Nicola Shaw

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: Nicola, where and when were you born? 

SHAW: I was born in Porirua, just near Wellington, in 1980.

CRAWFORD: Did you grow up close to New Zealand coastal waters?

SHAW: We left Porirua when I was about five years old. We moved to Hamilton, which is reasonably inland. Lived there for twenty years.

CRAWFORD: Till you were about twenty-five?

SHAW: Yeah. But we used to holiday up in Coromandel, on the coast. On and off, maybe once a year.

CRAWFORD: Specifically, where on the Coromandel Peninsula?

SHAW: It was just after Thames. It's not even a small town, it was basically a boat ramp.

CRAWFORD: But it's on the bay side of the Peninsula, rather than the eastern ocean side? 

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: You spent time there from when you were about five. Summers only?

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Approximately when would summertime have been for you? Roughly when would you go up, and when would you come back?

SHAW: It would’ve only been maybe a week to ten days once a year during summer. Probably around that Christmas-time to January period.

CRAWFORD: And that was pretty consistent for a period of time up to when you were twenty-five. Roughly two weeks a year? Or did it start to expand in time as you got older? 

SHAW: Up to the time of fourteen, fifteen. And then it was little bit less. 

CRAWFORD: Little bit less frequently? Or little bit less duration? 

SHAW: Less frequently.

CRAWFORD: So, you might not have gone in a given year, if you had other stuff going on?

SHAW: Yeah. As I became an adult. Because it was family holidays with my Dad, visiting Grandparents who had been up here for sixty-odd years on the same coast. 

CRAWFORD: When you were there, what kind of activities were you involved in?

SHAW: Mostly my Brother and my Father and my Grandfather went out on the boat. And I stayed on the coast. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Were they going out fishing? 

SHAW: They were going fishing, yes.

CRAWFORD: You didn’t typically go fishing with them?

SHAW: There wasn’t enough room. As far as being on the water, that really did start a little bit later in life.

CRAWFORD: When you were on the bay-side coast, did you do any swimming? That type of thing?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Dis you go traveling around the Coromandel Peninsula during those trips?

SHAW: More of a specific region.

CRAWFORD: Ok. When did you start to expand, either in terms of location or in terms of activities?

SHAW: I guess that came about when I was studying in Tauranga.

CRAWFORD: Which is where?

SHAW: Which is Bay of Plenty, just in here. 

CRAWFORD: You were about twenty-five when you started that?

SHAW: No, I had already come down to Nelson and come back up. 

CRAWFORD: You spent time on and around the water in Nelson?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: That’s a natural break in your experience. When did you move down there?

SHAW: I finished in Hamilton when I was about twenty-six, twenty-seven. And I came down to the Nelson area, which is the gateway to the Abel Tasman. I worked with a water-taxi company there for about four or five years.

CRAWFORD: When did that job start?

SHAW: It started about 2007, 2008. 

CRAWFORD: And you did that for about four years? 

SHAW: Yeah, four to five years.

CRAWFORD: You were working primarily or exclusively for the water-taxi?

SHAW: Exclusively. And then the very last season I actually worked for a catamaran sailing company.

CRAWFORD: A recreational charter, they would take people out? You crewed for them? 

SHAW: I crewed for them on and off, when they had the three-day charters. 

CRAWFORD: Were you still working with the water-taxi company in that final season? 

SHAW: I was pretty much finished up. The water-taxi had become seasonal. I had the winter off, and then did the last season.

CRAWFORD: How much of the year were you on the water with the water-taxi? 

SHAW: A lot of the time I was in the office, first with assistant operations, and then two days a week with operations. That was very much dealing with people, dealing with the Skippers and the weather. I’d be out with them infrequently during the season. There was also recreational fishing, and also going out the bay recreationally.   

CRAWFORD: In terms of the water-taxi, was that once every two weeks? Something like that?    

SHAW: Once every three weeks, once a month.

CRAWFORD: For the recreational charter, how frequent was that?

SHAW: In the final year we got out for three-day trips, maybe once a month. 

CRAWFORD: And what was the geographic scope for that?

SHAW: Most of it was in this area here, from Kaiteriteri through Tasman Bay. I’d been over to D'Urville Island once, and Marlborough Sounds recreationally a couple of times as well.   

CRAWFORD: Ok. Then where did you go?

SHAW: That's when I went to Tauranga, and did two years of study - including the honorary fisheries. 

CRAWFORD: When did you move?

SHAW: 2011. I finished in 2013.

CRAWFORD: How much time did you spend on and around the water, when you were based in Tauranga?

SHAW: A lot of it to do with honorary fisheries was driving around the coast, right round the bays. With the Polytech, we would go away for two ten-day trips - on and around the water.

CRAWFORD: Those were field trips for the program? 

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Diving trips? Free-diving or scuba-diving?

SHAW: Scuba. And also, our crew volunteered for one of the fishing outfits, chartered fishing tourism. That was sort of on and off. Maybe every second or third weekend. 

CRAWFORD: And that was over the two-year period you were based out of Tauranga?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: So, you were spending time on program-oriented fieldwork or field courses, scuba-diving, and traveling around the bays around north-eastern North Island.  

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Generally, what was the time of year for those coastal activities? 

SHAW: We were going from ... school year would have started late February, early March - through to October. 

CRAWFORD: And the fieldwork you were doing was distributed throughout the season? 

SHAW: Throughout, yes.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Two years doing that, plus you were crewing on the recreational fishing charter?

SHAW: Yes

CRAWFORD: What was the range for that? Where did they fish? 

SHAW: That was directly out of Tauranga, so Mount Maunganui and around there. Outside the harbor, basically. Mayor Island, and we’d get over to this stretch here as well.

CRAWFORD: Anything else that you were doing around the coast then? Were you doing any boating, or any other type of vessel-based work?

SHAW: Only bits and pieces for vessel-based recreational time out on the water. Very few.

CRAWFORD: But you also crewed on a recreational charter for line-fishing?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: And then in 2013, you went directly from Tauranga down to Southland?    

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: What was the connection, what was the draw? Did you apply for a job specifically? 

SHAW: Yes. I had been looking at Southland because I was interested in Stewart Island and beyond. My focus was water, something near the water. Based in Southland or Stewart Island, so I could outreach to explore those coasts. 

CRAWFORD: Outreach to explore Fiordland and the Catlins? 

SHAW: Yeah, yeah. It would give me a basis to explore that end of the South Island. 

CRAWFORD: Right. You had seen the North end of the North Island, and the big cities elsewhere. You were wanting to become a South Island gal?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: You went directly down to Bluff or Invercargill?

SHAW: Yes. Directly down to Bluff. And then over to Stewart Island. I was based out of Stewart Island in the very beginning for a while. 

CRAWFORD: That was for ...

SHAW: The Shark cage diving.

CRAWFORD: Peter Scott's operation.

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Your time with his tour dive operation began when?

SHAW: Not last season, but the season before. The 2013/14 season.

CRAWFORD: About this time of year, coming into December?

SHAW: The first year we started on the 15th of January. 

CRAWFORD: So, January 2014. And that was a full-time job for you, when you were doing that?  

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly, when did the season run till? 

SHAW: That year, the season ran from the 15th of January through to the 1st of June. The following year, it started on the 3rd of January and ran to about the 1st of June. 

CRAWFORD: And you are now about to start your third season?

SHAW: This year we start on the 12th. 

CRAWFORD: Of December 2015?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: And you expect to go through approximately the same seasonal schedule?

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: When you’re working in-season, I realize the weather is a factor, but roughly how many trips per week? 

SHAW: We’re trying to do it over a ten-day block. And the reason for that was that Pete would stay on the boat at Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: In Halfmoon Bay? 

SHAW: Yes. And then he would go back to Bluff, back to Dunedin, to restock, refuel, family time. There were some instances that went over the ten-day stint, that we would have one or two days off in between. The first year wasn’t as busy as last year. So, we could do anywhere up to ten days in a row, and then have three or four days off.

CRAWFORD: I'm trying to get a handle on what percentage of time in those ten-day blocks were you actually out on Shark cage diving trips?

SHAW: Per week, maybe 80 or 90 percent. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, a relatively high percentage of that time you were on and in the water. From the time you started with Pete's operation you were crewing, and some of your responsibilities were with the customers?           

SHAW: Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Just regular kind of customer support, and then some of it was in the Shark cage with them?

SHAW: I get to go in the cage when we either have a smaller group, which means more time - or if somebody needs my assistance, which happens less than you’d think. There's only been once or twice, really. Last year, I think I did eight or ten dives over the course of the season. The year before, maybe six. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. That was roughly once per month?

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Most of the time you are on the vessel, what you see is mostly from the surface?

SHAW: A lot of it is from the surface, yes.  

CRAWFORD: During the periods of time between those ten-day blocks, you're just relaxing? Or are you spending time on the water, or doing other coastal things? 

SHAW: On Stewart Island, I do go snorkeling, get a Pāua. Recreationally, you don’t have to go far. There's a few spots just right off the coast. 

CRAWFORD: You've done some Pāua diving off of Stewart Island?

SHAW: Infrequently off of Stewart Island. And off the coast of Bluff as well. 

CRAWFORD: Right. And for year one and two you were based for the season out of Stewart Island?

SHAW: Yes. And I was there for the winter in between. 

CRAWFORD: For the period you were on the island between the two seasons, what kind of water-related activities might you have been doing? Is that when you were doing Pāua diving on your time off?

SHAW: Yeah, and swimming as well. Coming backwards and forwards on the ferry. The odd boat trip out with friends. But yeah, again infrequent. 

CRAWFORD: At what point in time were you based out of Bluff?

SHAW: Bluff would be this year, so this coming season. Although I do have friends in Bluff. I’ve spent considerable amount of time with them, two weeks at a time.

CRAWFORD: When you spend time in Bluff, do you spend any time on and around the water? Some Pāua diving then?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Roughly what regions around Bluff would you be Pāua diving?

SHAW: It’s basically out the back of Bluff. A little bit out of town, across the farmer's paddock, and on the coast. 

CRAWFORD: Free-diving, shore-based?

SHAW: Free-diving, shore-based. Get Pāua there, because there's no commercial on that little bit of coast. So, they’re rustic, and there's more Pāua than rocks. We range a bit further out, because it's good to not get all of your sizable ones right off the coast.

CRAWFORD: To the extent that you are Pāua diving, what would be the maximum depth of water?

SHAW: Maybe four or five metres.

CRAWFORD: Rocky shoreline? All of it?

SHAW: Rocky shoreline. 

CRAWFORD: Is there anything else by way of time spent on the water, or activities or regions, that were different from what we’ve talked about so far?

SHAW: I spent a little bit of time round the Catlins, mostly land-based.      

CRAWFORD: Did you spend any time in and around the Otago Peninsula?

SHAW: This would be late June, early July this year, so 2015.

CRAWFORD: That was the first time you spent time working on the Monarch tour charter boat?

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: You spent one season on the Monarch ...

SHAW: One winter season. Season one doing Shark diving, in between was doing pest control land-based. 

CRAWFORD: Pest-control working for DOC?

SHAW: No, working for a community trust called SIRCET on Stewart Island. It was land-based work, we were out on the point there. I also did a little bit of work for a water-taxi based on Stewart Island called Rakiura Water-Taxi - I worked for Matt and Alina a little bit. I worked for them in season one of Sharking.          

CRAWFORD: During the season? 

SHAW: Yes. During my time off, I would be working for them a little bit as well. So, I did manage to get out on the boat with them sometimes.

CRAWFORD: Doing what kinds of things?

SHAW: I was more in the office with them. But I would get on the boat for recreational reasons to get around. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Season one with a little bit of water-taxi things as well. Then, in between seasons one and two of Shark dive operations, working for the Stewart Island trust, land-based pest control. Then season two ... were there any parallel activities during season two, as well?

SHAW: Season two got a lot busier. So, the parallel activities dropped off.

CRAWFORD: Pretty much you were full-time Shark cage tour operations during season two?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Then what happened?

SHAW: That’s when I came up to Dunedin.

CRAWFORD: At the end of the second cage dive season, you took up employment with the Monarch charter operation, based out of Dunedin and the Otago Harbour. That was for one winter season, just now completing? In between season two and the other upcoming season three of Shark cage diving?      

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Describe the work you have most recently been doing with Monarch charter. What region specifically?

SHAW: That's the Otago Harbour and Peninsula, including Taiaroa Heads.

CRAWFORD: How far into the harbour would you come?

SHAW: All the way up.

CRAWFORD: Was there a dock or at a wharf for pickup in Dunedin itself?

SHAW: Fryatt Street, just near Wharf Street, is where our office is - and where the Monarch docks.

CRAWFORD: Is that a pickup location?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: And the Monarch has other pickup locations in Otago Harbour as well? 

SHAW: Yes, at Wellers Rock. And also in Port Chalmers - for the cruise ship. 

CRAWFORD: So, it depends very much on what the specific charter for that day - where the pickup location is?

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Are the charters, for the most part, sightseeing trips or social outings? What kind of activities?

SHAW: They’re mostly sightseeing trips. Some of them are the first half of the harbour, the inner half. And those are mostly social events - food, drinks, night-time.

CRAWFORD: Going out for a boat ride?

SHAW: Yeah, just a boat ride. The rest of it is very much sightseeing, wildlife-orientated. 

CRAWFORD: Over the past season, what was the general split between the social boat rides and the eco-sightseeing tours?     

SHAW: The night-time boat rides have only just started. I might’ve done four or five of those. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Over the course of the winter season, during a week, on average how many wildlife sightseeing trips might you go on?

SHAW: That would’ve been two to three times a week, for the first six weeks. Since then, it's been once a week to once a fortnight. Whether it be half-days with the cruise ships, or doing full-days coming in and out of Taiaroa Heads. Because they do that five times a day in the summer season. There's only been twice when I’ve done that full summer day.

