going round, and you'd have a shot at it. You'd be very, very lucky to actually get a killing shot on a Shark.

CRAWFORD: Was that for intention, or was it for shits-and-giggles?

LEASK: Just shits-and-giggles, probably.

CRAWFORD: Did that kind of shooting continue on in time? Or at some point in time, did it become shooting with the intention of killing that White Pointer?

LEASK: Oh, I think most people - if you're trying to kill a Shark, you're probably more likely to use a big hook and a chain, or a net. More likely, we used to buy a rifle and a couple thousand rounds of bullets for them, and you'd be shooting trying to make yourself a better shot. So, you'd shoot at bottles, you'd shoot at other things. 

CRAWFORD: Later on, when this idea came into the community that the White Pointers coming into the Bays have crossed some line - and that they need to be removed for safety. The preferred gear ... well, there were nets set up specifically for catching White Pointers, big Shark nets. But you've also brought up something else that connects back to something that we talked about before - this idea about the barrels with a baited hook. When was the first time you remember hearing about or seeing those barrels with baited hooks?

LEASK: Oh, we used to see them ... like [Maxxy Sciperone??] had the [Sharon??] and different ones like that ... they would bring these things, have them down the wharf there, and they'd be setting them up. 

CRAWFORD: This was when you were a kid? In the '60s?

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Did you get the impression that this had been going on for quite some time?

LEASK: Oh, I think so. Yeah, yeah. You'd see this in old photos.

CRAWFORD: And were these barrels and hooks used for targeted harvest? Or was this to remove a threat?

LEASK: Even in the Māori days, the Shark teeth were very valuable. Because they were a good, sharp weapon. And they were jewelry. But they were also used as tips on Māori spears. They were used as fish hooks. They were quite a valuable thing, right back to the early Māori days.

CRAWFORD: How did you come to know about that?

LEASK: Well, I spent a lot of time in the museum here. Just different museums around the place. All around the Pacific Islands - the Chatham Islands, there's gear out there from very early days. Shark teeth with holes drilled in them, been obviously worn or were used. There has been a value on them from pre-European times.

CRAWFORD: Right. Back in the day, when we're talking about these barrels with baited hooks, where was it that kind of targeted fishing for White Pointers happened? Do you remember?

LEASK: Quite often it was out here?

CRAWFORD: Horseshoe Bay?

LEASK: Deadman's. But they'd only done it the once, and we lost this really big hook. That was [Leigh??] when he was younger.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever hear of anybody using these barrels and hooks in Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: No, not really, no.

CRAWFORD: Anybody ever use them out around the Islands?

LEASK: Like down Ernest Island, and Pegasus, and down around that area. I've heard of people doing it down there.

CRAWFORD: Anybody doing it around the northern Titi Islands? Or along the northeast shore of Stewart Island?

LEASK: Not that I know of. They would have, but not that I know of for sure - no.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's focus on the big Shark nets that were deployed here for White Pointers, back in the day. To your memory, when did they first get deployed?

LEASK: Over here, probably not till late '60s, halfway through the '60s. But Dunedin, that was the ones that we seen some Sharks getting harvested at St Kilda one time. Quite a lot of the swimming beaches around the place, they were putting these Shark nets out. 

CRAWFORD: Yes. Dunedin City Council was doing that. But here at Stewart Island, was it only Halfmoon Bay that ever had these big Shark nets? Or was it anyplace else?

LEASK: Well, like I say, Stu used the same nets as his Old Man had. He went and set them off here, you see.

CRAWFORD: Off the Neck?

LEASK: Off the Neck, when the stranding up there. That seemed to be quite efficient.

CRAWFORD: Are there bathing beaches in Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: Yeah. When we're having picnics and that, we're swimming.

CRAWFORD: But not the same as Bathing Beach in Halfmoon Bay?

LEASK: No, no. That beach there gets probably 20 or 30 visitors a year, at the most.

CRAWFORD: Ok. As far as you know, were there big Shark nets ever deployed in Horseshoe Bay? Or only Halfmoon Bay?

LEASK: Oh, I think Joe ... like, he didn't get Sharks every time he set the nets. I think quite often he'd set these nets, and would leave them for a couple of days. And sometimes they wouldn't get them. You've got to get the conditions right.

CRAWFORD: Roughly what years, over what time period, were these Shark nets being used?

LEASK: Later '60s, I'd say. 

CRAWFORD: I realize that their use would have changed from year to year, but if I'm listening correctly, they would have typically been used during summer months. How many times over the course of a summer would the nets get deployed?

LEASK: Oh, two or three times. Maybe a wee bit more than that. But it wouldn't have been six times a year.

CRAWFORD: Was it the case that every time somebody saw a White Pointer in the Bay, the nets would go out? Or only some of the times?

LEASK: Some of the times, probably.

CRAWFORD: Of the times that the nets went out, roughly what percentage of the times did they catch a White Pointer?

LEASK: Oh, I wouldn't be sure ... but I wouldn't think it'd be every once in ten, or something like that maybe.

CRAWFORD: Maybe 10%?

LEASK: Yeah, maybe. We never sort of used them much. But [Jerry Field??] got a few, Joe Cave got a few. Joe [Quinn??] got one or two. There wasn't a lot. 

CRAWFORD: So, when you add them up from mid-60's to protection - I'm presuming the big Shark nets were no longer being used after that ...

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: But over that entire 20-year period that Shark nets were being used, maybe 20 White Pointers got caught?

LEASK: Yeah, probably. And the same number would have been caught in the School Shark nets.

CRAWFORD: Incidental catch in those?

LEASK: Incidental catch. 

CRAWFORD: Where would those School Shark nets have been fished?

LEASK: They go all around. The back of Bench Island was one place where they got them. Out here ... like [Oliver??] had one a year or two ago, incidental catch. He said "Oh, it was a hell of a lot of work." And coming back, there were all sorts of people ... because they caught it by accident, it was already drowned. But I don't think he'll be filling the paperwork in again. 

CRAWFORD: Yes, there's DOC paperwork. Was he required to bring the carcass back?

LEASK: No, I don't think so. No.

CRAWFORD: It was basic information, in terms of paperwork that had to be filled, and then given to DOC or whomever?

LEASK: Then people came back and questioned him. Yeah, it was a bit of a ...

CRAWFORD: Where else would incidental catches of White Pointers in any types of setnets have occurred? That you heard of?

LEASK: Oh, around at Mason's. Up in the Straits around here sometimes. Anyone that's been netting School Sharks have probably caught one or two of them at least, if not more. 

CRAWFORD: In terms of White Pointers that were caught in Halfmoon Bay, over the 20-odd years the big Shark nets were used - were the White Pointers caught in those nets typically brought back to the wharf?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: How many of the White Pointers that came out of those big Shark nets did you see?

LEASK: Oh, probably a dozen - or maybe a wee bit more.

CRAWFORD: I understand that in some cases, the White Pointers were cut open. 

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. I think quite a lot of them, they were. 

CRAWFORD: And fishermen just kind of naturally ...

LEASK: You gotta look, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Do you remember seeing, or anybody commenting, if the guts contained Seals or Fish or whatever?

LEASK: Blue Cod was in quite a lot of them. Was in some of them. I remember that one they split open on the wharf there, and it had a lot of Blue Cod and stuff in it. I can't really remember if ...

CRAWFORD: Were there any White Pointers that had been caught inside the Bays, that were caught by the Shark nets - if any of them had Seals in them?

LEASK: Not that I know. But we were sort of Leask Bay, and didn't always find out. Joe or Stu Cave or someone like that, they'd tell you exactly what was in them. Because they would have cut every Shark open. To have a look, to see. But me, the only thing I remember was this one they had on the wharf, and they cut it open, and it had some Blue Cod and that in it. And that was pretty small too. It might have had other stuff as well, but ...

CRAWFORD: Depending on who I hear these stories from, there was a group of White Pointers that came in to Halfmoon Harbour itself - might have been two, it might have been three. To the point that it was a daily, midday thing - people were showing up at the wharf in order to see the White Pointers.

LEASK: I remember people going down to see them, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Which means there was an element of predictability?

LEASK: Yeah. They were coming around ... I don't know if it was midday and that. But I remember going down the wharf to see some Sharks were swimming around out there. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was this? Do you remember?

LEASK: Oh, I was still at school. So, '70 or something.

CRAWFORD: What do you remember of that?

LEASK: I think they might be the ones that Joe caught. The three Joe caught in the Bay. I think they were coming in quite regularly.

CRAWFORD: They were coming in close? 

LEASK: Oh, right by the end of the wharf. Probably because of the boats cleaning Cod and that, as well. Fish Shed's dropping .. the Fish Shed, all the waste used to go out from underneath the Shed. 

CRAWFORD: So, the processing facility that was there at the wharf, it was dumping ...

LEASK: Well, it was mostly just washing stuff down, bits of Cod ..

CRAWFORD: Blood and guts. But it was directly out into the Bay?

LEASK: Into the water. Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Under the wharf? 

LEASK: Under the wharf. I think that would have been ... the Co-op was built in 1968, I think. 

CRAWFORD: What was built?

LEASK: The Co-op, the big Fish Shed that's down here. After that, when we'd seen, they had water spraying down. And they reckoned that, if you're looking for Sharks, they're hosing and going out, and that sounds like fish jumping or some bloody thing. So, that might actually have been why they come in more. The other Fish Shed's back in a wee bit further - but their waste was going out too. The Fish Sheds used to drop all their waste out in the middle of the Bay. 

CRAWFORD: Did they barge their waste out?

LEASK: No, fishing boats would take it out. If you took the stuff out, you wouldn't have to pay for your bait, normally. We were normally going out, and we were dumping quite a lot of waste from the Sheds.

CRAWFORD: This was different from the runoff, the bloody water that was coming out below the Sheds at the wharf?

LEASK: Yeah. It's mostly just small bits. 

CRAWFORD: Just to clarify, when the boats took out the frames and waste from the Fish Sheds, where did they dump them? Deadman's Bay or someplace else?

LEASK: Well, we used to just go out past the [Big] Rock in the middle of the Bay. But then they were dropping up around the Horseshoe Point for a long time. There was a lot of rubbish. The fish were probably bled before you'd do that. 

CRAWFORD: Was that back in the day?

LEASK: Up until about two years ago. 

CRAWFORD: What happened two years ago?

LEASK: Well, I'm not sure where they're dumping their rubbish now. I haven't really been involved with the Shed. I'm fishing out of Bluff, on the other side.

CRAWFORD: Right. 

LEASK: And another big thing that's changed ... these last 20 years, we've had Salmon Farms up here. And they were dumping out and around this spot, out by Bench Island. Six miles off the Neck, four off Bench Island - so, somewhere around here. 

CRAWFORD: Dumping mortalities from the Fish Farm?

LEASK: Yeah. And they were probably dumping maybe 200 tonne a year of rubbish. Well, that's only been the last 20 years. So, that's another thing that sort of changes the whole thing. I just thought of that. 

CRAWFORD: No, it's important. It has come up several times in these interviews. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, to sum up - on those occasions when a White Pointer did come into the Bays, only occasionally were actions were taken to remove them?

LEASK: Only by some people. Most people - early days, late '60s - they didn't say much. Also when there was a lot of new families arrived on the Island ... there'd been a couple of attacks in Dunedin, and the Sharks were in the news a lot at the time. There was two fatal attacks in Dunedin, and people sort of got hysteric. That's why we got our swimming pool, was because everyone was going on about the Sharks being more threatening. 

CRAWFORD: So, to your memory, the swimming pool was directly connected to White Pointers ...

LEASK: Oh, definitely. Yeah. The fundraising was definitely connected to the Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: And the timing, you feel, was directly connected to the Dunedin attacks?

LEASK: Yeah. And the new families, because some of the new families came from Dunedin. 

CRAWFORD: When did the swimming pool fundraising start?