CRAWFORD: When you're on one of the harbour cruises, the sightseeing ones - regardless of whether they come out of Dunedin, Port Chalmers or Wellers Rock - generally what are you doing when you’re on the cruises? 

SHAW: I am specifically tending to people's needs. But also around Taiaroa Head, leaving from Wellers Rock, that’s the main concentration of wildlife there - so my job is to point out the wildlife. Be a second set of eyes for the Skipper, who may be looking in the other direction. Also pointing out to the passengers on board. The Skipper takes care of commentary most of the time, unless we only have a couple of people.          

CRAWFORD: So, a good chunk of the job is based on observation of wildlife around and in the water? 

SHAW: Yes.

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS 

CRAWFORD: Overall, if you were to score the contribution from Māori culture, values, knowledge to your understanding of New Zealand marine ecosystems - what level would you put that?

SHAW: Where I grew up in the North Island, I have Māori in my family, married in and Cousins born of half descent. My Stepmother is Māori. We used to stay on the marae once a year. There was also a general sense of school knowledge through Māori culture, language. Protocols - especially protocols in the marae. That sort of family background, as I was growing up. Working with the fisheries, I learned a wee bit more with protocol from that side of things. But I also worked directly with honorary fisheries officers who were retired and Māori; they had a lot to do with Iwi. The experience of Māori towards Pakeha - me being Pakeha, being a white girl on the marae. Seeing how Māori sort of relax when my fisheries officer came along - he’s Māori - and the tension is gone. Through the Bay of Plenty Polytech, there's a lot of learning the systems: the governmental systems, the communications systems.         

CRAWFORD: Ok. What about exposure to Māori culture, values and knowledge systems - specifically in Southland and on Stewart Island? 

SHAW: One of my friends has been learning through Kaumātua, where they are learning a lot of Māori culture and protocols, and also the spiritual sense of things. I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from him. A lady that I know on Stewart Island, she’s part Māori descent, part Pacific Island, and part Pakeha; she has a lot of knowledge system experience about the Island itself, about protocol. She actually blessed the boat for Rakiura Water-Taxi. I’ve been trying to get her to dig out a book - apparently, it has great insight on Māori culture, and how they perceive the animals in a spiritual sense. It’s got the A-Z of animals including mango taniwha, which is the White Shark. Haven’t quite been able to see that yet.

CRAWFORD: So, that's something that you were already doing as a natural course of affairs?

SHAW: My interactions with people on a non-debating sense, and to collect knowledge for my own understanding. So I can see both sides of the fence, I guess.

CRAWFORD: What I am trying to get at, is that you had already established and were developing those Māori connections - from the time that you got down to Southland and Stewart Island?

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Distilling all of that, and trying to rank the contributions of Māori culture, values and knowledge into what you know about these ecosystems - where would you put it?           

SHAW: I would put it at a modest Medium.

CRAWFORD: On the Science side of things, how much of your knowledge about New Zealand coastal ecology has come in from that knowledge system?

SHAW: Medium. I’ve got formal training of two years - that was at a diploma level. I stepped out of that for the reason that I'd finished my diploma. I could’ve gone on to a Master's, but I felt that for the direction I was going, I could do without being a Scientist myself. I wanted to work in amongst that sort of knowledge area. A lot of ecology, but it was also in a productive, practical way through the diving. That’s why the diving tickets were brought into that structure, so we could dive and analyze fish populations, Crayfish, and how the whole ecology worked. That covered all different areas of the marine ecosystem, whether it be fisheries or ecology.   

CRAWFORD: In terms of other Science inputs, have you had experiences with Scientists where you might have had some significant interaction? In terms of them sharing their understanding from their knowledge system?

SHAW: Clinton Duffy [DOC] - we’d give a lot of information to him.

CRAWFORD: What kind of information?

SHAW: The day-to-day bit that has to be given to him for DOC, through the permitting. We were doing that before the permits anyway. Shark identification on a voluntary basis. Identification mostly, photo ID, especially that first year. The second year, we were also documenting from our point of view. It was how we were doing things in identification as well. 

CRAWFORD: So, environmental conditions and the number of animals - potentially individual animals. That kind of environment and animal descriptions? 

SHAW: Absolutely. Peter would get a lot of feedback from Clinton. I’ve met Clinton once. A lot of the information that I learned has come, through Peter, from Clinton. And that’s really about the ecology and some of his theories on how Shark diving is affecting the Sharks - before and after, sort of thing. Also Mark Enarson, he’s a zoologist by certificate, but he’s been working with Peter for ten years through photography, and we had a lot of scientific input from him - a lot of debriefing on the scientific articles as well. My knowledge would’ve mostly come from him. If I've got hearsay, or I’ve had questions, I’ve gone to him for his opinion of it. Because he has been cage diving for the last ten years, and knows the interaction of those Sharks, and their movements, and whether their happy or angry.

CRAWFORD: I think in this case, I’m going to nudge you up into the High end of the scale regarding Science. Partly because of the diversity and the depth of the interactions with Scientists. 

SHAW: Ok.

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

CRAWFORD: Now I’m looking for the beginning of when White Pointers became part of your consciousness. When did you first know that they existed?

SHAW: When I was studying in the Bay of Plenty Polytech, I had a very good friend in Bluff as well that I’d been talking to. When we were looking at basis for his thesis - a basic scientific report - I was like "Alright, have you got any connections?" He said yes, but that turned out to be a very little loose connection.

CRAWFORD: Were these connections with people who were working with White Pointers in general, or the Shark cage tour dive operations in particular?

SHAW: I think my friend in Bluff was talking about Mike Haines. 

CRAWFORD: What had you asked your friend about - White Pointers in general? Or Shark cage tour dive operations in particular? 

SHAW: I had been talking about Sharks, and he mentioned the Shark cage diving down there. And I went "Oh, right." Networks, connections, "How do I do that?" 

CRAWFORD: Ok. But growing up on the North Island, spending time on the Coromandel Peninsula, spending time around the water elsewhere - had anybody previously mentioned anything about White Pointers? 

SHAW: That was the first time I knew really. Other than stuff that didn’t really register. 

CRAWFORD: You were twenty-something at that point?

SHAW: No. That was when I was studying, so thirty-one, thirty-two. 

CRAWFORD: So, you had spent all of your life as a Kiwi to that point ...

SHAW: Didn’t know we had things with sharp teeth in New Zealand. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Sharks in general, or just White Pointers?

SHAW: I knew that we had Sharks in general, from my Grandfather being a fisherman, and stories.

CRAWFORD: But there hadn’t been any stories that came down from your Grandfather or your family about White Pointers specifically?

SHAW: No.

CRAWFORD: The first time then, was you doing a paper for this Polytech program?

SHAW: I had to decide on a subject.

CRAWFORD: You needed a subject. You contacted a mate down in Bluff. And all of a sudden ... these White Pointers are lighting up your radar?

SHAW: The idea of it, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Let’s just characterize what that led to. Did you end up doing some type of a paper on White Pointers? Or did you do it on something else?

SHAW: I did it on something totally different, just because I didn’t have the right solid connection. The reason I continued to look ... I actually put in a search on Trade Me, which is a New Zealand site that also advertises for jobs, and I was putting in many different keywords. I was looking for a job a year before I finished Polytech, and just keeping an eye on what was out there. One of those, and I guess it stemmed from being interested because my friend mentioned White Sharks, I put in a keyword on Trade Me - 'Shark'. But nothing was really coming from it at all. And then we were just about to go away, down to Wellington - and it came up on Trade Me, Peter’s ad for Shark Dive New Zealand. He was looking for somebody for the season. So, I spent a few hours on the way down to Wellington, computer in hand, Mother giving me a bit of advice for the cover letter, and putting everything together for the cv. So, I applied for the job. Which was all very exciting, but a little bit of a pipe dream, really.

CRAWFORD: Pipe dream in what sense? You didn’t think you had a chance?

SHAW: Well I mean, thinking of these amazing creatures that you have no understanding of. The only thing you know it from is stupid things like 'Jaws' and tv and books and that sort of thing. All of a sudden, it’s like "This could be a reality."   

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you sent in your cv and cover letter ...

SHAW: Yes, I sent that in. People asked me "How did you get that job?" And I say, "Well, it's my great personality.' [both chuckle] But I had a background when I first was at school, managing and dealing with people in the fast food industry. Then I went into mental health for four years, which is really understanding people and their moods, and also how they're handling things. Pre-empting stress, panic, that sort of thing, and helping people in their day-to-day lives. And then I studied tourism, which is just a very basic course. And I had my stint in the Abel Tasman with tourism, that gave me the affinity to water. I wanted to live near the coast, and I wanted to get away from seasonal work, so I went up and I studied. Unfortunately, I didn’t get away from seasonal work. But the PADI Diver ticket, and I also have my very basic learner training wheels Skipper ticket, the tourism, the mental health - it all became a part of why I was accepted into that job. And as Pete reminds me every time I do something a little bit wrong ... out of one hundred and twenty three people, I was chosen. 

CRAWFORD: Prior to you having discussions with Pete and Andrea about their experiences, prior to being offered and accepting the job, and prior to you going out on that first trip for your job - had you ever seen a White Pointer in the wild? 

SHAW: No. 

CRAWFORD: During your youth, when you were taking those seasonal trips up to the Coromandel Peninsula, did any of the old-timers or anybody in your family - did anyone ever talk about White Pointers? 

SHAW: No. 

CRAWFORD: In the time that you spent in the Tasman Bay with the water-taxi and charter recreational fisheries - was there anything said by the old-timers or your contemporaries about White Pointers in those regions? 

SHAW: No. 

CRAWFORD: Cook Strait? Marlborough Sound?

SHAW: No. Only recently have I seen one article relating to the area with a picture of a White Shark being seen there. I guess it was between the D'Urville Island and Tasman Bay area. It opens up a little bit there. The fish ecology can be quite barren. A lot to do with if the commercial fishing come in during the wintertime, into a sheltered bay. If they come in there, because it's too rough on the outside. There is a Seal population in the Abel Tasman, there's an island there with a rookery.

CRAWFORD: But at the time, none of that White Pointer information was really coming up?

SHAW: No stories, no. And I would remember it. I think if people talk about it, you get a fear about being in the water. Or a wariness about being in the water, if it’s talked about.

CRAWFORD: Getting back to your Polytech days, was there any discussion of White Pointers by the instructors or old-timers? Maybe somebody else's experiences or sightings along that north-eastern section of the North Island?

SHAW: No. The bronzies [Bronze Whalers], they came up a few times.

CRAWFORD: Came up in what context?

SHAW: In the context of somebody was diving.

CRAWFORD: Scuba- or free-diving?

SHAW: Scuba. Got out of the water, about two minutes after seeing it - a Bronze Whaler. And also a spearfisherman, because it was on the end of the rope - his catch - and it got taken off. 

CRAWFORD: He had a float, with his fish on that float, and a Bronze Whaler came and took the fish?

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: These Bronze Whalers, they can get up to a decent size as well?

SHAW: Yes. Same fear factor involved, I think.

CRAWFORD: Right. But nothing specifically about the White Pointers on that side of the North Island, in the time that you spent with the people that you spent it with. It wasn’t even on your radar until Trade Me?

SHAW: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Well, it was sort of on your radar for that paper that never got written. But then you took the Shark cage dive job, relocated, and that’s when you started to learn about White Pointers? 

SHAW: I just remembered, the year before I relocated from Tauranga to Stewart Island, so the year before - I actually got the opportunity to come down, and stay with my friend in Bluff for two weeks. That kind of gave me the stability to know the area, and understand that I would like to look further and live there. So, during that holiday, we went over to the Island for an overnight stay, with the outlook of going Pāua diving. It was interesting enough that before we went out ... and I counted, I had eleven people, this was in December - and I now know in  December the Shark population increases slowly - I had eleven people say "Oh, be careful. There's White Sharks in the area."

CRAWFORD: These are eleven Stewart Islanders? When they found out that you planned on going Pāua diving there, they warned you about the White Pointers?

SHAW: Yes. One of those eleven, she’s got a scientific background, she was drinking at the pub and she said "Ah yeah, it’s not so bad. It's not quite the season yet." So, I was quite nervous about Pāua diving there. 

CRAWFORD: That’s a very important observation, because you didn’t get those kinds of warnings up at Coromandel, you didn’t get those warnings up at Tasman Bay, you didn’t get those warnings when you were doing your Polytech program on the east side of the North Island. You go down to Stewart Island, and it’s not one who gave the warning -but eleven!

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Knowing everything that you know now, from whatever sources, when you think about aggregations of White Pointers around New Zealand - other than Stewart Island, what other regions strike out as being hotspots?  

SHAW: As far as I understand, DOC [Department of Conservation] have been in the Kaipara Harbour, right back up north again. My understanding is that they’ve recently been researching White Sharks. Specifically, younger animals.

CRAWFORD: Juveniles?

SHAW: Juveniles. They seem to be higher in number.

CRAWFORD: That one bay? Or embayments along that entire region?

SHAW: I don’t know, other than that area. Hasn’t been mentioned. 

CRAWFORD: But you do know that DOC has more recently being working up there? Or over the past many years? 

SHAW: As far as I believe, it’s more recently. It could be as the Stewart Island research has wrapped up.

CRAWFORD: Right. When you started, Clinton would have been down working in the Stewart Island region for several years already. In general, what different types of research things was he doing in that region? 

SHAW: As far as I believe, it was around about a ten-year study. Identification of Sharks, so visual photo ID. Also, spatial distribution. 

CRAWFORD: How was he getting data on spatial distribution? 

SHAW: It was through tagging, but also with the buoys that would register when they came past.

CRAWFORD: The hydroacoustic array?

SHAW: That’s the one.

CRAWFORD: In general, what would you know about the different types of tags they were using? 

SHAW: Last year we saw one on a female Shark called Catherine. That was probably the best visual I got of the tags attached to the dorsal fin.

CRAWFORD: Those are the satellite tags? The more recent ones?

SHAW: Yeah, the satellite tags. The other ones you were talking about, that was a little bit before my time. During my first year, I didn’t have a huge understanding of what they were doing. But I was there when they went out. I think that was directly after Discovery Channel had been down.

CRAWFORD: Ok. For your first year, Clinton was already there - for how much of the season?

SHAW: It was ten days, I believe. A week to ten days. 

CRAWFORD: What was your knowledge of what he was doing during those ten days? 

SHAW: That year, I think they were mostly doing visual identification.

CRAWFORD: They were bringing the Sharks in?

SHAW: They were bringing the Sharks in. Baiting, bringing in.

CRAWFORD: In order to see them, or also for tagging? 

SHAW: I think it was also for tagging that year. It was just this last year that they didn’t need to do any more tagging. 

CRAWFORD: So, your second season? 2015?

SHAW: My second season, yes.

CRAWFORD: They were running on a vessel separate from your operation?

SHAW: They work out from the DOC vessel.

CRAWFORD: Was the DOC vessel working in close proximity to your cage dive operations, or over a much broader range?

SHAW: Over a much broader range. I know that Bench Island, which is one of the larger islands there, they had a lot of time there. But also around a lot of these other islands.   

CRAWFORD: The Northern Titi Island chain?

SHAW: The Titi Islands. 

CRAWFORD: Getting back to general patterns. Have you ever seen White Pointers anyplace except for the north-eastern side of Stewart Island?

SHAW: No. Although two of the females had been previously been tagged. Last year, they spent a lot of time on that west side, they were being tracked and monitored. They were also in Halfmoon Bay, before we’ve even seen them at Edwards Island.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean?

SHAW: We didn’t ID them out at Edwards Island. The tracking didn’t ID them being out at Edwards Island, until they’d come from wherever they’d come from. They spent a lot of time around the southeast coast of the Island, and Halfmoon Bay. They might’ve even gone up the Inlet as well. And then we saw one of them out at Edwards Island, near the end of the season. 

CRAWFORD: One of the animals with a DOC tag that Clinton had put on?

SHAW: Yes. And we hadn’t seen the previous year, but DOC had.

CRAWFORD: To your knowledge, part of the collected data on the distribution of the satellite-tagged White Pointers shows animals coming in from a distance. Some animals coming in along the southeastern shore of Stewart Island, and possibly into Paterson Inlet. Do you know if that was acoustic data or satellite data? 

SHAW: I think it’s satellite. I remember with Halfmoon Bay, because they got extremely upset after seeing them.

CRAWFORD: Who's they? 

SHAW: Locals who lived in that area. They saw them at Harrold’s Bay I think, which is in Halfmoon Bay. They’d seen a Shark there.

CRAWFORD: When was this? 

SHAW: This was last year. It would’ve been mid-season, of our season.

CRAWFORD: Roughly February?

SHAW: Yes. They saw it, and their comments were "The Sharks are following our boats." Haines, the other [cage dive] boat, had been in there that day. But of course, we knew from the satellite data that we hadn't even hit them over at Edwards at all.

CRAWFORD: When you talk about the satellite tagging data, how do you know about those data? Was it from verbal discussions with Clinton? Or some of his reports?

SHAW: Verbal discussions. And that’s not my verbal discussions directly.

CRAWFORD: It was Clinton to Peter, and then Peter to you?

SHAW: Yeah. So that gives you a basis to look further on that story. 

CRAWFORD: That’s an interesting example, because your understanding - based on Peter’s discussion with Clinton - is that there was an animal with a satellite tag showing up in Halfmoon Bay, that had not been out yet that season, to the only place that year it could have been exposed to Shark cage tour dive operations with the berley and bait. 

SHAW: Yes. Which I think is extremely important for the association with Shark cage diving. There’s a lot of stories about - and I've seen myself - last season and the season before ... Fishing boats cleaning catch in Halfmoon Bay itself, or just round the corner. Certainly, a lot of people have gotten better with this. Best practice not doing it.

CRAWFORD: Whose 'best practice' is that?

SHAW: Best practice means it’s a set of rules that you don’t have to follow, but it’s best practice for the outcome. That is, the Sharks aren’t smelling it.

CRAWFORD: Which community adopted this best practice? The people in Oban? Or the general fishing community out of that port?

SHAW: I think in general. But yeah, there's certainly people who don’t follow it. And I’m talking about recreational fishing.

CRAWFORD: Line-fishing?

SHAW: Line-fishing. I was actually on a boat with an older guy who was my flatmate at the time. He anchored up where he was going to put the boat for the night, and he was going to clean the catch right off the back in Harrold’s Bay. I said to him "Well, ok. This doesn’t seem right." And he just sort of laughed it off.

CRAWFORD: Did you get a sense of whether the community, including Halfmoon Bay, Horseshoe Bay and Golden Bay ... that the Stewart Islanders themselves held this as a best practice concept? Did you ever hear of it there?

SHAW: I think maybe that’s come from discussions from myself. I haven’t heard that best practice stated by anybody on the Island. But I’ve certainly talked to people on the Island about it.

CRAWFORD: At least from the people in the community that you’ve talked to, what was your sense of their position or opinion on this?

SHAW: An opinion wasn’t really given about it. My thoughts are that when an opposing argument is given - where fish get cleaned in the area, or fish get dumped over at the Titi Islands by the commercial outfits ... they don’t like to have an opposing opinion, that could take out the opinion that they have already of our Shark diving creating the problem, following boats.

CRAWFORD: You said before that you had strong opinions about White Pointer following behaviour. We had started to discuss the importance of scale, both in space and time. it’s one thing to follow for twenty metres; it’s a different thing to follow for ten kilometres. It’s one thing to follow at a speed of half a knot, a different thing to follow at ten knots.

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you believe that at lower speeds, these White Pointers would be potentially inclined to follow a boat for curiosity, or any other reason?

SHAW: Over a short distance, I believe they would. 

CRAWFORD: What would you think is a short distance?

SHAW: Over a few hundred metres. 

CRAWFORD: And then why only for a few hundred metres? 

SHAW: They’ve been, they’ve seen, they’ve smelled, they’ve investigated. Is anything being thrown over? Is there a reward for that following?

CRAWFORD: Ok. If the purpose of following is curiosity and investigation. I've heard of some cases where fishermen are out Codpotting, and after they pull their gear, they put the boat on autopilot and clean while travelling. In that case, following could be investigation followed by the occasional nibble. Depending on the speed at which the autopilot is taking the vessel, do you think a White Pointer might be capable and inclined to follow a treat trail like that?

SHAW: To a certain extent. But I do believe that built into their natural behaviour is a balance of nutrition versus expenditure of energy. When they feed on a Seal - that’s your roast dinner right there. That can last them for weeks. Three weeks, maybe four weeks, before they need to have a proper roast dinner again. Are these little treats really worth the energy that they’re expending? I think the balance of that is somewhere between 'yes it is' and 'no it isn’t'.

CRAWFORD: Right. But even from a very Human perspective, when you see someone going into the movies, and they have that extra-large bag of chocolate candies, and they just keep eating them one after another after another. It’s not a meal by any stretch of the imagination, but they can pack on a lot of calories feeding like that. Ok. You talked before about Science affecting your understanding of New Zealand's coastal ecology. You've done quite a bit of independent reading, but much of your knowledge specifically about White Pointers in this region comes from Clinton Duffy and Malcolm Francis' research?

SHAW: Yes. And association with Mark Enarson.

CRAWFORD: The different projects that DOC and NIWA, Clinton and Malcolm respectively, have been doing with White Pointers in this region - how many different types of their research projects are you aware of? 

SHAW: I’m aware of one project that they've had underway. They just released the thesis last year, at the end of the season. 

CRAWFORD: In terms of the types of data that were collected to answer certain types of questions ... what were the different types of data they collected?       

SHAW: My understanding is it was identification, tagging and spatial distribution within that population. 

CRAWFORD: By 'identification' do you mean photo identification?

SHAW: Photo identification, yes.

CRAWFORD: So, compiling and analysing the individual markings on the Sharks through images. And then looking to see where repeat observations are happening, at what time. That’s one research project.

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: A second research project is focused on spatial distribution, but what kind of data are being collected for that?

SHAW: It's basically to find out where the congregations are.

CRAWFORD: On a small spatial scale - in this region? Or on a large scale?

SHAW: In this region, specifically. I think on the larger scale it was just to compare to.

CRAWFORD: On this relatively fine scale, how are they doing things to collect data to answer questions about local aggregations?

SHAW: That was with the hydroacoustic tagging.

CRAWFORD: Putting pingers on the Sharks, and then having ears at certain locations. Do you know where those ears were?

SHAW: I have read it, but the memory is not specific.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Do you recall if the ears were all the way around Stewart Island, or over in Foveaux Strait, or just some spots? 

SHAW: I’m not sure if it’s completely around the island. But I know it's at least around this northeastern part up here. There was a story told that they actually got a ping - maybe four times, give or take - from a Shark in the area up and down Paterson Inlet. Cruising up and down.

CRAWFORD: Inside the Inlet?

SHAW: Inside Paterson Inlet. There were people on the beach enjoying summer fun and swimming, at the same time. The fish itself just kept on its own. As the story was told. 

CRAWFORD: 'The story' being Clinton to Peter to you?

SHAW: I’m not sure if it came from Clinton, that one. I do have another friend who works at DOC, and some of these stories come through him as well.

CRAWFORD: Right. Do you recall, was that work - specifically the hydroacoustic tagging - was that in your reading material, or was that word of mouth? Knowledge getting shared that way?

SHAW: A little bit of both. 

CRAWFORD: In general, if you had to summarize what was learned from the hydroacoustic work - to the best of your ability?

SHAW: At the moment, because I read it sometime last year, and it was a quick read ... My understanding was that they did find the White Sharks congregated in certain areas, and not in others. That for whatever reason, some of the islands or some of the areas, attracted them in greater numbers compared to others.           

CRAWFORD: And to go one step further, if you had to pick, what regions they would have been aggregating in?

SHAW: Well of course, Edwards Island. Bench was quite a good one, quite a well-known one, as well. I think Ruapuke may be another one. I’m thinking Bunker Islands as well.

CRAWFORD: And of course, this would all depend in part of the actual deployment - the locations where the hydroacoustic ears were deployed.

SHAW: Yes. They couldn’t put them absolutely everywhere dotted along.

CRAWFORD: Right. And simply because they didn’t have an ear at a particular location, didn’t mean that they weren’t over there as well. That's what Scientists call 'the absence of evidence' - as opposed to 'the evidence of absence.'

SHAW: Absolutely.

6A. OBSERVATIONS FROM CAGE TOUR DIVE OPERATIONS

Cage Tour Dive Operations

CRAWFORD: Where did you spend most of first season with Peter's operation.

SHAW: We based ourselves at Motunui, which is Edwards Island. On the east side or the west side, depending on the weather conditions. A couple of times we went over to Jacky Lee, which is right next door, sheltered on the south end. Again, it was to do with wind.

CRAWFORD: But still focused in the Titi Islands? 

SHAW: Focused in the Titi islands. But Edwards has always been our mainstay. The permits have designated that area.

CRAWFORD: Although the first year that you were working was before the permit - there were no geographic restrictions then?

SHAW: No, we could go wherever we liked. But Peter’s approach was just keeping it at this practice - a verbal understanding of not making the fishermen and the divers nervous by zigzagging around different areas. That meant that we would be there, and they wouldn’t see us in different places every day. But also, Edwards Island - the White Sharks congregate out there.         

CRAWFORD: On their own. If nobody was doing any cage diving operations, those Sharks would still be abundant around Edwards Island?

SHAW: I solidly believe that. That first year, we were over at Jacky Lee a few times. And also talking to the ferry driver, because they had another boat anchored there - he said he’d seen one there once or twice.  

CRAWFORD: Where? Jacky Lee?

SHAW: Yeah, at Jacky Lee. He was out there regularly, saying he’d seen Sharks maybe once or twice. We were seeing them every day. We could never put enough berley or bait in the water. And this was without the permits. Obviously, we weren’t putting ten baits in - it was one - and they'd never come along. We could put as much berley in as we wanted. Nothing.

CRAWFORD: You just weren’t going to get them at Jacky Lee on a regular basis?

SHAW: There were Seals on the Island, the water was beautiful. Whether it was topography or whatever.

White Pointer Seasonal Aggregation

CRAWFORD: Please describe the progression of White Pointers through the season, in and around the Titi Islands - based directly on your experience with the cage dive operation. 

SHAW: We started off my first season, and I was already taking a count of how many Sharks each day. And which individuals were coming back.

CRAWFORD: That was pre-permit, so it was not a requirement. But you and Peter were doing it anyways?

SHAW: Pete was already doing the photos. I wanted to do the accounting for it. I’d just come out of study. These things are important to build an understanding of patterns. 

CRAWFORD: Agreed. What kind of data were you collecting?

SHAW: During the beginning of our season, which started on the fifteenth of January, we were getting four to five Sharks a day.

CRAWFORD: When you say 'Shark' ...

SHAW: White Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Were they individually-different White Pointers? Or potentially repeat customers, one might go away and then come back?

SHAW: Yes. To begin it was at least four, then five, then six, then seven, then eight per day. Some of those were repeat individuals. Identified as the same individual as the day before. Some of them were steady each day.

CRAWFORD: This is important because 'repeat customer' has two different meanings in this context. Repeat customer within a day, and repeat customer across days. 

SHAW: Both.

CRAWFORD: Right. When you say number of Sharks in a day ... To the extent that you knew, and it sounds like you were taking the kind of data to know, the number of different individual Sharks that were attracted to the cage on a given day?

SHAW: Overall four to five, at the beginning.

CRAWFORD: Including the possibility that a particular Shark might have gone off for a couple of hours, and come back later?

SHAW: That would be counted as the same one. 