LEASK: Started about 1969, but the swimming pool was finished '71 or '72. And for the Pāua divers, Pāuas became worth money about ... they weren't worth much money until about 1970. Pāuas were sold for the shell, but we weren't selling the meat. And then all of a sudden ... we were only getting 13 cents a kilo for the meat, but it was still an industry that we sort of started about then. Probably next-to-no Pāua meat was sold before about 1968, on Stewart Island. 

CRAWFORD: Was there a relationship between the price of Pāua and the number of Pāua divers?

LEASK: Yeah, definitely. Because there was a lot of the new families that came down ... like my Father, he was over 40 before he started Pāua diving. Up till then, we used to get Pāuas just off the rocks on spring tides, and sell the shells. The Pāua shell was worth money, but the meat wasn't. Have you talked to Maureen Jones or Shirley Whipp, or any of those people? They're older people over here. Maureen's Father, [Maxxie Skipper??], I remember ... well, he died when I was about ten or eleven. Quite often, he'd set the drums out the Bay here. Drums with hooks to try and catch the Sharks come into the Bay. One of the meetings they were having, Shirley was going on about how ridiculous it was. She must be 85 now, I suppose. Two further back, old-timers.  

CRAWFORD: Once again, were these drums for removal of threat, or was it intentional harvest?

LEASK: I think it might have been more the harvest. I'm not quite sure, really. He died when I was quite young. Maureen and Shirley can remember the '50s and '60s a lot better than us. There's not a lot of older people left around the place now. 

CRAWFORD: Good. Thank you for those referrals. Let's get back to things that could be attracting the White Pointers into the Bays, or into the Inlet. What might it be about the freshwater, the estuaries that would attract the White Pointers? 

LEASK: Well, Sevengillers and that are attracted to them - to try and get rid of the lice. But I haven't really heard that of White Pointers. Sevengillers and some Sharks will go up into the freshwater to get rid of lice, etc. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. And you also mentioned something about the fishing Co-op?

LEASK: That's got water running down, and that. When DOC was doing the tagging program, and things like that, they had water running to try and attract them. They had water running out of their deck hose. That was part of the thing they were doing to attract them. 

CRAWFORD: Whoa. I'm getting mixed up. Is the Co-op down at the wharf, is it a fish processing plant?

LEASK: Yes. And it had holes. When they were working, there's water constantly running down. Which would probably sound like fish dropping, or something like that.

CRAWFORD: When they're working at the Co-op, there's blood and other stuff going out with the water through the holes? Directly into the water by the wharf?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. Straight underneath the Co-op Shed.

CRAWFORD: When did that Co-op fish processing plant start up?

LEASK: About '68. That was all about the same time. 

CRAWFORD: Was there some kind of fish processing plant on the wharf prior to the Co-op?

LEASK: Further back. Where the new buildings are, they were both Fish Sheds. At low tide, their stuff was going on to the rocks. But they were there, yeah. There's been fish processing on Stewart Island since the 1860s.

CRAWFORD: Since the get-go?

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And the Co-op was built at the same time as lots of new people coming to the Island, around the same time as the Dunedin attacks ...

LEASK: Fishing effort had really increased. There was a lot more people going out. Lots of things happening. 

CRAWFORD: Including, the equivalent of a berley trail being set up from the new Co-op?

LEASK: Yeah. It probably had some connection with it.

CRAWFORD: You think it was possible that White Pointers were coming into Halfmoon Bay, or perhaps further into Halfmoon Bay ... like the group of them that came right in to the wharf, and around the moored boats - at least in part, due to the signal that was coming off of the fish processing there?

LEASK: I think it might have, yeah. These Sharks aren't that fussy. I think there could be dozens of reasons for why they behave in different ways. There's more than one thing. People say about the Seal rookeries and that, but the Seals are just part of their food. I think if they've got something else that comes along, they're just as likely. Then you see them on the documentaries, and they're swimming through schools of fish and stuff, not necessarily feeding on them. There's something that sets them off, and triggers them for feeding. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. It seems pretty clear, even from your first observations and interactions at the fish cleaning stations, that the White Pointers are attracted to food and food cues generated by Humans.

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Whether it's fish cleaning stations, potentially fish processing sheds, line-fishing, and even charter operations when you're throwing Codframes or heads out. The Birds are coming in, and the Sharks are coming in - all of that stuff. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any other accounts in Paterson Inlet, prior to cage dive operations? From you or from other people?

LEASK: Yeah, there's people that have talked about it. But nothing else that I've had anything to do with.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, it's not unknown - but it's not common either?

LEASK: They reckon it's the same thing - they go around there, around these mudflats and around that area. It's got Cockles and other stuff, and that's what the Skates and the Rig and everything are up there feeding actually on the shellfish. 

CRAWFORD: And then the White Pointers, in turn, are attracted by the Skates?

LEASK: Attracted by the Skates and the Rays, yeah. That's what we thought was one of their favourite foods. Why they go around the beaches where there's shellfish. That's like Oreti Beach, quite often there's Sharks sighted up there. Because of the interaction between the Skates and the shellfish, and the Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. We'll come back to Oreti Beach in a minute - I'm interested in that. Before we move from Stewart Island, in terms of the Titi Islands here, prior to the cage dive operations, you had seen White Pointers over there.

LEASK: Oh, yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: What time of year would you have seen them there?

LEASK: We were Crayfishing normally up to Christmas just about, so normally it would be just after Christmas, or just before Christmas sometimes. Trying to get some money. 

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts, within the Islands?

LEASK: Around this area, Bench Island, was a common place. Divers sometimes seen them around this south side, out on [First and Saddem??] there. 

CRAWFORD: Divers, as in Pāua divers?

LEASK: Pāua divers. At Bunkers, I was dinghy-boying for Pāuas.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Where else?

LEASK: Around Edwards Island, especially the north end. That's always been quite a common area to see them. Pāua divers, [Bruce Skinner??] and them, when they were Pāua diving, we were out there. [Jeremy??], the Pāua diver that I was working for, he said about there "Oh, you're a bit hard up for places to go diving, if you go somewhere where there's a Seal rookery." It was well known amongst the older Pāua divers, you didn't go diving around a Seal rookery in the summertime, because that's when pups are getting born, and that was another thing that could attract them. 

CRAWFORD: But back in the day, there were some Pāua divers that were diving out round the Islands ...

LEASK: But not in the summer. Not round the islands. There was only like [Jeremy Foley??], he was out there. Some of the very new people. But none of the older divers. [Bruce Skinner??] actually came from Dunedin ... we'd have to ask Gary, his Son if he's about. I think they did have some sort of interaction with a Shark up in Dunedin before they came down and that. He would dive out in the Islands during the wintertime, but he wouldn't go diving out there in the summertime. He was one of the first commercial Pāua divers to come down here. You get a lot of Kelp out there too, it grows up. After the winter, after you get storms and that, the Kelp got washed away a fair bit, and it made it easier for them to find the Pāuas as well. So, it might have been a combination of the fact that in the summertime the Seal pups were there, could be Sharks, and there was a lot of Kelp. A lot of things that would have kept Pāua divers away from there. There's never been a lot of Pāuas caught around these Islands. Bench Island was the only place out there where they got a lot of Pāuas. And there's still Pāuas there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In terms of the four different Levels of interactions that people had with White Pointers out around the Titi Islands, prior to cage dive operations, what kinds of interactions were people having?

LEASK: Well, no one ever actually got attacked by them. But people seen them, and people were pretty aware normally.

CRAWFORD: Were there Drive-Bys? Were they common or rare? Or the Circling behaviour - common or rare?

LEASK: Probably reasonably rare, I think. When you were being a dinghy-boy, picking up the Pāuas off the divers and that, you're always out there watching for them. That was always part of your job as well. So, if you seen a fin or anything, you got your Pāua diver out of the water as quickly as possible. And people would avoid them. Like [Jeremy??] ended up sitting on a rock for quite a while we sat in the boat that one time at Bunkers, when we had them around a bit. That was when we came in, and [Bruce Skinner??] was at the wharf, and [Jeremy??] was going on about this Shark being out there. "Oh, you're a bit hard up for places to go Pāua diving, if you're out around a Seal rookery at this time of the year, you reckon." Because at that time, the Pāuas were pretty plentiful. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. In Foveaux Strait generally, and especially on the other side - the southern end of South Island - are there places where you've seen or heard about aggregations of White Pointers? Prior to cage dive operations?

LEASK: Well, just like Oreti Beach and that, there used to be Shark warnings sometimes come over the radio, and things like that. And that's why we thought, because there's the [Toheroas??] and the Surf Clams and that there, and the Flatfish etc off that area. Most of these beaches on the Stewart Island probably only get a hundred visitors in a whole year. But they get thousands of people at Oreti Beach and off Riverton and that. Same as further up the east coast, where there's not one or two people - there's lots of people going there. 

CRAWFORD: Yes, that's an important factor, in terms of figuring out what we know about White Pointer aggregations. It often has a lot to do with how many Human eyes are out there to see them.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Any other places you can think of in the general Foveaux Strait region?

LEASK: Ruapuke Island - there's lots of Sharks been around there for quite a few years. 

CRAWFORD: That you have seen, or you have heard about?

LEASK: Well, I've seen one, but I've heard of more. There was people out in a dinghy probably three or four Christmases ago or something like that. They were out there, and this Shark was wondering what this dinghy was, and trying to get a feed of fish. That's just right at this anchorage here. Ricki Topi - have you talked to him?

CRAWFORD: Not yet.

LEASK: He fishes around Ruapuke a lot - like out of Bluff, but he's got a house on Ruapuke, and he fishes around there. There's Ricki, there's John Young, there's different ones are there. They're the ones who would know more about sightings around there. 

CRAWFORD: Anyplace else in the region that you've heard White Pointers aggregate?

LEASK: Well, around Riverton. They do a lot of surfing around these bays, and around this area here. There's been reported ones that surfers and that would see them at times. I'm pretty sure Te Waewae Bay and all this area here ... that's sort of like the entrance to the Straits and that, and at times they would have been seen there. But personally, I haven't seen any along there. We're not Codfishing there, we're Crayfishing when we're up there. Live fish, so we're not throwing away any rubbish, really. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Getting back to the seasonality of White Pointers in the region - there are a greater number of individuals seen in the summertime. But I'd like to talk a bit about what you know from the tagging work that Clinton from DOC and Malcolm from NIWA have done on their movement patterns. 

LEASK: It's also a food pattern. We get all these Jellies, and we get all this plankton and other stuff, coming through the Straits. But here's like a tidal sink - the tide hits here, and it comes through here, and that's when the Muttonbirds come. When the Muttonbirds come to feed, there should be Sardines and other stuff feeding on the plankton. The whole food chain.

CRAWFORD: This is a very dynamic ecosystem convergence region here. 

LEASK: It is - all around this area here. The plankton and things like that really increase in the summertime. 

CRAWFORD: So, coming in right about now, there's a whole lot of stuff happening out there?

LEASK: There should be. But we haven't seen Muttonbirds much, this year. As much as normal.

CRAWFORD: Are there some White Pointers at least, here all year round?

LEASK: Well, I didn't really think so. But then Peter Scott, when he done three or four years ago ... I think it was June or July or something, he came down, and he did see some Sharks then. So, there is some. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. But that's relatively recent. Prior to him doing that, you would have thought maybe not so much?

LEASK: Well, we're Crayfishing at that time of the year, normally ...

CRAWFORD: Right. But for other people who are around, fishing or boating ...

LEASK: Your tourists aren't there, so you haven't got so many fishing trips going out at that time of the year. You haven't got as many eyes on the water.

CRAWFORD: That's a good point. But what I'm trying to get to is - even with that reduced Human presence and activity on the water, it still came as a bit of a surprise ...

LEASK: The attack down on Campbell Island, which is two or three hundred kilometres south of here, that was in about June or July. It was like a winter-type thing - when we thought they were all way up at Fiji or something like that. We thought the Sharks would have been moved away, and yet here's one three hundred miles south that attacked. A White Shark. 

CRAWFORD: What do you know about the circumstances of that attack? What did you hear about it?