CRAWFORD: It would show up as the same one. Ok. So, you and I have an agreement when you say X number of Sharks in a day - that's what we mean. To the best of your ability, the number of individually different Sharks that came to the cage that day?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: We’ll talk about repeat customers later. 

SHAW: That’s fine.

CRAWFORD: And you know I’m all about trends through time and space - in frequency and distribution. At the beginning of the season, starting mid-January around Edwards Island, you were getting four to five individual animals per day. How did that change over the season?  

SHAW: That increased to ten. 

CRAWFORD: By what point in the season? 

SHAW: That’ll be during the next month, so February.

CRAWFORD: Roughly ten different Sharks to the cage, on a given day? 

SHAW: Clinton did tell us one day "Well, actually you've photographed many more than that."

CRAWFORD: Many more individual White Pointers?

SHAW: Many more individuals. But a consistent ten that we were identifying, mostly from the surface, each day.

CRAWFORD: Getting back to the general patterns within the season, as the season goes on ...

SHAW: The beginning, male juveniles. You may get the odd bigger male, but they’re not the five metre. A lot of two to three metres, and some three point five to four metres. 

CRAWFORD: So, at the beginning of the season around December, in come the little males?

SHAW: They’re all sort of establishing. And then the females and the larger males start arriving, especially the larger ones at the end of March. So, December-January, mostly younger males with the odd sort of medium age one in there. And then, February-March, you've got the arrival of old males, little bit of female, and the big guys. 

CRAWFORD: Are those data that are required by the DOC permit, or are those data that are supplementary to what the permit requires?

SHAW: Some of that is supplementary.

CRAWFORD: What’s required for the permit? 

SHAW: Photo ID, identification, environmental as far as weather, location. 

CRAWFORD: In terms of photo identification, does it mean just a snap of one animal?

SHAW: They want side, other side, dorsal fin. They want every angle, which is almost impossible.

CRAWFORD: But the idea is multiple angles on an individual, and then from that collection of multiple images to estimate the number of different individuals on that day. Is that right? Since last year was the first permit year that DOC required those data, they will have all of that?

SHAW: Sizes, and male-female as well. Where possible.

CRAWFORD: Where possible. These data from last year have been forwarded to DOC? Or it needs to go through the vetting process, and then is will be forwarded?

SHAW: Each day, we wrote on a sheet that was supplied by DOC, with the layout of all those requirements. And that would be sent to Clinton, say once a month.

CRAWFORD: So, he receives a form for each day, and the images as well? 

SHAW: Images as well, yeah.

CRAWFORD: I understand about satisfying the DOC permit conditions, but why collect the supplementary data?

SHAW: Sometimes when we do have challenges, we can kind of understand them. "Did that relate to a king tide blood moon that set the other day? Was that in direct relation? Look, we got another one this year - did that happen last year?" It’s never a sure assumption.

CRAWFORD: When you say 'challenge' you mean in terms of being there with animals for the customers. That kind of challenge?

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, a seasonal progression from smaller males, then larger males, then the females and some of the bigger males. Who is the last to show up at the party? 

SHAW: I would say the last to show up to the party is the oldest female. 

CRAWFORD: Meaning the biggest female? 

SHAW: Yeah. And I’m thinking of one individual that is on that Level Three. She’s interactive.

CRAWFORD: But without the edge?

SHAW: There’s no edge, no. She's a beautiful animal.

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that there are increasing numbers of individual White Pointers over the season?

SHAW: There’s varying opinions that I’ve heard of. One is that they come to New Zealand to breed. They migrate to different areas, whether it be Australia, New Cal, all the warmer places of the world. And they come back for our summer. 

CRAWFORD: With regards to Clinton's photo identification work ... and this has a different meaning for you, because you see these animals up close and personal. You and the operation contribute a good chunk of the images that make up Clinton's database. If you were to generalize, what do you remember was learned from the photo identification work? What were the major trends, the major patterns? 

SHAW: The photo work went along with some of the satellite tagging, as well. They were tracking them right out on their migration route. I guess that was in direct relation to that. But, it was also about gauging the White Shark population size of the area.

CRAWFORD: What do you recall about the things they learned about population size, based on photo identification work? 

SHAW: It’s said that they are around two hundred, two hundred and fifty, migrating to the area.

CRAWFORD: This was photo identification? 

SHAW: It’s an estimate, based on photo ID. 

CRAWFORD: In terms of population abundance estimates, was that insight that you received from documentation? Or was that from word of mouth?

SHAW: That was from word of mouth. 

CRAWFORD: So, you haven’t read anything to date about estimation of population abundance - based on at least the visual identification component?

SHAW: It may have been something I’ve missed within that documentation.

CRAWFORD: Population abundance estimates require a particular kind of thinking. First you have to introduce what’s being defined as a 'biological population' and sometimes different biologists have different understandings. But in general, it has to do with reproductively isolated groups. There’s always going to be mixing. There’s always going to be immigration and emigration. But in general, a population is a more-or-less cohesive group, where the individuals that belong to that group are more likely to breed among their group, than they are to breed with an individual from another such group. So, it’s not a perfectly clean definition, and there are a whole bunch of methodology considerations that have to go along with estimating population abundance.

SHAW: It is my understanding that is a grey area.

CRAWFORD: Well, there's a high degree of uncertainty - but any data with regards to empirical evidence are going to be very useful, in terms of a population ecologist trying to get a handle on the population abundance. Let's just talk about the idea of White Pointers at Edwards Island, specifically. Since last year, the DOC permit says cage dive operations must be just at that one place, only within proximity to it. And there are images of White Pointers being taken there, and submitted to Clinton, and some form of analysis that he might be doing with those data. This particular animal was here on this date, and I have another image a week later, and then ten days later, and we can see that it’s the same individual. You can put together a trend over time in a place, and then try to estimate the number of White Pointers that would be at Edwards Island over the course of the season. Realizing there could be some animals that just pass through, and there could be some animals that stick around for a while, and there could be some animals that come and go, and then come back again. And there could be some resident White Pointers that are there for the entire period. Based on your understanding of whatever analysis that Clinton had done on photos from Edwards Island, how many different individual White Pointers had been seen by your operation? Or maybe combined Peter's and Mike’s operations - over the course of the entire season, at that one Edwards Island location? 

SHAW: Year one we sent in what we thought was photos of ten different individuals on one day. Clinton came back to us and said "No, you got sixteen." Which was very interesting.

CRAWFORD: So, your informal estimate was an underestimate, compared to his more formal estimate based on the photos?

SHAW: The way he IDs the photos is the fingerprint between the grey and white colour countershading pattern. Where that is quite individual for each of the Sharks. For us, we don't have time to do that. The way we do it is markings in general, but also characteristics, behaviours - the way they move around.

CRAWFORD: That’s interesting, because that stream of information is not necessarily available to Clinton - he only sees the still images, or maybe video if he receives it in that form. Was there any video that got sent? Or were they all stills, to your knowledge?

SHAW: We send them everything.

CRAWFORD: So, there could be a mix.

SHAW: Yeah. Clinton’s got quite a trusting relationship. We know that that he will sort out the rubbish from the good stuff.

CRAWFORD: So, for last year - you were sending a compilation of images for each day. And after examining the images more closely, Clinton said that you and Pete were underestimating the number of different, individual White Pointers you were seeing?

SHAW: Which is brilliant. That we can get clarification on where we're at, and how we're identifying.

CRAWFORD: Over the six-month course of the season, did you get the sense - either directly from Clinton, or indirectly through Peter - that the photo-ID-estimated number of individuals on a given day might increase or decrease over the course of a season?

SHAW: At the beginning of my season one, there was three and four. A few weeks went by then five, six and then eight, nine, ten. Then we had the suspicious Shark death. No Sharks for two to three weeks. And then we started having different individuals, but that same high number coming in right until the end of the season. My last dive, I could see nine.

CRAWFORD: In your field of view at one time?

SHAW: In my field of view. In the cage, myself.

CRAWFORD: At the end of cage diving season? So, we’re talking...

SHAW: May, June. But my season two was very different.

CRAWFORD: How was it different?

SHAW: We had five individuals, round about, that were consistently interacting with the boat over that season. One of those individuals was there from day one, to day end - although went off for a couple of days interestingly enough, came back a little bit subdued. He was a Level Four, and came back as a Level Three for a few days, before he hiked back up. We were surmising that maybe he’d gone to get a feed.

CRAWFORD: This was an individual that had some distinctive markings that you recognized? Did you and Pete have a name for this particular animal?

SHAW: Yes. His name was D'Arcy. 

CRAWFORD: You mean D'Arcy the Dorsal?

SHAW: D'Arcy the Dorsal - because of the rubbing against his dorsal that was there prior.

CRAWFORD: What kind of attitude did D'Arcy have that put him at a Level Four? 

SHAW: He was fast, quick-moving. He would come out of the water reasonably swiftly. 

CRAWFORD: Always focused on the bait or ...

SHAW: Yes, very much. 

CRAWFORD: Was he also focused on the platform, or the boat, or the cage? 

SHAW: Not really, no. It was the bait. 

CRAWFORD: He had an attitude for the bait?

SHAW: He would come up. He would saunter around the back of the boat going slowly. And then he’d come back around, and it’s like "Ok, watch this." And he’d come up and under, and you could see his tail do a little flick - and then 'whoosh' out of the water. To try and get the bait.

CRAWFORD: How much out of the water? Half his body? Just his head?

SHAW: He wasn’t breaching, but he was certainly head and body. Making a splash. 

CRAWFORD: All that was from one kick of his tail?

SHAW: One little thrust of the tail.

CRAWFORD: That was enough to propel this male's body up to the surface, and partly out of the water?

SHAW: Going from just that slow cruise, yeah.

CRAWFORD: So, the acceleration is pretty impressive. This was at the end of the season. You told me previously that there was a progression in size and gender of the White Pointers through the course of the season? 

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Was that in you first season, second season, or was it in both?

SHAW: I found it was in both.

CRAWFORD: Please characterize that progression again? 

SHAW: Generally, it started with youthful males ...

CRAWFORD: For the first couple of months?

SHAW: Yeah. And then some of the larger males - up to four, five metres. The four metres would sort of overlap with the juveniles, and into the bigger ones that were coming in as well. And then the females arrived last.

CRAWFORD: Big females or all females? Mix?

SHAW: A mix, really.

CRAWFORD: But the ladies show up towards the end of the season, after the big males typically have come in.

SHAW: Yes. Whether that’s specifically true - right after the big males, or whether that overlaps a little bit as well. 

CRAWFORD: Right. You described that D'Arcy was there from the beginning of that second season. He was a medium-size male? 

SHAW: He was about four metres. So the exception to the rule - still sort of a youngish male.

CRAWFORD: Right. But he buggered off for a little bit mid-season? 

SHAW: It was in February. 

CRAWFORD: How long was he gone?

SHAW: It was about two or three days. And he was sluggish.

CRAWFORD: And then he came back in, and you recognized him - because he’s D'Arcy the Dorsal? 

SHAW: He’s got that rubbing. 

CRAWFORD: And he doesn't do any of that attitude towards the bait for a while?

SHAW: For about two to three days. And then he was back to his normal attitude.

CRAWFORD: No change in his morphology, no bulging belly or anything like that? I wonder - would you know? Did you ever see ...

SHAW: A comment was made to me that he was slightly lighter on top, which I’ve been told can be due to location. If they’re on a sandy bottom more often than, their camouflaging can lighten. That's word of mouth.

CRAWFORD: But it’s still knowledge. We’re Humans. We tend to tell our stories. Sometimes we write them, to tell them. Sometimes we speak them, to tell them. I’m interested if - over the course of the two seasons, with multiple, first-hand, detailed views - did you ever see a known individual White Pointer, that was dramatically different in shape over time? We’ve had an instance with D'Arcy, where there was an observable difference in behaviour ... but if there had been a feeding event, was it associated with an extended stomach? Anything like that?

SHAW: Not that I can specifically recall. I think I would specifically recall. There might have been some hints, but it wasn’t enough to ...

CRAWFORD: Right. Likewise, if you had a female that came back and was noticeably thinner, maybe there was a birthing event or something. Nothing stands out for you in that regard?

SHAW: Nothing’s standing out. I remember Pete saying "Check out the lateral line when they first arrive" - because it was often more prominent due to the traveling, the migration without regular feeding events." Just like your ribs can show up, if you're getting too skinny. For them, that lateral line is a wee bit more distinctive when they first arrive.

CRAWFORD: Suggesting that they are in a different condition physiologically, before arriving. And that their condition changes as a result of them being around Stewart Island. There can be a number of things associated with that. It’s an important observation. 

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Just to kind of tie it up with the usefulness of the interpretation of visual identification ... Over the course of the entire season at Edwards Island, how many different, individual White Pointers? Did you ever have a discussion about that?

SHAW: Season one we sort of surmised around thirty-five to forty. 

CRAWFORD: That was a you and Peter? Or you and Peter and Clinton?

SHAW: It was me and Peter. Peter discussed it with Clinton. That might’ve come into it as well, but I can't say for sure.

CRAWFORD: And season two?

SHAW: Season two, I think that dropped. Quite dramatically. I would say maybe fifteen to twenty-five. 

CRAWFORD: Really?

SHAW: But season one, we had a lot of more of the Level Threes and Fours.

CRAWFORD: Animals that were showing interest and attitude?

SHAW: Season two, we had a lot more Level Two Drive-Bys. They were wary, and they would go off again. There was one where, I’d get in the cage, it’d be there for five minutes, and then it's gone again. Except for maybe five individuals, that hung around regularly. 

CRAWFORD: What would you estimate, what would you guess, that would have regularly hung around in your season one, compared to the five individuals in season two?

SHAW: Well, we had pre-Shark-death and post-Shark-death. So, those individuals pre, they changed to those post. We might’ve got one or two of the pre individuals come back after.

CRAWFORD: Prior to the Shark death in season one, roughly how many were regularly hanging around?

SHAW: Ten to twelve.

CRAWFORD: And after the Shark death, how many?

SHAW: Ten to twelve, but mostly different individuals. 
 

White Pointer Feeding

CRAWFORD: I've got to ask. Why are those Titi Isands so close, and yet in some ways so very different? What is it about Edwards Island that just makes it better than the other places for White Pointers?

SHAW: New Zealand Fur Seals, the topography under the water.

CRAWFORD: The Seals I can understand. Do you think White Pointers are fussy about what they eat?

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that?

SHAW: You look at their natural foods. It’s all oily.

CRAWFORD: Like what?

SHAW: The Seals, they’ve got a natural blubber layer. If they smell a Whale, they’re off! That’s more than a roast dinner, that’s a banquet on the blubber layer. The reasons we use Tuna? One, because it’s not a locally-caught fish, so just being nice to the fishermen a wee bit there. Two, it’s got a huge oil content in it. Whether you use Albacore or Skipjack ... rich, nutritious food. It's good energy food for them. Pete said to me that he did try and change it. With the Red Cod. And they spat it out.         

CRAWFORD: Ok. But what I had asked was, do you think they’re fussy. Which is a different thing than asking if you think that they respond strongly to high quality food. 

SHAW: Well, they spit out Humans all the time. 

CRAWFORD: What does that mean - 'spit out Humans'?

SHAW: In other areas - we haven’t had any incidents in a long time - but if they investigate a food and they don’t like it, they don’t swallow. I’ve seen it with birds as well. Giant Petrel, and also the Lesser Albatross, the smaller Albatross or Mollymawk.

CRAWFORD: You’ve seen it happen?

SHAW: Oh, yeah.

CRAWFORD: What did you see?

SHAW: I think it was D'Arcy, or maybe Arthur - Arthur’s a good one for that. They’re following these birds around all day. The Mollymawks, they’re a little bit more wary. Whereas the Giant Petrels will sit there while a Shark nose is up underneath them, trying to get their mouth around them. And the Giant Petrels will be picking at them. We call them 'natural decoys'. Whereas a lot of the time the Albatross will quickly get out of the way - they might feel the pressure of the wave or whatever. On one occasion, the Giant Petrels had been hanging around for a few days, the Sharks been chasing them for a few days. And then all of a sudden, this individual Shark got a Giant Petrel - went under the water with him, I saw the mouth closed around. And then the Giant Petrel pops up! That same Giant Petrel was there the next morning - he was bruised and battered, but you could tell that it was him because he was little bit like … just trying to get some food himself. And he survived. Maybe a month or two later, when an Albatross got taken, it had at least one broken wing. So, it got taken, came back up, and floated off down the Foveaux Strait. I was going back on a different boat, back to Stewart Island on a tender - we actually came up the side and checked out the bird. It was definitely still alive, but it wasn’t going to make it.

CRAWFORD: But in both cases, the White Pointer's mouth closed on the birds, and then ejected. And you made reference to an attack on a Human in terms of a hit, teeth potentially on a board or around legs,  maybe even tears into flesh or whatever - and then the Shark's gone. It could be surprise "Oh my gosh! That wasn’t what I thought it was!" And then they bugger off in a panic. Or there could be other things happening. But the question still stands - are they picky? Will they turn their nose down at some food, for whatever reason?

SHAW: They don’t eat Red Cod. Pete had said they’d spit out every Red Cod, but they do eat Blue Cod and Salmon.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen White Pointers eating Blue Cod?

SHAW: We’ve had a fisherman not a hundred metres away, cleaning his catch out at Edwards. "Yeah, I’ll help you out Pete." Throwing Blue Cod frames into the water, and they’re very quickly on it. But also, in my season one, we went out fishing for Blue Cod - nothing to do with any Shark operation - out on the point, got Blue Cod. And straight away, next thing - Snap. Gone. Pete’s like "Yeah, there's definitely a White Shark. Just by the feel of it." So, I believe they are attracted to those fish on the line, as well. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. White Pointers can be fussy - depending on the kind of fish. But for those it likes - fish frames, fish on a line, fish anything. In addition to Seal adults and pups.

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you know anything about the stomach contents of White Pointers that had been caught a while ago in Halfmoon Bay?

SHAW: I only know of one that had been told to me, but it wasn’t in Halfmoon Bay. For whatever reason, it was dead. I don’t know if it was killed, or if it was just a natural death. They opened it up, and there was about nine Seal pups inside.

CRAWFORD: And that was out in the Titi Islands?

SHAW: One of the Titi Islands.

CRAWFORD: Getting back to Whales ... In your two years around Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island, have you ever seen any Whale carcasses in this region? 

SHAW: All live Whales. 

CRAWFORD: Have you heard about any Shark-Whale interactions?

SHAW: Not specifically in the area. My knowledge just comes from other areas. Although when the Orca stranded ...

CRAWFORD: Where?

SHAW: It was in Southland. The other Whales in general don’t come through.

CRAWFORD: They don’t come through Foveaux Strait? 

SHAW: Yeah. Whether it’s because of the depth, or temperature, or whatever. I’ve had a friend whose sat in Doughboy Bay and listened to the Whales calling, so there's certainly Whales, but we haven’t noted any coming through the Foveaux Strait ourselves. But they had a pod of Orca out there.

CRAWFORD: Out where?

SHAW: I can’t remember exactly.

CRAWFORD: But it was on the mainland side of the Strait?

SHAW: That side, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And what kind of Shark-Whale interaction had you heard about? 

SHAW: We didn’t have any direct contact with Ingrid Visser, or any of the people working out there, but we were wondering if the carcass was attracting numbers of Sharks from Edwards. I think we did have a lull around that time.

CRAWFORD: Did you hear anything from others about Shark-Whale interactions around Stewart Island, or out in the Strait? 

SHAW: No.

CRAWFORD: Ok. You also mentioned topography as maybe being very important for the aggregation of White Pointers around Edwards Island. What did you mean, specifically? 

SHAW: The depth, and how it rises. It’s not a gradual thing.

CRAWFORD: You think the slope is important?

SHAW: Yeah, I think the steep slope’s good. You’ve got rocky on one side, you've got flat and sandy on the other. Like I said, I haven’t spent a lot of time there, but Jacky Lee may have a bit more gradual rise. The one side is rocky and a little bit shallow. The other side here is sandy and a lot deeper. 

CRAWFORD: So, you're talking about the nature of the substrate immediately adjacent to the island, but then also the adjacent topography. On Edwards Island, is the slope pretty steep on both sides? Relative to Jacky Lee? 

SHAW: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: You think that topography might be an important factor there? 

SHAW: Only because there's Seals in both areas. When we were sitting there that day, just anchored in that sheltered area in the bay there ...

CRAWFORD: At Jacky Lee?

SHAW: Yes. In the bay of Jacky Lee. We saw Seals, numerous Seals swimming around, on the rocks, everywhere. And you’ve got the currents going across.

CRAWFORD: And relatively strong?

SHAW: It depends. But that current can rip on through the Titi Islands. It can get extremely strong. Watching the different tidal levels, king tides, and all that. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any other environmental factors you think might be importance to understand the distribution and abundance of the White Pointers out around Edwards Island?

SHAW: Well, we were there during the dawn and dusk as well. 

CRAWFORD: And why might that be important? 

SHAW: The Sharks seemed to like the lower light levels for hunting.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean by they 'seemed to like it'? 

SHAW: They seemed to interact differently. We have, on very few occasions, been out when it hasn’t been full daylight. 

CRAWFORD: Dawn or dusk?

SHAW: We're generally there in day-time - eight till maybe two, five at the latest. 

CRAWFORD: Arriving on station ...

SHAW: Arriving on station at Edwards approximately eight o'clock.

CRAWFORD: You would leave Bluff maybe an hour before? 

SHAW: We were leaving at seven o’clock in the morning.

CRAWFORD: On station, at Edwards Island by eight am?

SHAW: Yep, by eight. 

CRAWFORD: And in the summer, eight is sunny?

SHAW: Generally, yeah. You’ve lost that dusk. 

CRAWFORD: But on some occasions, you said ...

SHAW: With Discovery Channel, we did the night-time filming.

CRAWFORD: Was Discovery Channel during your first season?

SHAW: First season and second season. 

CRAWFORD: Both. In the first season, they chartered Pete's operation? 

SHAW: They chartered the operation. 

CRAWFORD: For how long a period, roughly?

SHAW: It was meant to be for fifteen days, and it was ten. 

CRAWFORD: What time of year?

SHAW: I think it was in March. 

CRAWFORD: Towards the end of the cage dive season?

SHAW: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: That also means that as summer draws to a close, daylight lengths are getting shorter.

SHAW: But still very long days. I think dawn goes from five o’clock in the morning.

CRAWFORD: Fair enough. For the first season, you took Discovery Channel out for about ten days. What did they want, and what had you done in order to accommodate?     

SHAW: They wanted a grand story. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: They didn’t know specifically what they wanted?

SHAW: No. We got the cages ready. And got everything set up. They had all the paperwork, and they had their storyline. Now I can’t remember the first year - there was still logistics. I think there was a filming permit, possibly. Because I remember Pete was organizing that from August to December.

CRAWFORD: Discovery Channel had to get approval paperwork from DOC in order to do this? But this was pre-permit, during your first season. Anyway, they wanted a grand story. Were they basically exploring themselves? 

SHAW: They had a script. 

CRAWFORD: And they were shooting to the script?

SHAW: Yes. There were props brought in, and that sort of thing.

CRAWFORD: Where did you go with them?

SHAW: Anything where they were diving outside the cage, was up the Inlet. 

CRAWFORD: In Paterson Inlet? Behind Ulva Island, Big Glory Bay over by the farms?

SHAW: It wasn’t by the farms. I think we went to Little Glory, from memory. Stayed out of the way of the farms.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But that was all for a photo op? There was no berleying going on, nothing like that? 

SHAW: Yeah. We also came down round Port Adventure. We came down this way to do a bit of diving as well, to try and find a cave. [both chuckle]

CRAWFORD: A cave? Alright. But again, it’s their storyline. And more to the script that they were working from?

SHAW: Yeah. We were also asked to find a wreck, to send down a camera by itself. And that wreck was sort of about this area. And we did see a Shark within the timing of what it showed on the footage from Discovery. 

CRAWFORD: You saw a Shark at the surface?

SHAW: No. We dropped the camera down past the wreck. Basically, as soon as it hit the bottom, within moments, a White went past. 

CRAWFORD: That's an important observation, because that’s not in among the Northern Titi Islands. That's near an island off Chew Tobacco Bay or Port Adventure - along the eastern extremity of Stewart Island. 

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to your first season, pre-permits ... Edwards Island was a consistent performer, in terms of strong White Pointer abundance?

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: With regard to the actual operations, the berleying, entry and exit of the cage - all that was normal, typical operations? Unless there was something else done differently? That you learned something different about the animals or the operations? 

SHAW: The first year, we were using an environmentally-friendly berley bag, that was made of flax. It was hung over the side.

CRAWFORD: It was a form of berleying, without putting hundreds of litres in the water? It was just a berley bag soaking at the surface? 

SHAW: We would take the middle pieces out of the Tuna, generally Skipjack or Albacore. We'd take little pieces, chunks like that - maybe three chunks - that could last two or three days. And it’s interesting to compare that, to last year with the berley barrel. 

CRAWFORD: So, last year was the start of the DOC permit. Prior to the permit, there was no constraint on what could be done. What Peter was doing was just taking Tuna pieces, putting them into a flax bag, and it was just soaking? Nothing being pumped, just a soaking bag?

SHAW: It would let out a little bit of that fish tissue, but not as a pumped soup.

CRAWFORD: Didn't the White Pointers come up, and try to eat the bag? 

SHAW: Very, very few. Two.

CRAWFORD: Out of how many total encounters? Regardless of the number of different individual Sharks, regardless of repeat customers?

SHAW: I think two individuals would come up. We kept that berley bag on board after one got taken, because we didn’t want that to be a precedent for them. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Was there anything else of significance from the Discovery Channel filming week?

SHAW: It was really about timing, because the Discovery did the night dive that season. We were putting the cage to the bottom. For those who understand the characteristics of White Sharks particularly. It’s not something we offer anyone off the street. So, we were putting the cages down to the bottom, and we did it on this night dive, for this one occasion.

CRAWFORD: Tell me a little bit more about the specifics of that. The cage gets set up, and divers into the cage, and then the cage with the divers is lowered to the bottom? Completely self-contained?

SHAW: They’re in scuba at this stage. When we use the cage normally, we open two doors on the side, and the window gives a higher filming view. They went to the bottom, they got to the bottom, they opened doors and windows. Very quickly, and you can see on the footage, that footage I believe is not dramatized as such. This was at Edwards Island ...

CRAWFORD: So, it was back at the hotspot?

SHAW: On the west side of Edwards. 

CRAWFORD: And it was a night dive?

SHAW: That was the night dive. They very quickly had to shut the cage windows. There was flicking of the tail, there was very quick movement, there was Sharks working in succession - actually going for the cage. Now that’s the first time in my wo-year experience with the White Sharks that they've been aggravated enough in that sense. Very quickly, they shut up shop. And soon after, we brought the cage back up.

CRAWFORD: If I’m understanding you correctly, one the of the most important things here is connected to your general comment earlier about the idea of day-time versus night-time. Your feeling is that the animals behave qualitatively differently in the day with full sunlight, than in the transition hours. And based on what you just said, potentially night-time even more?

SHAW: Yes.

White Pointer Mating

CRAWFORD: What do you know, from other people or your own experience, about the possibility of White Pointers mating around southern New Zealand?

SHAW: I’ve heard it’s said that they come back for breeding, but we see very little evidence of bite marks.

CRAWFORD: Ok. One possibility is a migration from possibly multiple sources, with this southern New Zealand as a common destination. 