LEASK: He was trying to spearfish, I think. Had people on the rocks - a girl had to jump in the tide and drag him out. But it took a bite, and shook the shit out of him, and then it let him go. He was lucky to survive. But I don't know - just what I read in the newspaper. Which might not have been 100% true. But we were quite surprised that they were there at that time of the year. 

CRAWFORD: That they were that far south, at that time of the year?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. We heard when the Whaling, which was in the summertime ... in the early days, when they were Whaling down in the Ross Sea and that, there was always Sharks hanging around the Whale boats. They were constant companions. You throw your scraps over the side, and you'd see fins gathering on them. So, we knew they went down to the Ross Sea. That's where the Toothfish boats and that go now. But that's sort of summertime, and we didn't realize ... They tagged three Sharks one year - one went to Australia, one went up to Fiji, and one went somewhere else.

CRAWFORD: Right. Prior to you learning about some of the Science tagging work that Clinton and Malcolm had done, what was the thinking about where and how long these White Pointers moved?

LEASK: We thought they arrived sort of in the summertime. As kids, we never used to go setnetting for Greenbone and stuff. Never used to do that out at the Islands in the summertime, because the Sharks were there. But in the wintertime we done quite a lot of Greenboning - netfishing - out there. When the Sharks aren't there, was what we thought during the wintertime. 

CRAWFORD: But you didn't know where the White pointers were, during the wintertime?

LEASK: No. We actually thought they went away up to the Tropics. But since they done the tagging and that, they have a wide range. No two Sharks actually behave quite the same.

CRAWFORD: Was it generally the thinking that when the White Pointers came here, that they were here to feed?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That these were prime feeding grounds?

LEASK: That's what we thought, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: That's a reasonable thing to think. Did anybody think about the White Pointers coming here to also be involved in any way in reproduction?

LEASK: Well, at the time we didn't know anything. It's a bit like the Eels. We didn't know anything about them, really. You now, about their breeding things. Before the Science studies, we actually thought it was just because of the food. We thought they probably did come from Australia. We didn't spend that might time thinking about them, really. Our thinking was they arrived about the same time as the Muttonbirds, and that wasn't a good time to go Greenboning.

CRAWFORD: Let's talk a bit more about Clinton and Malcolm's work. They've done a variety of different things. Have you been directly involved with them while they did their work here?

LEASK: Just like up at the DOC place, and watched the tapes and stuff of what they've done. Had a fair few drinks with them at different times. 

CRAWFORD: At the pub?

LEASK: Down at the DOC house, more often. After end of day, they'd normally go and have a feed, and then we'd quite often go up there. So, I've watched a lot of the footage they took. 

CRAWFORD: So, you've had some direct contact with both of those guys?

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: In general, what's your knowledge of the different types of work they've done on White Pointers in the Stewart Island region?

LEASK: The tagging, the acoustic tagging, and the satellite tagging - there's the three. And that the acoustic tagging was probably a big alert for the people, because they didn't tag that many Sharks, but there was lots of them hanging around this area here ...

CRAWFORD: The mouth and periphery of Paterson Inlet?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: They didn't have their acoustic receivers deployed all over the place, but where they did have them ... I've heard the ones around the mouth of Paterson Inlet - the White Pointers showing up there, that was a surprise for a lot of people.

LEASK: That was a surprise. We expected the receivers out around these islands and that. We expected them to be getting lots, because that's where they were tagging them, out there. But we were surprised they were at Native Island and Ulva Island - those two beacons in particular. And one on the corner of the Neck, they surprised me more than any of the other acoustic work they done.

CRAWFORD: Partly because there just hadn't been that many visual observations of the White Pointers at those locations?

LEASK: No great numbers of Seals or anything up there. And that's when we thought they're not just here to feed on the Seals. They're here for other food as well. 

CRAWFORD: Or other reasons?

LEASK: Other reasons, yeah. I was very disappointed when they actually didn't do any research last year. Because they were sort of building up a bit of knowledge. And then when they called it off, everything was too hot down here.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean 'too hot'?

LEASK: Too many people were against them. And they were going on about DOC attracting Sharks - doing the same thing the Shark cage things were doing. So, there was quite a reaction.

CRAWFORD: This is the first I've heard of a strongly negative community response to the DOC tagging program with the White Pointers.

LEASK: Oh, it was quite a reaction against them as well. Clinton and Malcolm as well. Around using the DOC boat. You ought to talk to [Steve Meads??].

CRAWFORD: I asked, but he declined to interview. This is the first I've heard that people had any opposition to what DOC was doing with the White Pointers.

LEASK: Because they were doing the same, you see? Because they were berleying out, and doing all the things trying to tag them. So, there was quite a thing. They were all booked in to do it all, and then they cancelled it. 

CRAWFORD: Was it just an impression, or did somebody tell you that Clinton and Malcolm were told it was politically too contentious, and that they needed to cancel their research?

LEASK: I was politically contentious, because I was taking people out and I was showing people Sharks and that. But we were trying to do it without actually throwing Tuna around, or cutting up Seals or anything.

CRAWFORD: No, no, no. I mean ...

LEASK: But the opposition to me was ... I'd go into the pub, and there were big rows and stuff. Same thing was happening to Kina Scollay. Kina came down, and he went out with Peter Scott last year and that. He was telling me that the opposition from Stewart Island was the reason why DOC didn't do the research anymore. 

CRAWFORD: So, there was opposition to the Shark cage dive operations. And opposition to the DOC research program because they were berleying and hooking and handling the White Pointers to get their tags on them. And also opposition to you because of you throwing Codframes ...

LEASK: Just throwing the Codframes over. 

CRAWFORD: As part of your charter tour operation.

LEASK: It's the waste product, the Codframes, anyway. It's the waste product from the fishing charter. Sometimes I'd leave some on board. If we catch fish somewhere, and then we wouldn't throw them off while we were steaming - we'd wait until we stopped steaming before we threw them off. That was my part of the berleying up.

CRAWFORD: I understand. Getting back to the Science research, had you heard directly from Clinton and Malcolm that they were told to cancel their White Pointer tagging research at Stewart Island? 

LEASK: No, just Kina.

CRAWFORD: Ok. With regards to Science, let's get back to the contribution of their knowledge, then. For their decade of scientific research here ...

LEASK: They just confused us. [chuckles] It surprised us. There was a lot of information that was surprising a lot of people. 

CRAWFORD: Well, confusing maybe initially - compared to what had been thought previously?

LEASK: It was different from what we were expecting. 

CRAWFORD: The hydroacoustic work was a very good example of that kind of surprise. In terms of the satellite tagging, what would you say is the most important thing that you learned from the satellite work they did?

LEASK: Oh, just the distance that they travelled. They're an international fish. The ones they tagged, there was Fiji, and southern Australia. It just surprised me - I thought the Sharks would hang around the New Zealand area. But they're not just hanging around.

CRAWFORD: So, the scale of the migration was much bigger than you had expected?

LEASK: And the individual way the Sharks acted. They're not all going to the same place. They're not all rushing away to get to the Seal breeding somewhere else, or something like that. Some were going continuously, like a straight line ... there was the one went to Australia and back in about a week. It was quite amazing.

CRAWFORD: How do you interpret that? When you see the satellite tracks, and you see a White Pointer doing that kind of long-distance, straight line path? And fast. What does that tell you about these White Pointers?

LEASK: They're looking. They're a bit like us, when we're Tunaing. You steam round and round in circles, you get sick of that, and you go in a straight line sometimes if it's not working. There must be either food or breeding over in both places.

CRAWFORD: Did you get a sense these White Pointers - even when they're out in the middle of the Tasman Sea - that they know where they are, and where they're going?

LEASK: Not particularly. 

CRAWFORD: Some people have said they're getting this impression that these White Pointers know where they are, in a very big seascape.

LEASK: There was a lot of Sharks have been tagged two years ago. Last year on the tourist trips, we weren't seeing many tagged ones. Might be one in ten we were seeing was tagged. And I think they done 120 or 130. That sort of makes me think it's not all the same Sharks coming back. Some are the same ones are coming back. And some Sharks they hadn't seen for a few years, and all of a sudden they turn up again. They've got no fences, so they're a bit like the bloody old Buffalo years ago. They've no fences - they can go in different areas. There might be something, Whale strandings or something like that might have an effect on them. 

CRAWFORD: Or these migrations might be a big deal, and it's just not something you do every year.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. That could be too.

CRAWFORD: But then there's the idea that they come back to Stewart Island, they come back to the Titi Islands ...

LEASK: But they're not the same Sharks every time. 

CRAWFORD: When the satellite tags start to show them coming back - maybe they'll mosey along, maybe they'll stop along the way ...

LEASK: But sometimes they're direct.

CRAWFORD: Yes. And sometimes they come back to the exact same location they were at before. 

LEASK: To me, that's why they need to be doing more tagging. The Shark numbers have been protected in Australia, they're protected here. It's going to be interesting - with people targeting them around places in Australia, like Port Lincoln, in that area. Without people targeting them, whether they were going to change their pattern a wee bit, or whether ...

CRAWFORD: Because they may actually be affecting the White Pointers that come back here at Stewart Island, for part of the year?

LEASK: Yeah. Well, one Shark he was here, and then he was in Australia. That's a pretty good swim. 

CRAWFORD: But if they're culling them over in Australia, they could actually be killing White Pointers that belong here, for part of the year.

LEASK: But they're protected in Australia now too, you see.

CRAWFORD: Well, there's debate about the policy for culling off the beaches.

LEASK: Now there is. But they protected them for five or six years. And now they're saying "Well, hang on. We can't let them go unchecked."

CRAWFORD: Ok. What do you know about Clinton and Malcolm's photo-identification project?

LEASK: I've sat up at the DOC place when they had the GoPros and other stuff on the big screen. You can see the different marks, and the Sharks are individuals. And you'd never pick it out just looking over the side of the boat and that. It's not till you actually put still-photos on a big screen that you can see.

CRAWFORD: Then you can see - these images are different White Pointers, those images are from the same White Pointer.

LEASK: Yeah. Peter Scott is doing the same thing. I've spent a fair bit of time with him on his boat. He'd have videos and that. And he had photographs from quite a few years ago. They'd notice "This is a new Shark", and "Oh no, hang on. That was a juvenile beforehand." 

CRAWFORD: In terms of the photo-identification work specifically, did you get a sense of any type of surprises, or new ideas about the number of different individual White Pointers around the Islands?

LEASK: It did surprise me, when they first started the tagging ...

CRAWFORD: Not the tagging, the photo-ID work ...

LEASK: Yeah, but when they were out there, and they were photographing - they weren't getting every one. And the photos, identifying them, and the amount of Sharks they were seeing - like seven or eight. When they first started to do it, it was surprising to me. They could tell, they were known to them. They were naming the ones they were tagging, but they had other ones there that were too shy to get close to the tagging. Those GoPro cameras have made it all sort of possible. So much better than the cameras they had before, twenty or even ten tears ago. That's making the research a lot easier, I think.

CRAWFORD: Right. Are you aware of any White Pointer attacks on Humans in the Foveaux Strait - Stewart Island region?

LEASK: No. But ... there was the car crash off Tiwai Bridge. There was half a body was pulled up. But that could have been Sevengillers or something. That was years ago.

CRAWFORD: Where's Tiwai Bridge?

LEASK: You know where Tiwai Aluminium Smelter is?

CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah, yeah.

LEASK: There's a big wharf that comes out where the ships lay. There was a car with six people went off the wharf there. And they only found half a body. 

CRAWFORD: Half of one body?

LEASK: Half of one body, of the six. A lot of people go missing out here. Pretty happy if they actually get a body back. Something was cleaning up - but it could be Sea Lice. Like, bodies don't necessarily float. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, that might have been an attack, or it might have been a White Pointer scavenging on Human carcasses?

LEASK: And the Campbell Island attack, that sort of surprised us. Dunedin ones - they had Shark nets out. The attacks there, and we were thinking it's just like you get a rogue Dog or something. Like 90% have no interest in biting, but when a Shark does have a bite of someone, it does a lot of damage. They have hooked on to boats, rudders especially. There's the Shark that grabbed the bow of the boat - I'll show you, I'll bring the newspaper clipping off the boat, if I go out there later on, and let you have a wee look at that. That was a Shark that grabbed the boat by the bow, and it just started shaking it. Interactions, but they're not really on to people, more on to boats.

CRAWFORD: But I asked you if you knew of any White Pointer attacks on Humans - and you're not aware of any in the Stewart Island region?

LEASK: No, no. I did hear ... I took the Discovery Channel people over to the Neck, so they could do some filming. They had a Riverton surfer, and he had his surfboard was bitten. Surfies and that have seen them, but definitely no fatal attacks that I know of. 

CRAWFORD: Regardless of any reason why, do you think there has been an increase in the number of White Pointer-Human interactions over the past decade?

LEASK: Out at the Islands doing the tourist thing, from when I had the [Laloma??] to when I'm doing it now, I could say there probably is. There's more Drive-Bys. More Sharks probably get interested than there was beforehand. But that's from two boats - and there's a ten-year gap in between that too.

CRAWFORD: Fair enough. That's one person's observation. A person who had experience before and after cage dive operations. Other than your own charter work, have you heard of other people who are going over to the Islands to see the White Pointers?

LEASK: Oh, yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Has that increased over time?

LEASK: It has, yeah. Every time it's on the news ... I know quite a lot of the Bluff people, they do come over. If they're coming to Stewart Island, they'll stop off at Edwards Island on the way, and things like that. That's non-commercial people. There's a lot more interest in the Sharks now, than there was ever before.

CRAWFORD: Has that increase in non-commercial White Pointer tourism increased with the presence of the cage dive operations, and it being in the news and all that kind of stuff?

LEASK: It has, yeah. The news especially. Every time there's something on the news, we get more phone calls. Peter Scott and Mike Haines both get more phone calls and that. So, the public awareness ... And with them being so handy. It's not like when you go to South Africa.

CRAWFORD: It's right there. [pointing out window] 

LEASK: It's right out there. [chuckles] Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Even from Bluff, it's a 45-minute boat ride.

LEASK: Yeah. Well less, now they got the new boats. 

4. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - DIRECT EXPERIENCES

CRAWFORD: When was the first time that you remember hearing about, or seeing, a White Pointer?

LEASK: Oh, I'd be two or three years old. Dad used to bring his fish into Horseshoe Bay, into the shed there. Be cleaning his fish. Everyone used to do it - go into either Frenchman's or Deadman's. Clean the fish. Throwing the Codheads over. And Sharks come and picking up every one of them. You had lots of Mollymawks around, and as soon as the Mollymawks disappeared you knew the Sharks had arrived. We used to tie bits of string, string them up ...

CRAWFORD: String what up?

LEASK: String up the Codheads, baitfish. Throw them over ... We weren't actually trying to catch them, we were just trying to get them to grab the pieces of string, and things like that. As kids - and I had older Brothers as well.

CRAWFORD: Ok. This is the first time anybody has talked to me about this. People have told me about being over at Deadman's, dumping their Codframes, coming back the next day and they were gone. But they never actually saw the Sharks. But you've got firsthand observations from an early age ...

LEASK: From a very early age. 

CRAWFORD: Like, less than five?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And you said Sharks, as in plural? 

LEASK: Normally, it seemed to be twos and threes. You'd see a bigger one, and smaller ones. Deadman's was a place where lots of people used to go and clean their fish, when we were kids. Normally if we see one, we see two or three. 

CRAWFORD: That's a good observation. How many other boats would typically be cleaning there at a time? On an average day?

LEASK: Probably two or three boats. And the same in Horseshoe - we used to go in Frenchman's, where there was an old anchor we used to pick up. Sometimes, we'd have two boats or three boats tied up together.

CRAWFORD: I don't know that you would remember this ... and I guess it depends on whether you came in when there were already boats there ... Was it usually the case that when you guys showed up, there were already one or two boats there? Or was your Dad typically the first?

LEASK: No. Sometimes there were other boats there. 

CRAWFORD: My reason for asking is, sometimes you were first. And when you were first, were the White Pointers there - waiting?

LEASK: Normally, when you're steaming, there are lots of birds coming in. 

CRAWFORD: You were cleaning while you were steaming back in?

LEASK: We were. 

CRAWFORD: Was it the case that your Dad had an autopilot or something while you were steaming?

LEASK: We didn't have an autopilot, but he used to have a tiller at the back. Steer and clean fish at the same time. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly what kind of speed are we talking about?

LEASK: Oh, probably five or six knots - when you're cleaning fish. You always had a crew, so there was two of them cleaning fish. 

CRAWFORD: The point is - the frames were going overboard while you were streaming?

LEASK: Well, the heads in them days. We used to head and gut all the fish, in the early days. It wasn't until later on we started filleting. 

CRAWFORD: So, the heads and guts were going overboard as the boat was steaming back in at five or six knots. Well, I need to back up. Do you remember seeing or hearing about White Pointers around the boat while you were handlining for fish?

LEASK: We used to lose the odd handline. And it would be just a clean bite. We were sort of "Well, there's probably a pretty big Shark down there." [chuckles] If that happened, you lifted your lines up, and shifted a wee bit.

CRAWFORD: Did that typically work? If you brought in your lines, and moved someplace else?

LEASK: Sometimes, yeah. We didn't lose a lot, because we had great big, heavy metal sinkers on them. The Shark would have been just curious. 

CRAWFORD: I think it would be reasonable for people to think that it would have been a big fish of some kind. And reasonable to expect that it would have been a Shark. Did you ever see, or hear about, White Pointers following the handlines back up to the boat?

LEASK: The only place I remember seeing Sharks while we were fishing, was up at Smoky. It's quite shallow water, where we were fishing there. 

CRAWFORD: Was this when you were a kid on your Dad's boat, fishing at Smoky?

LEASK: As a kid, yeah. We were probably fishing around these rocks here. 

CRAWFORD: So, for all that time that you were out fishing with your Dad, you only remember once that you saw a White Pointer while you were actually fishing?

LEASK: Yeah, it was just swimming around. It wasn't attacking our lines or anything. 

CRAWFORD: But it wasn't uncommon that sometimes you'd have a cut line, or maybe just bring up a head that was left of the fish on the handline?

LEASK: Oh, yeah - when you're getting Groper and stuff like that.

CRAWFORD: Was that generally throughout the entire region? Or were there some places more than others?

LEASK: Well, later on when the Groper fishing around Mason's, and around that area, was really big for just getting a half a fish. Just the head of a Groper.

CRAWFORD: Was that also occasionally out in the Titi Islands, or the northeast side of the Island?

LEASK: We stopped handlining, and started using Codpots, so ...

CRAWFORD: Remind me - when did you switch over from handlines to using Codpots?

LEASK: Dad got the first ones when I was about twelve. But I done trips away handlining - like with Peter Leask - in about 1980. Other ones, we did go now and again. Go back and have a try at it.

CRAWFORD: Ok. I'd like to get back to Deadman's Bay. I asked you when was the first time you remember seeing a White Pointer, and you said Deadman's Bay ...

LEASK: No, actually it was Horseshoe Bay, but Deadman's Bay was about the same time.

CRAWFORD: About the same time, and it was the same type of activity - fish cleaning stations? Similar in terms of the conditions, and what you saw?

LEASK: Yeah. Cleaning on the moorings.

CRAWFORD: And I took it back to whether you had seen White Pointers where your Dad had been fishing, even before heading back in - cleaning on the way, or cleaning at the station. Do you remember yourself, or do you remember your Dad or other fishermen talking about, seeing any indication that White Ponters were following the boat back in? As the heads and guts were going over?

LEASK: Well, the birds are normally pretty efficient. The Mollymawks and that would be coming in, fish would hit the water and the Mollymawks would scoop it up. 

CRAWFORD: So, there wasn't any major indication of White Pointers following the boat to the cleaning stations?

LEASK: No, but you wouldn't either - because your boat's moving. By the time you clean one fish ... you'd clean one head, and the next head would be way down by the [edge of your section??]. When you're steaming, you wouldn't see anything. 

CRAWFORD: Even at five or six knots? I guess that's a decent clip.

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. When you were steaming back, roughly how long would that have taken?

LEASK: Half an hour, normally. Most of the places out here. Out in these Islands here, you'd be back in half an hour.

CRAWFORD: Was it the case that you would stop in at the wharf, offload, and then head to a cleaning station? Or straight to a cleaning station, finish up, and then to the wharf?

LEASK: No, no, no. You clean up first, clean up all your fish. Hose your deck down, make sure everything was tidied up. And then go in and unloaded your fish boxes.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's go back to you remembering being at the cleaning stations, the crews not only of your boat but often others as well. When you were first to get to the cleaning station - and I'm not sure you would remember - but were the White Pointers already there? Or did they come after the first boat got there and continued cleaning?

LEASK: Well, normally the birds would be there. And then they would take off. So, the Sharks probably weren't there when we first got there. Sometimes you'd go, and somebody would be cleaning, and there wouldn't be any birds there. So, the Sharks would already be there.

CRAWFORD: Tell me a bit more about the birds. Was there an interaction between the birds and the White Pointers?

LEASK: Well, that's the main signal. If we're handlining out in the tourist boat, we'll have Mollymawks around us. We'll always have birds around us, for the scraps we're throwing out. Soon as the Shark appears, the Mollymawks disappear. We have had, on the tourist boat last year, one Shark came out of the water, grabbed a Mollymawk in its mouth, disappeared down, and about probably two or three minutes later this poor old Mollymawk came up, and it's wings ... it's got two sergeant’s stripes on it, these two pieces of its wing. If I'd had a gun, I would have just shot it. We didn't have a gun on board, but if I'd had the thing, I would have shot it. But this poor old bird. I thought the Shark would come back and get it, but it didn't. 

 CRAWFORD: That is another clear, direct interaction between the birds and the White Pointers. Do you think that when the birds see the White Pointers, the birds bugger off because they realize that could happen to them?

LEASK: That they could be a target. Other people have seen it quite often. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Let's get back to the birds maybe being at the fish cleaning stations prior to the first boat coming in.

LEASK: No, the birds always followed us.

CRAWFORD: You always brought the birds in with you?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do the birds typically follow the boats, just when motoring - even with fishing?

LEASK: No. As soon as you start cleaning, you get one bird interested, and then the rest of them get interested as well. You'll see the Mollymawks will be quite high up, flying around, and then you throw some rubbish over and they come in.

CRAWFORD: I can imagine you might have one or two right away, because they may have been just in the vicinity ...

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: How long does it take for the others to come in?

LEASK: Oh, minutes.

CRAWFORD: If you were out, say at Bench Island when you were doing this, how many birds would you get around the boat? Roughly?

LEASK: You'd have up to around a hundred. Some places, like when we're down the Traps and places like that, we'd probably have 30 or 40 Albatrosses - and then the Mollymawks as well. You might have two or three hundred birds around you then. There's not many Codheads, when you're throwing them over the side, there would not be many that would stay on the water for long at all. The Mollymawks will dive down to probably 20 feet or more. They'll dive down after them. The heads actually sink, and the birds will still come in get them. 

CRAWFORD: Alright. Getting back to the cleaning sites around Halfmoon and Horseshoe ... the birds would have followed you there, and hung around while you continued to clean fish. Would the White Pointers always come? Or usually come? Or sometimes come?

LEASK: Probably more sometimes. It wasn't always. But it always seemed to be after Christmas, and around that time. Not very many in the winter. Summertime, especially when there was a few people going to the same place. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. There's a couple things going on there. Partly, there's a seasonality to the fishery. And partly maybe the potential that there are more White Pointers during some times of the year, than others. 