SHAW: And the migration is staggered over time.

CRAWFORD: Staggered on the basis of some come from further away, coming later? It could be staggered in terms of animals that might be stopping along the way to feed or hang out or do whatever?

SHAW: They could be busy finishing off what they’re doing up there. 

CRAWFORD: It’s possible also that you get juveniles potentially showing up first, maybe because they’re wishful thinkers about reproduction. But then when the bigger animals show up, they get displaced. And that leads us down a completely other path, in terms of social structure and dominance hierarchy. But also, it could very well be that not all animals engage in actual reproduction. If the younger ones are not engaging in reproduction, but they are around to watch and socialize. 

SHAW: If there is social understanding.

CRAWFORD: Yes, if there is that kind of social complexity. Do you think that at least some of the animals that you're seeing in this region at these times are there for reproduction?

SHAW: I’m not convinced. I can’t say yes or no. 

CRAWFORD: What might you be looking for, in terms of evidence that would convince you?

SHAW: One is information from other people, from their knowledge. Scientifically. I've been told that during interaction when breeding, that they can bite.

CRAWFORD: Who can bite?

SHAW: The male or female.

CRAWFORD: The male bites or the female bites?

SHAW: I’m unsure. 

CRAWFORD: But there might be some biting behaviour going on?

SHAW: There’s been little evidence of that.

CRAWFORD: What kind of evidence might you have seen? What little evidence?

SHAW: I don’t know what the breeding side of things entail. Although in saying that, one of the days this last season, when the females started to turn up - we were getting a lot higher numbers of the males. Whether that was what for breeding, or just for social ...

CRAWFORD: Let's get back to the wounding and scarring. There are a variety of different types of scars that a typical White Pointer might have, and they could have been caused by a variety of different mechanisms.

SHAW: Seal, Boat.

CRAWFORD: Right. Describe to me the kinds of scars, or patterns of scarring, that you have seen on these White Pointers. In general, what kind of patterns have you seen? 

SHAW: Anything from scuff marks on the dorsal ...

CRAWFORD: On the dorsal fin? Or on the top of the head?

SHAW: Both. I believe that’s to do with the Level Four behaviour, and interactions with boats. Fast, furious scuffing past. And it’s any boat.

CRAWFORD: Ok.

SHAW: I’ve seen small marks on the base of the dorsal. 

CRAWFORD: On the base of the dorsal fin?

SHAW: Yeah. Also scratches around the nose. 

CRAWFORD: What do you think might be causing the scratches on the dorsal fin?

SHAW: We have talked between ourselves, myself and Pete, about that being with Seals getting away. They fight. They will bite. 

CRAWFORD: Yes. And if the Seal could bite, that might be perhaps the only thing on the Shark they could reach to bite. It’s possible. 

SHAW: And very distinctive on the side, maybe forward off the dorsal - that curved moon shape. Not a solid cut, but incisions. Scarring incisions in that pattern.

CRAWFORD: On the base, anterior to the dorsal fin - so before it, on the base?

CRAWFORD: On the top of the head.

SHAW: From what I remember, it was forward of the pectoral fin, just on the side, sort of further to the top. 

CRAWFORD: Relative to the eye? 

SHAW: Back further. 

CRAWFORD: Is it different from the base of the dorsal? 

SHAW: It’s much smaller.

CRAWFORD: Mouth size? Like a Seal's mouth? 

SHAW: Yeah. Whether it’s that or not, it's in relation to that size of a Seal mouth, possibly.

CRAWFORD: And then the scarring that you've seen on top of the head, you think maybe teeth or claws scraping? That kind of thing?

SHAW: Forward of the pectoral fin it looks like teeth marks, if I were to relate it to anything. There’s no drag from it, as far as being clawed.

CRAWFORD: Do you see any of those dragging type of claw marks?

SHAW: Puncture. Drag claw marks around the snout sometimes. Lunch was trying to scratch them back, or they might be bumping into something.

CRAWFORD: Right. Very helpful. What kinds of scarring might you have seen elsewhere on the body? Moving from the front of the Shark back. On the pectoral fins themselves, any scarring? 

SHAW: Nothing really prominent on the pectoral fins, other than maybe the odd scratch or something.

CRAWFORD: Moving further back?

SHAW: From memory, the same sort of moon-shaped puncture behind that pectoral fin to tail. Stuff like that, to get more insight we very much tried to get photos of anything that was different and out of the norm. So, anything that could be distinctive, and could be through behavioural stuff again, has been forwarded to Clinton Duffy. 
 

Dead White Pointer Incident

CRAWFORD: From your perspective, as you understand it, what happened with what became the infamous 'dead White Pointer incident'?

SHAW: What happened was, one individual person come into the area -into the Shark diving area on the east side of Edwards.

CRAWFORD: By 'person' do you mean ...

SHAW: Zane Smith.

CRAWFORD: A Stewart Island fisherman.

SHAW: Yep. Pāua diver, fisherman. Parked his boat around the corner, he got into this rubber dinghy, his blow-up rubber dinghy. And he was not doing anything else - just passing different boats looking in the water, looking around. And he was there for quite a while. 

CRAWFORD: Half a day?

SHAW: Yeah, maybe a couple of hours. He was there after we left. I was getting a bit nervous for him actually - anything that is a blow-up boat in a Shark aggregation zone is potentially risky.

CRAWFORD: Even if a Shark was just mouthing, it could puncture - and the next thing you know ...

SHAW: Yeah. It’s not necessarily an attack. He was looking in the water. We were watching a Shark swim along behind him, as he was looking out the front. For me, under best practice guidelines, you would not take a rubber, blow-up dinghy into a Shark aggregation point. Although nothing happened. I think we had a couple days, we might’ve had three, four, five days off after that incident or ... I mean, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He just wasn’t doing anything we could see that was productive, although it certainly looked like it was Shark-focused. So, we were kind of scratching our heads a wee bit about that. When we came back - no Shark.

CRAWFORD: No Sharks, plural?

SHAW: No Sharks whatsoever ... well, on that day that we came back, on the end of that first day, we got one. We sat there until about five o’clock. About twenty minutes before we left, one turned up. Next day, nothing.

CRAWFORD: What was the behaviour of that one late-comer like? Do you remember?

SHAW: From memory, it was a Level Three.

CRAWFORD: So, showing some interest?

SHAW: Yeah, showing interest. But it wasn’t there for a long time. Like I said, during the period of two to three weeks where we had no Sharks at all, we did get in the cage - slowly and carefully motored around to see if we could see anything. Pete was out with the glass frame to try and spot anything. Because we were starting to see bird activity.

CRAWFORD: By 'bird activity' what do you mean?

SHAW: Feeding.

CRAWFORD: On the surface?

SHAW: On the surface, in that corner of the Island. We had Third Degree come down - the tv program. Sam Hayes, she didn’t know what had happened. And she started talking between locals and us - basically, trying to get to the bottom of it. So, we found out that while we were away, that Zane Smith was out on his boat, and Mike Haines was out on his boat.

CRAWFORD: Had Zane already put gear in the water? 

SHAW: I wasn’t there. I’ve only got hearsay. 

CRAWFORD: But based on what you’ve heard, Zane was there, around Edwards Island ...

SHAW: And I know Sam Hayes hit Mike up about it. And Zane had some of footage of it as well.

CRAWFORD: They had words. Mike starts up the berley to attract the White Pointers to his cage dive operation?

SHAW: Maybe. From my understanding, a Shark was caught in the net.

CRAWFORD: That would’ve been the next day?

SHAW: I’m not sure of the timeline around that. Just from not even being in the area. 

CRAWFORD: But it was reasonably close enough in time afterward?

SHAW: It was close enough to them being in position. Shark got caught in the net. I had heard at the time, and I’ve had it confirmed over and over again by different people, that Shark was shot. Illegally. You're meant to leave them. But it was shot while it was in the net, to retrieve the net, and also to retrieve that Shark. I was told that the jaws were taken for trophy, and that the fins were also taken to sell. In hearing this, I’ve heard that DOC were told about these breaches, and that the Police were told about these breaches. The Policeman on Stewart Island. The Police had said to another person that worked in DOC, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Well, we couldn’t do anything at the time without DOC moving forward with it. At the time, it all sort of laid behind the scenes. It was all rumor. It wasn’t until after that six months elapsed, because you can’t prosecute after a certain amount of time, that started coming a little bit more out of the woodworks. I was told by more than one person on the Island.

CRAWFORD: Obviously, a source of multiple concerns, several different interactions, and aspects of potential conflict there. From a purely ecological perspective, the thing that I’m focusing on here is this idea that there was a dead White Pointer in the water ... I guess even before we go any further, have you ever seen a dead White Pointer, on the bottom or washed up or in any way?

SHAW: No.

CRAWFORD: Have you ever heard of anybody seeing a dead White Pointer - that they had reason to believe a Human had caused the death? Shot or in a net or something like that?

SHAW: Not in this instance, no. I’ve heard, of course, from people. One fellow said "Oh yeah we’ve got it sussed this year. All we’ve got to do is go out and shoot one, drag it out into the area, leave it there, and no other Sharks will come about."

CRAWFORD: That was some of the common knowledge?

SHAW: Oh, they get shot all the time. People secretly get rid of them all the time. Now, he was very much the personality of soap-boxing and just grandeur. He loved a story. And I know that the locals like to plant the odd thing with him as well.           

CRAWFORD: To see what he would take?

SHAW: Well, he would always ... yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And there's always opportunity for accidental or purposeful misinformation to go out, and then have a life of its own.

SHAW: I remember the second day, Pete sort of started to go quiet - and that's never a good sign. He was looking in the water, and he said quietly to me "I think something's happened." And this was before we’d found out that Zane and Mike had had issues. Before we found out that Zane had confirmed exactly where the Shark was caught in the net. Zane wouldn’t respond to "Did you kill it?" But yeah, Pete sort of knew from the absolute quietness ... it might’ve been a sixth sense. They've been there for so long, and all of a sudden this is totally out of character.

CRAWFORD: As far as you were aware, Peter had never experienced that kind of Keyser Söze situation? "And like that [woosh] ... they were gone?"

SHAW: In the nine years now that that he’s been doing it, and he started off with a very quiet manner as a hobby, Pete said to me that the worst day - it was when got to two o’clock in the afternoon, on the west side of Edwards Island. That he’d never not. It was a hundred percent viewing, in the whole time they’d been out there.

CRAWFORD: So, he hadn’t seen any type of precipitous decline like that. And that lasted a couple of weeks anyways, right?

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORDS: A couple of questions then, specifically about that. There’s a perceived cause, and a perceived effect. Some people see the connection, and claim the effect as having been caused by the factor. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t potentially other things happening; things that could also have caused that effect. But the point that I’m trying to get to is that there was a dead Shark at Edwards Island - regardless of how it became dead. Was it suspended in the water column? Was it on the bottom?

SHAW: We couldn’t find it.

CRAWFORD: Right. You never found that dead Shark when you went looking for it. You only know through secondary information that the Shark had been entangled in a net, and that it had died one way or another in that net. Whether by drowning, or by being shot. But you had also heard that it had been retrieved. You said you'd heard that the jaws had been taken for trophy and so on. But either way, that means it was dead in the water, and then at least some of it was taken out of the water.

SHAW: Yeah. I’d also heard that the body was dumped. Whether it was dumped at Edwards and stayed there or drifted out. Or whether that was actually out in the current. 

CRAWFORD: There are a whole bunch of different uncertainties about this.

SHAW: Absolutely.

CRAWFORD: I value your description, because you're close enough to have an informed perspective, but distant enough ...

SHAW: That was frustrating, because of the fact that we were away. If we were there that day ... and we always arrive first. But if Zane had been there, we wouldn’t have stayed in the same area as him. Although if Zane had turned up after us ...

CRAWFORD: But it wasn’t a Peter-Zane thing. It was a Mike-Zane thing. 

SHAW: Exactly, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alright. The story gets told from different perspectives. I think many people have converged on the idea that it was somewhat blown out of proportion, as well.

SHAW: Samantha Hayes came in as a mediator, and basically teased the story out of different people to get more of a reality of what was happening. More than anybody else could sort of surmise. From our side, it was very valuable to hear Zane's side of it as well. To put our perspective into context.

CRAWFORD: But for me - I’m focused on that dead Shark, from an ecological point of view. I’m trying to get my head wrapped around this idea of whether it's possible that a dead White Pointer, in a place which is a known as a White Pointer aggregation place, could have that kind of dramatic effect. Obviously, something was going on. Do you think there was something about that single, dead Shark that caused the other White Pointers to vacate? 

SHAW: The reason I think definitely it was why they vacated, was they've got superpower sensories. Their smell, their hearing, their sight, their ampullae of Lorenzini - and especially that they’re able to sense stress in the water. All of that put together ... those Sharks just saw, heard, smelt, felt that very, very stressful situation. It would’ve been thrashing around in the net. When it was shot, did it die straight away? The smells that are coming from this dead animal. But certainly the stress that it was emitting while caught in that net. I like Pete’s explanation of it. If you walk down the street, and you saw something horrific happen - and somebody died. Would you stay away from there? Especially if you thought there was danger associated with there that could affect you? You wouldn’t even have to think about it. It would be a natural thing to be like "Right. We want to get out of here." And I think that’s just a basic of animal behaviour. 

CRAWFORD: One follow up question on that. This revulsion of living Sharks to the presence of dead Sharks - was that a general thing? Did you ever hear the Stewart Islanders, or anybody else for that matter, talk about it? If it was common knowledge that this was the case, or maybe it was recent common knowledge - I don't know. But if it was pre-existing common knowledge that you could actually keep more White Pointers away by having a dead White Pointer out there, say in Halfmoon Bay to protect the kids and the beaches?

SHAW: Pretty much during the whole politics of that, the comments were "Now we know what to do."