LEASK: When the Muttonbirds arrive, which is normally October-November, the Strait's full of food. That's our warmer time. Eventually the westerlies and the other stuff. The Muttonbirds arrive, and they're feeding. And that seems to be when the Sharks turn up as well. Peter Scott did some cage diving throughout the year, and they did have the odd Shark at funny times of the year. But typically, to do it properly, that's why they're gearing up from there on. Because it's typically the time. End of November to June, sort of thing.

CRAWFORD: Right. But we're still back in your early years. And you said 'sometimes' you'd see a White Pointer at the cleaning stations. Maybe 30-40 percent of the time?

LEASK: Yeah, 30 percent, I reckon.

CRAWFORD: And if you saw them, you might see one - but typically see a couple or a few?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: I'm not sure how you would have known this, but when there was a group of White Pointers - did you get the sense that they arrived as a group? Or as individuals?

LEASK: Quite often ... like with Joe Cave's nets, to catch three. If there were Sharks around someplace ... The Shark boats, they write them down, since they've been protected. 

CRAWFORD: We'll get there. Cage diving definitely comes up later. But back in the day, when you were a kid on your Dad's boat at the cleaning stations, do you remember the White Pointers interacting with each other at all?

LEASK: Yeah. The wee ones would keep out of the way of the bigger ones. The little ones would move around sometimes. The little ones are probably quicker. 

CRAWFORD: So, back in the day, you would see a variety of sizes. Did they ever scrap? Fight with each other?

LEASK: No, no. Just pushing.

CRAWFORD: When the White Pointers came to a cleaning station, would they circle around first, and then come in start feeding on the Codheads?

LEASK: We'd normally be looking for them, once the birds buggered off.

CRAWFORD: How long between when the birds buggered off and the first White Pointer arrived? Roughly?

LEASK: Oh, minutes. You're not stopping cleaning, you're still cleaning. When they were heading and gutting, it didn't take long. You'd see two or three Codheads going down, and the Shark would typically go for the deeper ones first. And quite often, they just swim around the surface - and not be interested in eating anything. Sometimes, you'd just see the fin swimming around. Some of them wouldn't come in, some of them would.

CRAWFORD: What kind of water depth was the boat in at the cleaning stations?

LEASK: Oh, 20 feet. 

CRAWFORD: I'm guessing you could see to the bottom?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Did you see piles of Codheads accumulating on the bottom over time?

LEASK: No. Because the birds would eat them if the Sharks weren't there. Typically, you could go and clean, you could have a few boats cleaning in Deadman's say, you throw over stuff. There'd be nothing there, the next day.

CRAWFORD: Right. But the idea that the birds are there for the first part, and the White Pointers are there for the second part. I guess what I was trying to figure out was, did you ever see White Pointers actually feeding on Codheads off the bottom?

LEASK: No, no. Just curious.

CRAWFORD: Other than circling, what other kinds of behaviours did you see from the White Pointers at the cleaning stations? How would you know a White Pointer was curious?

LEASK: Oh, we used to throw things over - we used to tie things on, different things.

CRAWFORD: And what would they do?

LEASK: Well, quite often they'd just be looking. You'd throw one over, and they'd just look at them.

CRAWFORD: How would you know that they were looking at the things you had tied to the line?

LEASK: You can see their eyes. When they come around the boat, they'll sort of roll up over. They don't normally seem to be aggressive. They're pretty efficient swimmers, sort of cruising.

CRAWFORD: If a curious White Pointer swam by, would it roll its head up ...

LEASK: Sometimes, yeah.

CRAWFORD: ... so one eye is looking more at you or the boat?

LEASK: Yeah. People quite often comment on that.

CRAWFORD: Were they typically below the surface, or at the surface?

LEASK: Just below, normally.

CRAWFORD: With the fin cutting?

LEASK: Sometimes, but mostly below. Like three or four feet under.

CRAWFORD: Was it rare that a White Pointer would lift its head up out of the water?

LEASK: Well, there's the old newspaper trick - that's one way to get it done. 

CRAWFORD: What's the newspaper trick?

LEASK: You put a piece of newspaper on the water, and the Shark will come up. Sevengillers do it as well. We done that last year - we had some people out, and we could see some Sharks under the water, and they wanted to see them closer. I put some newspaper on the water, and that brings them up. Quite often with Dad, we used to use newspapers as a tablecloth on the boat. He'd throw a paper over, and they'd sometimes come and grab hold of something that's off the surface of the water.

CRAWFORD: That seems to be a different behaviour - in at least two different regards. First, it's different in the sense that other than putting a head on a line - you were putting something else on or in the water. But then, it sounds like the newspaper was evoking a different response than a Codhead?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Don't leave that thought. But in terms of the White Pointers responding to the regular kind of fish cleaning, there wasn't a lot of rapid swimming, or head-shaking, tail-slapping ...

LEASK: No, no. Not normally, no.

CRAWFORD: With just the normal business of fish cleaning at these stations, even with kids tying Codheads onto lines, did the White Pointers ever interact with the boats with any type of attitude or edge?

LEASK: No. But other people would say they were quite aggressive.

CRAWFORD: Yes, I've heard. In the Stewart Island region, have you seen or ever heard of White Pointers following boats?

LEASK: Just dinghies and small boats, sometimes.

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts?

LEASK: Well, Paterson's Inlet. One followed us at Ulva. 

CRAWFORD: A small boat, going at low speed.

LEASK: Rowing, so you're making splashes. That would probably sound like Mackerel jumping, or other things.

CRAWFORD: Could very well. What about White Pointers following fishing boats?

LEASK: Well, they've turned up pretty soon after we started cleaning sometimes. So, they could have followed you from someplace else.

CRAWFORD: And maybe you didn't see them following?

LEASK: Cause we're cleaning, while we're steaming. And you probably don't see the Shark until they come up to the surface. 

CRAWFORD: Or it could be that they're hanging out around the cleaning station, waiting for you?

LEASK: Yeah, they could be. Like at Deadman's, when Gary Neave and that, moorings in there, and lots of us going and cleaning there. Normally, it would be ten minutes of so after you got there, you'd see a Shark. They weren't long, so they weren't that far away. Although they could probably go from Edwards Island to Deadman's in ten minutes - at 9 knots, or 10 knots, they could probably cover that distance.

CRAWFORD: You think these White Pointers can do 10 knots for 10 minutes?

LEASK: Oh, easy. They can probably do 20 knots when they want to.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, but over a prolonged period of time, you think they can do that speed?

LEASK: Well, the tagged one that went to Australia - was it 'Geraldine', I think. It had to average about 10 knots for five days. Every sighting seemed to be ... and that could have been like because there's a Tiwai boat, and then there's the boats going to Gladstone, so it might have been following the ship that's taking that route.

CRAWFORD: You're the first person to bring that up! Because all we know from the satellite record is where the White Pointer was at a time. Other than swimming, we don't know what it was doing. A very good point - thank you.

LEASK: Yeah. They followed the sailing ships, like in the old days too. They were throwing the scraps and stuff over, and the Shark fins and that. So, it could be a learned behaviour from years ago. That's where I think we need more study.

CRAWFORD: Excellent points. But to bring the issue back home, you have not seen White Pointers following bigger boats, but it could be happening?

LEASK: Yeah. It's quite possible. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's talk a bit more about the newspaper. As a young guy on your Dad's boat, was that the first time you remember seeing or hearing about newspapers going over - and the White Pointers responding?

LEASK: It was like [Bruce Nielsen??] at Port Adventure ... he was throwing stuff. We were sitting there with our rifles, we were shooting these Sevengillers. And there was the newspaper, and the Sharks would come in, and the Sevengillers. They wouldn't actually really be taking it, they'd just start pushing it from underneath, and we'd start shooting and quite often get them. That's the Sevengiller Sharks.

CRAWFORD: This was back in the day still?

LEASK: Yeah. This was about '69.

CRAWFORD: Sevengillers would come up to newspaper floating at the surface. You said they would 'push' - would this be casual pushing? Or pushing while coming up out of the water?

LEASK: Most would come out of the water.

CRAWFORD: So, there was something strongly attracting to to these Sharks, by a piece of newspaper floating at the surface?

LEASK: Yeah. Whether it was the light goes through it, and that ... whatever it was.

CRAWFORD: But back in the day, with the White Pointers at the cleaning stations, were people putting newspapers over to attract Sharks, or were they just cleaning?

LEASK: People were trying to catch them. Quite a lot of people tried to catch them. 

CRAWFORD: At the cleaning stations?

LEASK: Yeah, around things. People used to have 45-gallon drums ...

CRAWFORD: Hold on to that, please. We'll be getting to the idea of people trying to catch White Pointers in just a bit. We're still focussing on people and newspapers at the cleaning stations. So, was that the first time you had seen or heard about that happen with White Pointers?

LEASK: Just Dad used to use a bit of newspaper to clean, and you'd throw it over, in a cardboard box or something like that ...

CRAWFORD: By accident, or on purpose?

LEASK: On purpose. Not to attract the Sharks, just you clean up your sandwiches or whatever, and you throw the newspaper over. So, it wasn't actually to attract the Sharks. But that was the only time I actually seen them come up out of the water and that. When we were young.

CRAWFORD: And that just happened to be at a cleaning station, where there were other things going on?

LEASK: Normally, yeah. You know, a cup of tea when you clean up.

CRAWFORD: Right. Have you seen in other cases, not at cleaning stations, when newspaper or cardboard or a piece of wood goes overboard, and the White Pointers come up to investigate?

LEASK: No. Just when I've been doing this tourist thing there, I've been doing it a wee bit. From about 2015.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Even though I'm still focused on your early days, let's take a minute for these more recent events, and then we'll go back again. 

LEASK: I quite often put a newspaper in my pocket when I'm going out in the boat.

CRAWFORD: This is a recent thing, as part of your charter ... people are going out there, and some specifically want to see a White Pointer?

LEASK: They want to see one come right up.

CRAWFORD: I'm guessing that it's possible, if you go nearby where the cage dive operations are running, that you might see one there. But you have found that you can actually attract the White Pointers just by putting newspaper on the surface?

LEASK: We're lining - my people are lining. 

CRAWFORD: Oh, so they're fishing already?

LEASK: They're line-fishing already. I think that the fish struggling on the lines ... and probably Bench Island where I've seen the most Sharks often, around Flat Rock. Edwards Island, just about always we go out there, we would. But around Flat Rock, around Bench Island, that's another place where they hang out. There's Seals and that. Round this side here. That'd probably be the most common place I've had the sightings. Not out at Edwards.

CRAWFORD: In recent times, within the past couple of years, while you were running charters when people are handlining for Cod ... If they say "Hey, we'd like to see a White Pointer." What do you do?

LEASK: I do go to certain places. I go to Edwards or Bench. And I just get them to start fishing. 

CRAWFORD: Will the White Pointers come to your charter boat, just with them handlining?

LEASK: They will, yeah. That's how we've mostly seen them. And while they're fishing, I'm cleaning the fish. So, I'm throwing over the bits. 

CRAWFORD: But these are individuals, handlining for fun. There's not really that much fish cleaning going on - compared to a commercial dayfisherman?

LEASK: No, no. Twenty or thirty fish.

CRAWFORD: And then you put out newspaper sometimes, on top of that?

LEASK: Well, I've been doing the newspaper lately. 

CRAWFORD: But from the White Pointer's perspective, it's actually a combination of things. A combination of the place, and the activity - your linefishing - plus the fish cleaning - Cod heads and frames. And then potentially, you much put some newspaper out. But it's not any one of those things.

LEASK: No, no. We don't advertise.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Do you remember multiple White Pointers - like a group? Or did you even hear those kinds of specifics?

LEASK: There was actually a couple of times when we've seen them. Normally, you'd just see the fins for a wee bit. They weren't hanging around, they were swimming. Amongst the boats in Halfmoon Bay.

CRAWFORD: And they were just cruising? They weren't agitated or anything like that?

LEASK: They didn't seem to be, no.

CRAWFORD: And then the big Shark nets went out. And one or two of the White Pointers get caught? Were you around for that?

LEASK: I remember Joe getting three. We just seen them pulled up on the beach - at Butterfield's, they had them up on the beach. We didn't even actually stop, we were just driving past and seen them.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember any of the White Pointers, including those that got hung up at the wharf, being cut open to see what they ate?

LEASK: I remember one being cut open ...

CRAWFORD: That you heard about, or you saw?

LEASK: No, we seen. That's the only one that I've seen cut open, the one that had some whole Blue Cod in it.

CRAWFORD: I heard that at least one of the White Pointers that got cut open had a lot of Codframes in it. And people were surprised that it had fish frames in it.

LEASK: No, this one didn't, I'm pretty sure. This was people going on about them eating Blue Cod. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's try and get back to your general knowledge of White Pointer distribution and abundance. After those early observations, up until the cage dive operations started up, roughly how many White Pointers had you seen in the wild? Roughly?

LEASK: Without doing the first set of charters about eleven years ago, probably ten or twelve.

CRAWFORD: Where would you have seen them?

LEASK: Around Waituna, Mason's Bay ... oh, I've probably seen more than ten or twelve. Mason's Bay, we were flying in there, and there was a big one just in the shallows off Mason's there. 

CRAWFORD: That you saw from the air?

LEASK: Seen from the air as we were coming in. The amphibian plane landed in the water. We circled around, you could see it quite clearly looking down.

CRAWFORD: When was that?

LEASK: That was quite a few years ago. Thirty years ago, probably.

CRAWFORD: And in behind Codfish, when was that?

LEASK: Ten or fifteen years ago. Fishing around there. Same thing, though. That was a place where we go in and clean. But it's also a place where there's quite a lot of Seals on the rocks and stuff as well. It's one of the better anchorages around there. We anchor in Waituna, and people clean fish there a lot. So, you could call it a fish cleaning station as well. All these places that we go, we go to anchorages and that, and we are dumping rubbish over. 

CRAWFORD: Have most of your experiences with White Pointers been at cleaning stations?

LEASK: Yeah. Or Crayfishing up along the Five Fingers. Quite often we'd see the fins and that along there, and outside the Seal rookeries.

CRAWFORD: Where is that?

LEASK: Outside Dusky Sound, to Breaksea Sound. The third and fourth Sounds, going up. 

CRAWFORD: When you were Crayfishing there, you'd see White Pointer fins?

LEASK: Sometimes you'd see fins. Normally, something would catch your eye. You'd either see the Seals disappearing, or something would catch your eye, and then you'll see a fin.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever have interactions with White Pointers up in Fiordland?

LEASK: Not really, no. We never tried to catch them, no.

CRAWFORD: Did they ever circle, or show higher levels of interest?

LEASK: We're normally working, so your boat's hardly stopping. You're picking one pot up, circling around, setting that, and picking up the next one. So, you're never actually stopping.

CRAWFORD: Right. But neither are the White Pointers showing interest in your Crayfishing pots?

LEASK: No. 

CRAWFORD: Refresh my memory ... did you do any Codpotting or linefishing, while you were Crayfishing up in Fiordland?

LEASK: Yeah, we had done. 

CRAWFORD: When you were doing that as a secondary activity, did the White Pointers interact more then?

LEASK: Normally, we weren't stopping then either. Because it's quite a long steam to anchorage and that, so normally we're cleaned up by the time we get into anchorage. So, normally we're just steaming round and round in circles, and not actually stopping very long.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Then let's focus on your pre-cage-diving experiences with White Pointers around Stewart Island that were not at fish cleaning stations. 

LEASK: The back of the Neck, seen fins there. We used to fish along there, and see fins sometimes. They could have been Mako, they may not have been Whites - because Makos and White Pointers look very similar. 

CRAWFORD: Let's talk about the distinction between Makos and White Pointers. You've seen both. What do you see that distinguishes between the two?

LEASK: There is more white on them. And normally, a bigger Shark. A good-sized Mako for us is probably about 12- or 14-foot or so. A good-sized White Pointer might be up to 20 feet. 

CRAWFORD: What about the shape of the dorsal fin, when you see them?

LEASK: No, I didn't notice. The White might be a sharper fin. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. What about differences in body shape when you see them in the water?

LEASK: You can't really ... I landed a couple of Makos. Underwater, they do look reasonably similar. Darker, I think. You can see the white on the White Pointers, normally. But underwater, the Makos look a bit darker - they're more blue. So, some of the sightings we've seen that were just fins, could've been either.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's get back to Doughboy - tell me about the White Pointers you've seen there.

LEASK: Well, Doughboy was not long after a Blackfish stranding. There were fins, quite a few fins, around that one.

CRAWFORD: When would that have been?

LEASK: It would have been twelve years ago, I suppose.

CRAWFORD: And that was a big stranding?

LEASK: It was quite a big stranding. I think 130 Blackfish. 

CRAWFORD: What time of year - do you remember?

LEASK: Before Christmas. November, December. Summertime.

CRAWFORD: When you saw the White Pointers at Doughboy, at the stranding site ... I mean, obviously the Blackfish were stranded in very, very shallow water. They were out of the water.

LEASK: They were on the beach. There was ones that had been floating out, and they were getting chewed to bits. 

CRAWFORD: Were the White Pointers fairly close to shore?

LEASK: Yeah, they were. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of depth?

LEASK: About what we were anchored in - probably about five fathom, thirty feet.

CRAWFORD: Is that the shallowest you've seen White Pointers?

LEASK: No, no. Out here now, we've seen them in eight or nine feet of water, out around Edwards. They come right in against the wharf, you get fifteen or twenty feet at the end of the wharf there, and we've seen them in around there.

CRAWFORD: Which wharf?

LEASK: Halfmoon Bay wharf. We've seen them around there, and that's pretty shallow.

CRAWFORD: Ok. At Doughboy, roughly how many White Pointers were there at the stranding?

LEASK: Oh, we were seeing three and four fins at a time, so you wouldn't know ... the other ones probably could have been underneath.

CRAWFORD: Could have been a half-dozen White Pointers there.

LEASK: Well, there could've been more too.

CRAWFORD: Did you notice anything about their behaviour? Were they actively feeding on carcasses, that you saw?

LEASK: Some of the ones we were seeing, were just swimming around at the surface. Whether they had already fed, or whether they were waiting to feed ... waiting for something to drift off.

CRAWFORD: Right.

LEASK: Some of the fishermen had actually taken some of the Blackfish out deeper. To try and help them out, when they heard about the stranding. So, we had gone to take a look. 

CRAWFORD: Were the White Pointers just milling around, under the surface?

LEASK: Well, they didn't seem to be very active. There was other people that had seen ... the [Forrests??], they reckoned that the Blackfish that were floating off, they were bouncing up and down. We had a Whale carcass out in the Strait that was doing the same. Those Sharks were probably eating from underneath them. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's bring it back closer to home. How many live White Pointers have you seen in Halfmoon Bay? Over the years?

LEASK: Probably between a dozen and twenty. They weren't really exceptional when I was a kid. We were sort of more interested seeing a Whale, or something like that. We seen dead ones, brought up on the beach. But live ones, probably between a dozen and twenty in Halfmoon Bay. 

CRAWFORD: Based on what you said, I do the math and it seems like on average you would see like one White Pointer per year?

LEASK: Yeah. When we were seeing them, quite often you'd see two or three. 

CRAWFORD: I'm interested in that too. Roughly, what was the split between seeing a White Pointer by itself, versus seeing a group of two or three? Would the split be 50:50? Half the time you'd see them individually, half the time you see them in groups?

LEASK: Probably, yeah. Doing the trips like we are now, the fishing trips out among the Islands, we're actually handlining around the Islands again - more often you'd see more than one.

CRAWFORD: Was this prior to the cage dive operations?

LEASK: Yeah. Both boats. 

CRAWFORD: Right. That's what I'm focussing on, is before the cage dive operations.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And back then, you'd go over to the Titi Islands in your charter boat ...

LEASK: Well, fish and scenics trips, was what I used to do.

CRAWFORD: Right. Including linefishing for Blue Cod?

LEASK: Yeah. Fishing and sight-seeing, because it only took about half-an-hour to catch enough fish. And then you'd make a four-hour trip out of it. Every time we seen them, school parties and other people out ... every time it was quite exciting, so we did start looking for them. 

CRAWFORD: This was back when?

LEASK: I could find the exact date, but I would say about 12 years ago - with the [Laloma??].

CRAWFORD: So, we're talking early 2000s?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. 1998, I might have bought the boat, actually. 

CRAWFORD: And back then, when you were linefishing out around the Islands, it was not uncommon to see a White Pointer, and it was not uncommon to see a group of White Pointers?

LEASK: Quite often, when you'd see one, you'd see a bigger one and some smaller ones, or something like that. With the Shark boats and that, we'd be seeing them one place, and they'd be seeing them another place.

CRAWFORD: But we're not talking about the Shark boats yet. Different part of the conversation. What I'm trying to do is get a handle on what the conditions were like before the cage dive operations. 

LEASK: Yeah, it was still the same places. You know, Edwards Island, Flat Rock, Bench Island. They were the places were it was quite common to see them around Christmas. That was our busiest time, too - was sort of November, December, January, February.

CRAWFORD: Busiest, in terms of your charter?

LEASK: Charters. I was sort of busy up to about March, and then we'd do less trips. All weather-dependent on doing fishing charters and that. It's not like when we're going Crayfishing, you can't take them out if it's too rough. So, you go into sheltered spots where it's calm.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's get back to the group behaviour of the White Pointers. And let's not focus on what you saw when you were fishing, because you were doing things that could actively be attracting them. When you saw White Pointers - and you were not linefishing, and it wasn't a fish cleaning station or anything like that. Under those non-fishing-related circumstances, do you still see them travelling in groups sometimes?

LEASK: Normally, you only see one set of fins at the surface. But we'll be steaming, or we're not actually stopping. If you're actually stopping, they're more likely to come around. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. I'm still thinking about Joe's big nets catching those three White Pointers together. Like a social group of them.

LEASK: Yeah, a lot of people couldn't understand that. Catching them. I think the value of the jewels was actually a bit of a driving thing for some of them. 

CRAWFORD: Realizing that you can have multiple motivation factors in the taking of the White Pointers ... but there was at least that one circumstance, that I've heard about from several people, when there was a group of White Pointers that came into the Bay on a fairly regular basis. And the nets caught two of the three, or something like that.

LEASK: [Jerry Field??] and Joe Cave and that, that was about that time of the year - people would have stopped Crayfishing and started Codding. We were always told that they come into Bathing Beach after the Skates. That was meant to be one of their favourite foods, and that's why they went up the Inlet. Like why they came into the estuaries. They were around a lot of estuaries, and that's why they were coming in was the Skates and the Flatfish. That's what we'd been told. That's why we thought they went in to Bathing Beach. 

CRAWFORD: That's what you were told, when you were kids?

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And that's why the Shark Warden there at the beach, in part?

LEASK: Bathing Beach, especially. Just someone ... looking down at the water, you get quite a good view - because it's clear, white sand. 

CRAWFORD: Many of the descriptions I've heard about this one incident, where it was a regular occurrence - that there were these three White Pointers that regularly came deep into Halfmoon Bay, almost on a daily basis like at midday. And I think you said you were around at the time?

LEASK: Yeah, I was around. And I remember when the plane had seen these Sharks in the net. But I actually thought Joe caught three of them out of there. Because there was three, and I thought he caught all three of them at Bathing Beach. 

CRAWFORD: Do you remember actually seeing these White Pointers coming in close to the wharf, cruising among the boats?

LEASK: Oh, yeah.

CRAWFORD: In a group of three?

LEASK: No. Just seeing ... we'd see one Shark, or something.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Do you remember hearing people talk about the White Pointers coming in as a group?

LEASK: I remember going down the wharf, after school to see these Sharks coming in. That was about the same time. 

CRAWFORD: Individual or group?

LEASK: No, it was still a group of them then. But even then, I think we were only mostly seeing one. But they were coming right in by the co-op. 