CRAWFORD: So, that implies that it was new knowledge.

SHAW: But also, I’ve heard and read many stories about Sharks being shot.

CRAWFORD: You mean globally, or here?

SHAW: Here. Prior to being protected.

CRAWFORD: Tell me your knowledge of White Pointer shooting in the region.

SHAW: Somebody told me that there was at least three a year. I read another thing about an old guy, and he was basically saying "We're out on a boat, and one of these dastardly fish come along, and started chewing on the rudder, chewing on the side of the boat. Get the World War II gun out, and Boom! That fixed that." In the story.

CRAWFORD: So, it seems like it was a norm, within a certain part of the community, a certain group of people. You see a White Pointer, you shoot it.

SHAW: Well, somebody who goes fishing and takes punters out, has basically said "Look, if I can show you a Shark, you can pay a little bit more." He’d go out to an area, and he’d throw out the newspaper to get the floating shape on top of the water. He’s not governed by any best practice or DOC permits.

CRAWFORD: He’s not a cage tour dive operator.

SHAW: Nope. And he’s told us, because he’s quite a character, that back in the day - that’s how they used to do it. They would put a piece of newspaper out to coax them in. Boom! That would fix that. What I've surmised from the very beginning ... I hear other people saying "Oh, we're training them." The behaviour's always changing because of what we’re doing, and the association with people in the water and food. Well, I think the behaviour changed prior to the Sharks being protected, because any Sharks exhibiting 'bad behaviour' were shot. Yes, there was still a population in the water - because not all Sharks will approach boats.

CRAWFORD: If I understand what you’re saying ... in different words, you’re saying that based on the accounts you’ve heard, it’s quite possible that the local Stewart Islanders have imposed a form of artificial selection on the Shark population, by removing the level Threes and Fours on sight. Leaving only the Level Ones, the ones that would run away; and the Level Twos that would stay there, but keep their distance - they wouldn’t approach in proximity.

SHAW: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Did I get that right - the idea about the artificial selection? That’s not a phrase that non-biologists or non-Science people would necessarily be familiar with. They wouldn’t use it.

SHAW: I thought it was spot on. 

CRAWFORD: The White Pointers that would have been in proximity and interacting, are the ones most likely to be shot. Therefore, those behavioural tendencies are reduced over time in the population. That the manipulation may actually have been in effect with these White Pointers - potentially long before the cage tour dive operations. By netting and shooting Sharks coming in to proximity, they have been 'dociling' the animals - removing the ones that were interactively Level Three or Level Four.

SHAW: That's my strongest argument of behaviour.

CRAWFORD: You are the first person in my interviews to have raised that possibility.

SHAW: Because nobody wants to hear it. You do. And a lot of other people do. But the anti-Shark people don’t believe that's a factor.

CRAWFORD: Whether they think it’s happening or not - whether anybody thinks it’s happening or not - it is still a logically possible, cause-and-effect mechanism. 

White Pointer Interactions with Cage Dive Operation 

CRAWFORD: Peter helped me get my head wrapped around the idea that there is a very broad spectrum of how individual White Pointers react to the arrival and processes of the cage dive operations. You're going to have some Sharks in the vicinity that just don’t come to the cage. Peter had an example where there was a big animal on the bottom, and it clearly wasn’t coming up, because that day you wouldn’t get any big Sharks. So, he had the feeling that there were some Sharks around Edwards Island that just did not come to the cage. You could see them on occasion, but not coming into proximity of the cage?

SHAW: My knowledge of that has come from Mark Enarson, who gained it from one of the scientific reports. He told me that first season, you can generalize White Sharks into three types. One lot of Sharks will leave when the boat arrives - they'll leave the area. Another lot of Sharks, you won’t see unless you're looking for them underwater, but they’ll syill be in the area. The third lot are very interactive, you will see them - they may or may not interact physically, but they are curious even if still wary. 

CRAWFORD: One of the most important things you said right there, was this is knowledge that Mark Enarson had shared with you - in turn, based on his knowledge of Science. 

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen that as well? White Pointers that just don’t come to the cage? You see them there, but they don’t come up and they don’t come around the cage?

SHAW: Yeah. And some of them won’t interact with the bait. They won’t take notice.

CRAWFORD: Well, whether they notice or not ...

SHAW: Oh, they notice. But they don't interact. Some will be down on the bottom and never come up.

CRAWFORD: So, present but non-proximity.

SHAW: Some will interact, either following the bait or coming close past the cage - looking in and checking things out. Some I’ve seen, very few, go round and round and round the boat, without a close look.

CRAWFORD: Let's consider the White Pointers that do come into proximity - and proximity in this sense is close enough where a Human could potentially recognize an individual. They’re big fish, identification based on markings, or something like that. [Discussion about project classification levels for human encounters with White Pointers: Level 1-Observation, Level 2-Swim-By, Level 3-Interest, Level 4-Intense]. 

SHAW: Drive-By.

CRAWFORD: Well it could be Drive-By, or it could be Circling. It could be either of those, but the point is some are just not in close proximity. Some other animals come into proximity, and if we consider an operational thing like - as far as you could throw a bait. Maybe ten metres. 

SHAW: Depends if you're throwing like a girl or a boy. [laughs] 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, what would you say would be a good measure of proximity to the cage? Ten, fifteen metres - something like that?

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And then there are some White Pointers that come into proximity, but they directly interact in some way. They may bring their eye up to the surface and have a look. They may bring their back and head and mouth out of the water. Some curious animals, under some conditions, are like two-year-old Humans - they just put shit in their mouth, without apparent aggression.

SHAW: Yes, that’s one of my favourites.

CRAWFORD: There's a rope, there's a buoy ... 

SHAW: They’ve got to test. They don’t understand what it is. The sight, the smell.

CRAWFORD: But it’s not a snapping compression. It’s not a head shaking. It's not anger.

SHAW: It’s not 'game on'.

CRAWFORD: It’s not 'game on'.

SHAW: As we discussed with the night-time dive, it’s not those same characteristics as the night. There's no flick of the tail.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen animals in the water, either at a distance or down at the bottom, when those animals were just not coming around the cage?

SHAW: Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you say that? 

SHAW: On the days, especially when we have struggled to have any interaction at all - because the usual suspects aren’t there. That’s when we can see the shadow down below. When we were looking for evidence of the Shark that had been killed, we didn’t have any Sharks for that period. We moved slowly along with the boat and the cage, myself, Mark Enarson, and Samantha Hayes who did the Third Degree investigative news piece. 

CRAWFORD: The TV Three news piece?

SHAW: Yeah. We went in the cage, and slowly moved along that area -up and down on the east side of Edwards Island. We saw one individual that had never shown itself to us, did not come near. We had bait and berley in the water. That individual was low, swam off. 

CRAWFORD: Low as in deep?

SHAW: We were facing this way, it was low - as in deep. We were only at ten metres depth. I saw it come, and leave. It came towards us, but within sighting distance it curved away from us.

CRAWFORD: That would be Level Two, presuming it had seen you. Level Three is more curious.

SHAW: It’s especially when we have struggled and not seen Sharks that like to interact - the Level Three and Four that we have been looking for. That's when we have noticed the Level One's as shadows in the distance. 

CRAWFORD: In the region, but not coming into proximity. Yes.

SHAW: Yes. It might even be a fin above the water, but it’s way over there. And we can’t bring them in. 

CRAWFORD: We’ll soon get to the dead White Pointer incident that some people think caused the absence of the other White Pointers, but were there any other instances during the two seasons that you  worked - without any dead Sharks as far as you knew - when there were just no Sharks to be found?

SHAW: Not the first season. 

CRAWFORD: So, it only happened that once - immediately after the dead White Pointer?

SHAW: Yeah, it only happened that once. It was reasonably steady with four, five six a week. From ten to no Sharks, when one was believed to have been killed. And then it went back to ten very quickly, once they started coming back. But mostly different individuals.  

CRAWFORD: How long for them to return?

SHAW: Two to three weeks.

CRAWFORD: Two to three weeks. And when they did come back, it was largely a new crew?

SHAW: Largely a new crew, I believe. 

CRAWFORD: Well, you were taking notes - so you’ve got more than just belief. You’ve got some evidence, you’ve got some observations. You said it only happened once during the first season, but did it happen during the second season at all? 

SHAW: The second season, the first two months we had a few individuals. There were three that interacted. If we saw them, we knew our day would be steady and consistent for a few hours.

CRAWFORD: If you saw any one of them? 

SHAW: Any one of them. 

CRAWFORD: Did they often come as individuals, or did they come in groups of twos or threes? 

SHAW: Yeah. The first one, in day one he turned up - we called him D'Arcy the Dorsal, just for the sake of it. He was there from day one, and he was there all season. Sometimes he went away. He was four metres. 

CRAWFORD: So, D'Arcy was not a juvenile?

SHAW: No. He was reasonably active. Jumping out of the water from day one. And he could be very fast, and also very sneaky. 

CRAWFORD: Was this the animal Peter referred to as Arthur?

SHAW: No. Arthur’s been here for many years. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. I need to link what Peter told me with your experiences. Peter sees things differently - not only because he’s the Skipper, he’s responsible for the vessel, as well the crew, as well the passengers. He’s responsible for watching other boats in the region. He’s responsible for what’s happening generally, as well with the Sharks that are in the water specifically. 

SHAW: The safety of the Sharks, safety of the people.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, everything. All of it. But you're different, because you are working more with the customers directly. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems you are able to spend more time paying more attention to the individual Sharks, and what they’re doing as well?

SHAW: I have an interest of documenting. Factual things that happened, that stood out.

CRAWFORD: In year one and year two, you could have the same pattern, or you could have different patterns. But overall, if you had to roughly estimate the four different Levels into percentages, what would it have been for all of the animals that you've seen over your past two years? Roughly what percentage for Level One animals? Observations, but never came close? 

SHAW: It would change from season to season. The first season ...

CRAWFORD: You're talking about your year one?

SHAW: My year one. Being able to visualize, but not identify ...

CRAWFORD: Yes. Your observer abilities would have improved over the course of the season.

SHAW: And also bringing into account that we were very distracted with a consistent amount of Sharks that slowly grew in numbers. So, any of those that were keeping their distance, we may not have been paying attention to them as much, as the numbers in proximity. So, I would take that at much lower during the first year.

CRAWFORD: Is that because of your observer capabilities?

SHAW: I think that’s because of my observer capabilities.

CRAWFORD: Alright. So, let’s just focus on your second year. That way we remove much of that observer experience effect, with you becoming a better observer. Overall, in year two - roughly what percentage of the animals were in that Level One category, they maintained their distance? They did not come close to the cage?

SHAW: I would throw out thirty percent.

CRAWFORD: Thirty percent Level Ones. Visually you could see them, but they did not come within ten to fifteen metres of the cage. Now Level Twos - the ones that came into the ten to fifteen metre close proximity, but didn’t show anything in the way of engagement beyond that. The close Swim-Bys and Circlers. 

SHAW: I would call that about even, another thirty percent. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. And then the split between Level Threes and Level Fours? Threes are the curious ones that are engaging, but without attitude - those would be the Level Fours. 

SHAW: I would call it sort of twenty, twenty. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Thirty, thirty, twenty, twenty. 

SHAW: Keeping in mind that individual numbers were much different during the second year than the first year. Consistency and number of Sharks each day.

CRAWFORD: Was the second year more consistent or less consistent than the first year?

SHAW: Less consistent. 

CRAWFORD: So, it was more variable day to day? 

SHAW: More variable. But you had those three individuals at the very start, and maybe one or two at end that made our day. Because of the interaction and their comfort level.

CRAWFORD: Those are Level Threes or Fours?

SHAW: Both - Threes and Fours.

CRAWFORD: Level Threes are curious, they’re coming in close, while Level Fours are in that close proximity, plus they’ve got edge to them. Did you have any reason to believe that those proportions, thirty thirty twenty twenty, would have been different from the beginning of the year to the end of the year? Anything like that? 

SHAW: Yeah. But it’s quite hard to say, because you’ve got the arriving distribution of that population of Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Are there any kind of patterns that you recognized that would have been different from the smaller animals to the larger animals? What have you noticed?

SHAW: Those juveniles are a lot faster. They’re a little bit more erratic. The very large five metres - slow. It’s almost like they've seen it all before. For example, in the Level Three you would have heard of Marble Tail. He's been identified for many a year by DOC and by us. He is a five metre, and he is consistent in his time around the boat.

CRAWFORD: He’s a late arrival, because he’s a big fish?

SHAW: He’s one of the first of those late arrivals of the big fish. He’s a lot slower in his movements.

CRAWFORD: But he does come into close proximity?

SHAW: He does come into very close proximity. This past year when he first arrived, he lifted his head out of the water four or five times in front of the cage.

CRAWFORD: How?

SHAW: On his side. Mouthing. 

CRAWFORD: Mouthing slowly?

SHAW: Gaping. Slow. I was on the platform. He went behind the cage, I could see him behind the platform through a gap about that big. He lifted his head out to look. He lifted his head out in front of the cage to look. He lifted his head up on the starboard side of the boat to look.

CRAWFORD: Multiple head raises?

SHAW: Yeah. It was bizarre.

CRAWFORD: Haven’t heard that one before.

SHAW: Always very bizarre. He would come out of the water ... only did it for a very short time. I lost my footage, unfortunately, off my GoPro for that. But he would lift his head out of the water, and if Pete would slowly bring the bait up and out of the water, then he would gape out of the water at the side of the boat. 

CRAWFORD: He would hold that gape?

SHAW: For a little bit, yeah. For a few seconds. You got full.

CRAWFORD: Full Monty?

SHAW: You got Full Monty, yeah. [both chuckle]

CRAWFORD: And then he would slide back down?

SHAW: And then he would slide back down.

CRAWFORD: But it’s interesting that you put him into a Level Three, without the edge - without the attitude.

SHAW: There’s no edge on him whatsoever. He’s gentle.