CRAWFORD: You've said before that, either at the fish cleaning stations or when you're fishing, you expect multiple White Pointers - and that makes sense, because there are attracting cues they could be responding to individually, and they end up in a group because of that. But when White Pointers are swimming around together, and there's no proximate thing - no fish or smell to attract them - it suggests that there's some kind of social behaviour that maybe we're not aware of. That they're together because they want to be together, rather than each of them just individually responding to some attracting cue. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Did you see them swimming through Halfmoon Bay as a group? Whether it was two or three or whatever?

LEASK: Normally, you'd only see one. But that doesn't mean there weren't two underneath.

CRAWFORD: Right. And it doesn't mean that there were additional White Pointers in a group. Or that there was a group - when you saw them, only one was visible; but further along the Bay someone else saw two or more.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Let's go over then to Paterson Inlet. I think you said you've seen White Pointers there?

LEASK: Yeah. I've seen one off of Ulva, when we crossed to Ulva as kids. Seen one follow their dinghy - we were rowing.

CRAWFORD: Are we talking the '70s then?

LEASK: Oh, late '60s. Off Ulva Island, off here. We were coming from Deep Bay, this bay here. We were rowing across to go camping on Ulva, and we came across the Shark every time we started paddling. Every time we started paddling, this thing was swimming around. We stopped paddling, and we drifted up - we went up here, because our Grandfather was expecting to see us. Far over at Sidney Cave, we were up to this end of Ulva, camping on the beaches there. We were just drifting. It wasn't threatening or anything. It was just coming around, seemed to be interested in us rowing in the clinker dinghy.

CRAWFORD: Roughly what time of year was this?

LEASK: Probably more likely the summertime. 

CRAWFORD: And this White Pointer, relative to the size of the clinker dinghy?

LEASK: It looked bigger. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: As a kid, it would look even bigger. [both chuckle]

LEASK: We had a 12-foot dinghy, but this Shark looked longer.

CRAWFORD: Was the White Pointer circling around, or was it following as you were rowing?

LEASK: It would just come up, and we'd stop rowing. And then it would disappear, and then we'd start rowing again, and it would come back up again. I don't know whether it was the splashing of the oars, or whatever it was. Something we were doing to attract it. 

CRAWFORD: So, this was beyond a Level 1 Observation. This White Pointer was definitely interacting with you. It's more than a Level 2 Drive-By, so it's more of a Level 3 showing interest. 

LEASK: Showing interest, but not aggression. Just curious.

CRAWFORD: It didn't bump the dinghy, or anything?

LEASK: No, no. I've quite often noticed the same thing with the newspaper over the side, and different things like that. Quite often, they're curious. You see the photographs with the big wide mouth and that - but the only thing I've seen them take is a Mollymawk, and the newspaper. While we're fishing, quite often they're looking. You'll see the eyes, and they'll come there. People take photographs, and that's what they go on. 

CRAWFORD: Eyes up out of the water, or below the water?

LEASK: Both. When they come along, quite often they sort of roll over a wee bit - so one eye is looking at you a fair bit. That's more recent observations, since we been doing the charters.

5. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS

CRAWFORD: Were there any people at the fish cleaning station who said the White Pointers were harassing them?

LEASK: Well, sometimes ... like one that was there, a Shark grabbed their boat, and gave it a shake. He got out a whole tooth - one was still in the boat. There was a photograph in the Southland Times as well, with the big Shark bite on the bow of his boat. 

CRAWFORD: When was this?

LEASK: That was 2005 or something. I've got the clippings still, on board my boat. I’ve got them laminated on my boat.

CRAWFORD: Ok. We'll get to these more recent events. But we're still discussing what happened back in the day.

LEASK: Yeah. People did say they'd sometimes grab hold of a rudder or something like that, and give it a shake.

CRAWFORD: Give it a shake, sure. I'm guessing maybe not over the top behaviour - ramming, thrashing, Level 4 behaviour? No White Pointer breaching and landing of the deck, or anything?

LEASK: No, no.

CRAWFORD: Not even anything remotely like a White Pointer 'frenzy' or anything like that?

LEASK: No.

CRAWFORD: Ok. You had told me that that your Son-In-Law saw a White Pointer maybe taking a Seal. Where was this, that it happened?

LEASK: That was out at Edwards. Out by the Shark divers.

CRAWFORD: Roughly when?

LEASK: Two years ago.

CRAWFORD: They were linefishing?

LEASK: They had been linefishing. They were looking for Sharks, so they kicked over all the skeletons. 

CRAWFORD: So, the Seals were interacting with the Codframes or heads or whatever? Is it common that the Seals will come over to a boat that has put stuff like that in the water?

LEASK: They will. They'll come, but quite often they'll just play with them too. If you're boning out the fish, you've got the tail - but you've still got the skin attached to the skeleton. Quite often, you'll see Seals start playing with them. They'd been seen there, and they'd been watching, and then they decided to go over by the Argo, the Shark dive boat. They were just moving away, and all of a sudden the Shark came right out of the water right behind him. Peter Scott - him and his punters seen it as well. 

CRAWFORD: I think Peter gave me his description of it. But from what you heard from your Son-In-Law, the White Pointer came up right next to the boat out of the water, Seal in the mouth ...

LEASK: And then disappears. Bits of skin were coming up. 

6. EFFECTS OF CAGE TOUR DIVE OPERATIONS

CRAWFORD: This final part of the interview focusses on the question of whether the cage dive operations are having an important, lasting effect on the White Pointers here. You said before that you've been out on Peter Scott's cage dive boat during operations, and you've been nearby in your boat when they've been doing their thing. 

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Imagine somebody's here from Auckland and doesn't know anything about cage diving. And you describe what you understand the process to be for a cage tour dive operation. They load up their punters, steam over to Edwards, and moor on the lee side. What are the next steps? What do they do?

LEASK: Normally, there's berley. It's just the juice ... What we done when I was out there with Peter Scott, he had a Tuna and he cut it in half. The head was one piece, the rest he jumped up and down and he was just using the juice. Now they've got a mincer ...

CRAWFORD: The DOC permit says they have to use a fine mince.

LEASK: High tide seemed to be when we had the most action with the Sharks. Which would sort of say that they're coming around ... like the Seals are the main berley that's there. They're just trying to distract the Sharks away from the Seals, I think.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What's next after berleying?

LEASK: Well, the time I had it, Peter put the cage down in the water. They had the Tuna head on a buoy. And if that one got taken, they'd just put another one on it. 

CRAWFORD: They can still do that, but now there are permit restrictions on the number of heads they can use as throw baits on a line.  

LEASK: Yeah, yeah. He reckoned that he should have a mincer on board, because he reckoned it was the berley that was the important cue to get them to come around. It's not the chunks of stuff. And they had those surfboard things and stuff, in the early days.

CRAWFORD: We'll talk about decoys in a second. Right now, I'm just trying to get the general process down. The cage. The berley. 

LEASK: Made a cup of coffee. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: If and when the White Pointers come, then people get into wetsuits, they get into the cage, they take their pictures, they rotate in and out. That type of thing?

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And then at the end of the day, they stop berleying ...

LEASK: Well, no. Even with the berley, sometimes the Sharks just disappear. They don't necessarily hang around all the time. Mike Haines was out there the other day from before 9-o'clock. We went out there at 3-o'clock and they hadn't seen a Shark. We actually saw the first Shark - it wasn't where Mike was, it was probably a quarter of a mile away. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. That's a good general description of the different parts of the cage dive operations. Now comes the question. Do you think that, for the White Pointers in the nearby region, do you think the cage dive operation we just described ... do the operations have a lasting, important effect on the White Pointers?

LEASK: They're no different probably than they were when we were head and gutting them, or fileting our fish and sending our fish over. When they had them boards and other stuff there ... I've seen some photographs - the Sharks I've seen have been doing the Drive-By on things there. But like the one that tried to get into the cage and that ... Well, I've never put a diver in the water when there's been a Shark there either. I can only say for our boat, I don't think they've changed much at all.

CRAWFORD: Remember you telling me about the White Pointers at the fish cleaning stations? Do you think that the White Pointers that get exposed to the cleaning stations, the boats and the Codframes - are they different after those experiences? Do they behave differently after experiencing a fish cleaning station, compared to White Pointers that haven't had that experience?

LEASK: I haven't got enough information for that, really. I've always thought it's been reasonably random. There's more than one thing that's influencing them. I think that the amount of Sharks that are around, the amount of food, the amount of boats that are about, and all these things probably have a big effect. I don't know if it's going to be a lasting thing. But when the Shark boats are out there, and we go close to them, I'd be 90% sure that the Shark will come away from their boat, and come over to our boat. It's curious, I think.

CRAWFORD: Ok. If White Pointers are in a place where there are Codframes or heads, or whatever - and they're feeding on that - is it the case that that those White Pointers are likely to hang around in that place more frequently?

LEASK: Or come back to it. They do seem to work out a timeframe, if you're going back into an area at the same time of the day and that. 

CRAWFORD: Because they're either there or not far away?

LEASK: Or not too far away. The Islands to Deadman's or Horsehoe Bay is only ... like it's 20 minutes for us in the boat. It's probably only 10 minutes for the Sharks. When they start swimming, they're pretty hard to keep up with. 

CRAWFORD: And just to put things into perspective, from Halfmoon Bay wharf to Deadman's Bay - how long is that, in a boat?

LEASK: Oh, 5 minutes.

CRAWFORD: Right. If the White Pointers are associating the location of a cleaning station, and they think "Oh, that place - I got fed there yesterday, or the day before. And I'm gonna hang around, because I might get fed today or tomorrow."

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That kind of association to place ... if I understand what've you already told me, maybe you think that kind of association happens?

LEASK: It probably does. I think there is an association and timing things. Because the boats don't ... like there's Deadman's and that - you go wherever the weather's fine. But the other thing that's there all the time is the Seal rookeries. And other food. 

CRAWFORD: We've agreed that there are multiple things going on at the same time. But at least with regard to the fish cleaning stations, what Humans are doing is increasing the probability the White Pointers are going to be at that place in the future.

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You've already said that you think the White Pointers probably associate a place with food, such that they are more like to be around there. Do you think that the White Pointers would associate individual boats at the cleaning stations - so that if they saw that boat someplace else at another time, they might think "Oh, that's a boat that I got some food from. I'm going to check that boat out, to see if I get some more food."

LEASK: I'm just not quite sure whether they work on instinct, or whether they work on a process. We haven't really ... that's the next level of this. Where Scientists study them, really. But they're very efficient, they haven't really changed for millions of years - the fish themselves, have they? Like, they got the old Mega-Sharks from years ago - they probably got smaller, the Sharks, if anything. The actual Sharks and their instincts, probably hasn't changed that much. 

CRAWFORD: I hear what you're saying. On one hand, they can associate a place with food. But when we add that extra thing - a fishing boat at the cleaning station, could they associate a boat with food? Not even any specific boat - just a boat. Elsewhere, is it more likely to approach another boat to check it out for food?

LEASK: If you feed a Dog, it's gonna come back. A Dog associates with a noise ... Sharks are very efficient hunters, they could quite likely associate with a noise.

CRAWFORD: I'm not worried about the noise just yet. I'm just thinking about a boat - the presence of a boat. Remember how we talked about the White Pointers' response to something floating on the surface?

LEASK: A piece of newspaper, yeah.

CRAWFORD: A floating piece of newspaper. A boat, a dinghy, whatever. Just based on their natural curiosity, they might be likely to check out anything that's floating. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: But ... if it had that experience of being fed at a cleaning station where there's a boat, it might increase the probability that White Pointer would check out boats elsewhere.

LEASK: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: When we hear about White Pointers checking out people in dinghies ... beyond natural curiosity, even just the fish cleaning stations could have accounted for some of that increased dinghy attention. 

LEASK: Yeah, so maybe they would have done it earlier on.

CRAWFORD: Maybe they were doing it earlier on. Even before cage diving started?

LEASK: We haven't got the documents going back far enough to really be sure. 

CRAWFORD: I'm not asking you to be sure. I'm asking if you think that the White Pointers could associate the presence of a boat at a cleaning station and the food it gets there, such that it would increase the probability of checking out a boat under other circumstances?

LEASK: I think they're naturally curious.

CRAWFORD: I agree. But I'm not talking about natural curiosity. I'm talking about association between food and boats.

LEASK: The learning behaviour ... they go on about, like Ocean Beach over in Bluff there. When Ocean Beach Freezing Works was working, and the waste that was going out there, and that smell and that. That was a place where the Whites used to gather, they reckon. It wasn't just the White Pointers either, it was lots of Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Sharks of all kinds?

LEASK: All kinds there. And I don't know if that's a learned behaviour. It's like you put a Sheep in a bloody paddock of Swedes, and even if they hadn't seen Swedes before, they're going to go and nibble on it. The blood and stuff that was coming out Ocean Beach, that behaviour could be learned, or it could be just instinct.

CRAWFORD: But in that case, what was coming out of the Freezer Works was coming right out of the factory's trough. It wasn't coming off a boat. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Tiny Metzger told me about when he was a boy, he and his Uncle I think, were out in a dinghy - and they were going by Ocean Beach, and a White Pointer gave them a really hard time. It's not necessarily the case that the White Pointer had associated boats with that type of effluent. 

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: But we're talking about whether or not White Pointers can associate the presence of a boat with food at the fish cleaning stations?

LEASK: Quite likely. It is quite reasonable to assume any animal - you put food out, they'll respond to it. And if you do it repeatedly, they will associate and learn.

CRAWFORD: Ok. The next thing to add is the boat's motor. There are some people who have said, either the specific characteristics of the boat or the electromagnetic or acoustic characteristics of the boat's motor, can for some boats be very distinctive. Whether it's a boat at a cleaning station having a particular kind of motor that could also be a cue that the White Pointers could associate with food. Such that elsewhere, even if they did not see that particular boat - they might hear that boat motor's acoustic signature, and have associated it with food. I think you can see where I'm going with this. Because pretty much all of the questions about White Pointer food associations with the cage diving operations are the same as for the fish cleaning stations.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: At the fish cleaning stations, do you think a White Pointer with experience at a fish cleaning station would be likely to associate food with that particular boat with that particular motor sound?

LEASK: I think what would be more likely would be when you're cleaning and you get the birds feeding, the birds fighting, and they're making all the fuss there, the Mollymawks ... Have you ever seen, been out on the boats at all? 

CRAWFORD: Yeah. It's quite a response. 

LEASK: If you're cleaning, and the birds are diving in and they're fighting and doing all that - that's like a panic thing, when the birds are doing it. When we first go out to the Islands on our fishing trips, I'm actually trying to attract the birds in, because the fighting of the birds attracts the Sharks.

CRAWFORD: That's a very interesting idea. 

LEASK: I think before you're cleaning and when you're steaming, you've got lots of birds feeding around. And then, when you drop your anchor or your drifting while you're cleaning, the birds start feeding ... and the first sign that we have, is when the birds bugger off. That's normally the first sign we have that a Shark is there. And a natural thing, like out in the mid-Tasman and places like that, these birds start feeding on schools of stuff ...

CRAWFORD: And the White Pointers would be attracted the birds like that under natural circumstances, in case there was something there for them to eat as well?

LEASK: Yeah. I think so, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That's a very good idea. You are the first person to raise that possibility.

LEASK: And the old newspaper trick, I think from underneath it probably looks like the bottom of a Dolphin, or the bottom of a Mollymawk or something like that. 

CRAWFORD: It could very well be. Aside from any association that White Pointers may make with the birds and their activity, do you think the White Pointers can, or maybe even do, make associations with specific, individual boats?

LEASK: Mmmmmm. Various boats, they reckon the colour of your antifouling paint ... I actually painted mine black this year. Was it Mike Haines or someone I was talking to, and it seems to be the lighter colours they like. The Sharks are more attracted to lighter colours.

CRAWFORD: So that's a visual cue.

LEASK: That's a visual thing. Underside of most Whales ... like the top of most Whales is dark, and the underside of most Whales, and Dolphins ...

CRAWFORD: And White Pointers.

LEASK: is white. So, the camouflage and that. But they reckon the lighter colour of antifouling makes a difference. I've just painted mine black, you see - so this is the first year. But we went out the other day, and a Shark still came alongside us, pretty well straight away.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What about the motors? Do you think they distinguish and associate specific motors with food or berley? Some people say yes, some people say no. What do you think?

LEASK: In the [Laloma??], I used to stop the motor. In this one, I keep the motor going. There must be sound underwater - I don't do much diving, but underwater they reckon a diver can hear a boat a long ways away. Sharks should be able to hear the sound of a motor. 

CRAWFORD: Have you noticed, or heard from other people, that the White Pointers are more attracted when the motor is running, or when the motor is off?

LEASK: No, I haven't really noticed. I noticed that both Peter Scott and Mike Haines keep their motor going. So, noise could be a thing.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen, or heard about, White Pointers coming up and specifically mouthing the prop on a motor?

LEASK: No, no. The rudder, but not the prop.

CRAWFORD: OK. Let's transition now, specifically to the effects of cage dive operations. It has some things in common with White Pointers at the fish cleaning stations, and some differences. At the cage dive operations, there is a boat and a motor. There are Humans. And there is a berley trail, but there are no fish frames being dumped by the operators. One big difference is the substantial amount of Tuna berley that is released into the tidal current by the cage dive operators - more than what you might expect from cleaning Cod at a station. But according to the DOC permit, no food, nothing to chaw down on. Another big difference is the submerged cage that might or might not have submerged Humans wearing wetsuits. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Under the DOC permit, Peter and Mike are only allowed to run their cage dive operations in proximity to Edwards Island. They're only allowed to berley, they're not allowed to feed. They can use a Tuna head or something on a line as a throw bait to bring the White Pointers into close proximity to the cage - but if a White Pointer catches the throw bait by accident, there are restrictions on how many replacement throw baits they can use. 

LEASK: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: First and foremost, do you think the White Pointers that have experienced the cage dive operations at Edwards Island have associated that place with the smell of food? To the point that they are more likely to be at Edwards Island even when there's no cage dive operations running?

LEASK: With the picture identification, when they were doing the tagging and stuff - they weren't seeing the same Sharks coming up there. This is the thing. They go out there one day, and then they go out to the same place again, and they weren't seeing the same Sharks. With Peter Scott and that, the Sharks only seem to be hanging around that area for two or three days. Every now and then, one will buck the system. But they are seeing different Sharks when they're identifying them. So, I think what we've got is a big funnel that you can see ... and behind these Islands is like a big eddy. Around here is shallow water. They'll come down through all this thing, and they hang around in the tidal areas there. But they're not seeing the same Sharks every day. 

CRAWFORD: I've interviewed both Mike and Pete ... I normally don't bring in information from other interviews, but I think it's important in this case. It was Clinton's photo-ID project that told them they were grossly underestimating both the number of White Pointers that were there, and the number of repeat White Pointers coming to their operations. So, let's get back to that first question in the series. Do you think the White Pointers associate that place, Edwards Island, with the smell of food - and therefore a higher aggregation as a result of cage dive operations?

LEASK: When you're Tunaing and stuff, and the blood and that - the Sharks will follow you around. Like I've seen lots of Blue Sharks and other Sharks and some I never identified. With worldwide fishing, they probably associate with boats anyway. I think the only way you could be sure is with photographs.

CRAWFORD: If I'm hearing you right, I think you're saying "I don't know"?

LEASK: I don't know. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: That's completely fine - and you can say that for any of the remaining questions. But let's go to the next part. Let's consider the cage, and more importantly the wetsuit Humans in the cage. Do you think the White Pointers that are exposed to the cage dive operations around Edwards Island are associating the smell of the food with the presence of Humans ...

LEASK: In the cage.

CRAWFORD: In the cage. Such that, at some other point in time at a different location, when they encounter another Human, maybe in a wetsuit, and the White Pointer thinks "The last time I saw that thing, there was a strong smell of food around. I'll check this out a little bit more."

LEASK: Most animals, when they're feeding, they use more than one sense. Like if you've got Dogs hunting and that, he'll be sniffing, but he'll be looking and stuff. With the Sharks, I think there's more than one thing. Like the Pāua divers, they don't associate them with food - do they?

CRAWFORD: Hang on for a second. There's no smell of food around the Pāua divers for the White Pointers to associate with. There is the smell of food around the cage dive operations. So, do you think that the White Pointers attracted to the cage dive operations - the boat, the berley, the cage, the Humans - do you think the White Pointers would associate the berley smell of food with the presence of the submerged Humans in the cage? Such that, if they see Humans in a wetsuit - on or in the water - that they would investigate those Humans with a higher level of interest?

LEASK: Personally, I don't. But, they reckon urine ... like the surfers and stuff like that, if it's a wetsuit and they're pissing themselves and that, the urine is a really good way to attract Sharks as well. If they couldn't use the berley, they were going to use Seal piss or something?

CRAWFORD: That's the first time I've heard about this. When did you hear about this idea?

LEASK: This was with Clinton or one of them. And that's why high tide ... well, it was probably Peter the first time, but I've heard it since ... high tide before the Seals are on the rocks and that, and they're all peeing and shitting there. With the high tide, they reckon that's what gives Edwards Island - with the way the currents go, it washes the stuff all around, and that's what attracts the White Pointers. I don't know if it was Mexico or somewhere, one of the guys that came out doing the thing, they weren't allowed to use berleys and baits. The people in the cage are acting totally different than a person that's actually diving. A person that's diving, he's not restricted, he's not doing the same things. 

CRAWFORD: Fair enough. The Humans in the cage are not on a surfboard, they're standing rather than swimming, they're not freediving, they are very much behaving differently. So, that's an excellent point. But getting back to the question - after exposure to cage dive operations, do you think a White Pointer would be more likely to interact with a Human in the water, regardless of their circumstances?

LEASK: I don't think so, really. But the Sharks are real opportunists. If they haven't been feeding for a wee while, and there's a lot of surfies in the water, and there's a bit of a panic and other stuff going on. They're very curious ...

CRAWFORD: Regardless of cage dive operations, all of those things would be factors?

LEASK: Yeah. There was no cage diving around Dunedin when them two people got killed. There was no cage diving around the Campbell Islands. Or the Chatham Islands. These are all attacks that happened before. So, I don't think you can actually say "Because a Shark's attacked, it's because of the cage diving."

CRAWFORD: That's right. But the question has to do with contributing factors that could lead to increased risk of interaction or attack on Humans. 

LEASK: I'd like to know how many of these Sharks are repeating. It was a couple of years ago, but when we were looking at stuff at the DOC house - one day they were going out to the same place, and they seen six or seven Sharks. The next day, they were seeing different Sharks. Like I say, it let us know how many Sharks were there. I can't tell ... like I can tell a big female from a small male - but that's about it, you know? And only if they turn over. [both chuckle] So, that's the type of question that can have hundreds of different factors, is what's going to make them look at a Human.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Last question about the cage dive operations ... As their boats are moving out from Edwards, have you ever see White Pointers following them?

LEASK: No. But I probably leave before them, normally. Once we've sort of seen them and that, we're normally off.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Have you heard of anybody talk about White Pointers following the cage dive boats?

LEASK: Just they were saying about the Argo last year, they said "Oh no. There's a Shark up in Golden Bay." But there's been Sharks in Golden Bay before. There was one caught ten or twelve years ago. And there's been ones that we've known about. It could be a bit of a coincidence, you know? They were going there before the boats, going there after. That's the same thing ... looking down and you can see a Shark in the water. 

CRAWFORD: Right then. That's all I've got for you, Fluff. Thank you so much for taking the time, and being patient with me, and for sharing your knowledge with this research project.

LEASK: Yeah, yeah.

Copyright © 2021 Gordon Leask and Steve Crawford