CRAWFORD: What does 'gentle' mean in this context? 

SHAW: Slow. He’s not rushing around. It's gaping, it's not ... When he came up towards the bait, Pete’s only very slowly bring it back. And he’s coming very slowly. He’s watching. You can see his eyes watching what’s going on. He lifts his head up. He gapes. Comes back down. Slowly around. If you lost a bait to him, you’ve lost your job - because you shouldn’t. [chuckles] Compared to D'Arcy, who acts very differently. Marble Tail’s a very good example of a Level Three, with full interaction, but without aggression or ADD status.

CRAWFORD: Or edge, or attitude?

SHAW: Because I don’t think it's aggression 

CRAWFORD: I understand. Level four is a complex band, because the motivator behind those behaviours could be very different. But they’re still a class of behaviors that have tension, or speed, or clamping, or some combination of those things.

PPP Hypothesis

SHAW: Did Peter tell you about the three Ps? This is a totally different thing.

CRAWFORD: Not yet. But please take me on the three P story right now.

SHAW: I was in the cage on one occasion, when it was only females. The three Ps are Pregnancy, Period or Peeing. It’s all got to do with hormones - Human female hormones. Pete rarely lets all females, or single females, go into the cage anymore just because ... they’re not acting aggressively, but just because it’s kind of an unknown. I find it extremely interesting. I’ve seen it from above the cage, and I've seen it from within the cage. Seeing it from above the cage, I think it was a four, four point five male - and he wasn’t acting aggressive.

CRAWFORD: What Level?

SHAW: A Level Three. Interactive but not ...

CRAWFORD: So, close proximity, interactive, but no attitude.

SHAW: No attitude. Pete yells out "Oh, look at this!" Here’s the cage, and this male's slowly sauntering in straight to the cage. Bait’s over here. He comes up. Mouths the cage, slow action. Mouthing the cage. There’s two females, maybe three in that cage. And he’s mouthing it.

CRAWFORD: No male divers in the cage?

SHAW: No males. I think it was the same day that I jumped in "Right. Let’s have a go at this." [chuckles] On the occasion that I got in, I had two other females with me ... And when we say "Is it any of the three Ps?" to the females - they sort of go shy, and won’t say yay or nay. On this occasion, I was in the middle of the cage, Shark's doing the same thing - coming forward, gapes open, and I’ve got [spreads her arms widely] right on the cage in front of me, which is awesome. He’s doing that [pushing] on the front of the cage.

CRAWFORD: Pushing? Pulsing?

SHAW: Yeah. Just real slow .

CRAWFORD: It’s not a clampdown. Is it contact?

SHAW: On the cage, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Teeth or gums or what?

SHAW: Yeah. It’s all around, and it's just [chewing]. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: But it’s not fast, either? 

SHAW: Not fast. There's no [clamp].

CRAWFORD: There’s no impact? 

SHAW: There’s none of that. There's no impact. He comes up, and he places his mouth on there. And from inside the cage ... it didn’t last for very long, but I’m sort of ... [whistles, chuckles]

CRAWFORD: It lasted for like a second?

SHAW: A few seconds. More than one second. It wasn't just grab on, let go. It was grab on, investigate, let go.

CRAWFORD: It was a big male. This was Marble Tail, I think you said?

SHAW: This one I can’t remember to specify which one.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But it’s a big male, which means it’s later in the season?

SHAW: Yeah. And this was in my first year. 

CRAWFORD: Have you ever seen that behaviour from any other Shark?

SHAW: I think so. This was in that first season, so it's a little while ago, but I think there was maybe two or three occasions where we had that. I remember saying to somebody who was pregnant, in the early stages, about the three Ps afterwards. And she said "Well, there was one that kept coming past and eyeballing me. Just sort of backwards and forwards a few times." But on these occasions, if we’ve put a male into the cage - a male Human ...

CRAWFORD: You mean, after seeing this behaviour from the Sharks?

SHAW: After seeing this behaviour, or when a male diver has been in the cage before and after - that characteristic ceases. There's no more ...

CRAWFORD: It ceases, and it wouldn’t start again? Or if the male came out, it would happen again potentially?

SHAW: Well, we haven’t tested it to the point of dropping one in and out with the right Shark. I also assume that it’s got to be the right type of Shark, to want to investigate that curiosity of what I assume is to do with hormones. 

CRAWFORD: Quite possibly. When you say the 'right type of Shark' - what do you mean? 

SHAW: Level Three or Four.

CRAWFORD: But Level Fours have got attitude. Do you get the feeling that the animals are doing that type of full-frontal pulse ... that under other circumstances, they would have attitude as well?

SHAW: I think it’s curiosity, and wanting to investigate further. But in not an aggressive way.

CRAWFORD: But it’s only the big males that do this?

SHAW: Well, it hasn’t happened often enough.

CRAWFORD: Right. In total, out of two years, how many times do you figure maybe you've seen this? 

SHAW: We were trying not to do it last year, just to keep anything that could create controversy down.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But total?

SHAW: How many times? Maybe three or four.

CRAWFORD: And in each case, it was female-only divers in the cage?

SHAW: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And male White Pointers that were doing this.

SHAW: I believe so.

CRAWFORD: Bigger males?

SHAW: Not necessarily. 

CRAWFORD: Could have been smaller?

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That leads obviously then, to the natural question - that type of full-frontal mouthing behaviour - what do you think that is? What might explain that?

SHAW: I think it’s sensory. I think it’s due to ... like to come past something, and look at it with your eyes. That the mouthing is sensory, to get a gauge and understanding, along with everything else. Along with the ampullae of Lorenzini, along with the eyesight, along with the sense of smell, that gives them that 4D picture - complete - of what something is. That's my theory.

CRAWFORD: But if there is gender specificity on it, why do you think having an all-female crew in the cage might elicit that behaviour from a male White Pointer? 

SHAW: Hormones.

CRAWFORD: What about hormones, though?

SHAW: Maybe the female Sharks are eliciting similar hormones, or different hormones but the same sort of "Oh! What is that?" sort of attitude. Or maybe they're coming out without aggression, because they think that it’s similar to a female White Shark, and they want to come up ...

CRAWFORD: Let’s imagine there was no cage. Just a female White Pointer. And let’s imagine that there was some sort of hormones that would be in the same general class as what coming from the female Humans inside of the cage. And the male Shark comes up to the female Shark separately over here. And the male does this kind of slow approach and the open mouthing. What do you figure that might be? 

SHAW: It was something to do with their breeding indications.

CRAWFORD: Courtship? Maybe it’s communication to the female, that the male's here and ready if she is. That kind of thing? 

SHAW: Yeah, yeah. Giving her a kiss. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: The thing that strikes me about your observation is that if configured slightly differently - instead of full-frontal display to the cage, consider where a male White Pointer does this with a female, and could clamp down like that on the female. That could be a courtship thing, that potentially could lead to the kind of courtship wounding or scarring that other people may have seen. Because even a gentle love bite from a male, a big male on a big female - these are sharp teeth. It doesn’t mean that it was a deep wound, maybe it’s more like a deep hickey.

SHAW: Yeah, exactly. 

CRAWFORD: Have you ever in your other experiences, checking out the internet, talking to other people, have you ever heard of anybody else describing this in a cage tour guide context?

SHAW: Only Peter, from before my working with him.

CRAWFORD: Which means from the Peter's cage dive operation, prior to you starting with him. He had seen it, prior to you working there. It’s a truly outstanding observation.

SHAW: Yeah. That’s what I respect in my job. Seeing things every day. It's a different outlook to locals, who have stressful interactions. Or to scientists who have short, but intense interactions to try and plant the right gadgets to gather the data. The characteristics are brought out in such a finer manner. Myself, gathering information ... now I haven’t sat down with Pete to do this properly. That's why my information is still a little bit hecklety pecklety, and a little bit unorganized. But I would like to see, without bringing an extra body on board ... we don’t get many days off anymore, because everybody wants to go. That tells a much wider story, especially in New Zealand where you don’t have ten boats out there. I mean part of my observations has also been whether Haines has been out there as well? Have the Sharks been interacting?

CRAWFORD: it’s also important to recognize the way it was observed. Peter told me about this specific kind of interaction and the PPP Hypothesis, but it’s very different when you tell me about it. Partly because when you got in the cage, you experienced it in a way Peter couldn’t because he’s the Skipper and I presume he rarely goes in the cage. Well, I don’t know, how often does he go in the cage? 

SHAW: Last season, I got him to dive a couple of times. But he rarely goes in. The season before, it was once. Although he had many times, in the previous years.

CRAWFORD: But the point is, if the two of you are right about the presence of a male diver - maybe it couldn’t have happened at all if Pete was in the cage. 

SHAW: So, Peter’s up here with the bait - observing. But the bait was being ignored. All the attention is on us.

CRAWFORD: And he described it from that perspective. Your description is unique, to say the least. 

SHAW: Yeah.

6B. effects of cage tour dive operations

CRAWFORD: With specific regard to the possible effects of cage tour dive operations, I see my job as bringing out the understandings and the opinions - and the reasons for holding these opinions - from all of the different parties. So, we can start to learn, and start to resolve the conflicts.

SHAW: Yes. And I’m very strong on that. A lot of people say "Oh, there are Sharks coming up and nudging the boats, chewing on props, and this that and the other." And I’m not surprised. They’re doing what they do - they’re curious. When people say to me "My boat got attacked!" ... I talked to Squizzy one day, a fisherman you would’ve talked to on the Island, and he’d written in the Sun Magazine "I got attacked twice." And I said "You didn't get attacked. There was a curious animal that came up and nudged you. Had a wee little nibble, like a baby chewing on a soother. If you were attacked, you’d know about it."

CRAWFORD: There are several important things here, yet again, that we need to discuss. 

SHAW: And I think that’s hugely important. But I think what coincides with that idea that we’ve just clarified, is the feeding of Sharks from any boat.

CRAWFORD: Let’s talk about that.

SHAW: I was told through Pete, I think it was through Clinton, that the fact of us having people in water is another argument. That’s having people in the water, Sharks associating food with people. So, food with diving - not just food with boats. 

CRAWFORD: Well, food with Humans in a cage in the water, compared to Humans in boats. And for right now, let's focus on the berley smell or bait smell and sight of food - rather than the consumption of food itself. As you know, under the DOC permit conditions that started last year, the cage dive operators are not supposed to allow the Sharks to get their mouths on the bait. So, the chemo-sensory cues of food, not the food itself.

SHAW: Exactly. I was told, especially with their ampullae of Lorenzini, that their detection of what’s inside the cage can be skewed. Because of the cage itself emitting an electrical field. Because of the type of material, and the fact that there's always movement there.

CRAWFORD: Who told you that?

SHAW: I heard that through Pete, come through Clinton, I think.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, the properties of the cage could interfere with one or more of the Shark's senses?

SHAW: I always thought that was an interesting idea. And could be quite probable, although I haven’t put it down to absolute fact. When there’s three people in the cage, that blur ... what’s taken away is the outline. Because of the cage, and the electrical impulses that's lit off. Those three people could potentially become a blob. Now whether that makes the Sharks more curious ... [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: The potentials here become complex, because you're dealing with multiple cues on multiple sensory systems. You've got visual, you’ve got chemo, you’ve got ampullae of Lorenzini, you’ve got who knows whatever other kinds of ways that the White Pointers sense their world. 

SHAW: But that aside, Pete was told when he first started doing cage diving "Hey, Pete. You don’t need to go all the way out there. Just go round to Dead Man’s Beach" which is right outside Halfmoon Bay. "There's heaps of Sharks there, because that's where they clean their fish before they come into the Bay."

CRAWFORD: Peter was told that?

SHAW: Yeah, he was told that by one of the old guys on the Island - he was quite friendly. Pete’s quite well known in the fishing community.

CRAWFORD: And he was directed to a specific location where commercial fisherman typically clean their catch?

SHAW: Yes. Spend an hour, or however long they’d do it. All in the water. The fish sheds on Stewart Island for the Cod Fishery, they were going out and we sighted them ... we didn’t sight them dumping, but they were going out periodically to dump fish in the Titi Island area. And the Council has actually following up on them, and said "Look. You haven't got a permit." As far as I understand the Salmon Farm does the same thing, with a very oily fish. Takes it out, dumps it, and then gets worried that we're in here. So, food sources from boats.

CRAWFORD: Yes. Let’s clarify a couple of things. As I see it, there are maybe three different categories of potential food sources from Humans: One is the recreational or small-scale food fishery, line-fishing. You mentioned before that you were out with whoever it was cleaning their catch in a bay within Halfmoon Bay. That’s one category. It’s maybe not qualitatively any different from the commercial fishery waste, but it's quantitatively different in terms of the order of magnitude of fish frames and guts. That's a second category. Those fish are being dressed, and whatever doesn't go to market or get used needs to be disposed of. I think it's fairly consistently being reported that back in the day, people would just go find a bay - in some cases a bay that was consistently used, like Dead Man Bay - and then put their frames, their refuse, their offal into the water there.

SHAW: As they would in the rest of New Zealand. Without thinking about it.

CRAWFORD: And then it’s gone the next day. You don’t worry about it. There's no apparent negative ecological or environmental harm. The third category then is the Fish Farm. Maybe it’s not on the same schedule, because they’ve got a different routine. But it's a similar thing that they process a large quantity at scheduled times, and they have to deal with morts - the fish that die while being raised in the farm. I know their practices have changed over time as well. I know something about the dumping practices and regulations, what they used to be versus what it is now. 

SHAW: Yeah. I don't know the details about that.

CRAWFORD: But qualitatively, each of those different activities - the individual level, the commercial Cod fishery, the fish farms - they all produce fish offal and fish frames. The local nearshore dumping in certain places by the fisheries or aquaculture operations, do you think that that would have an important effect attracting White Pointers? 

SHAW: I certainly do, because their food source is out here.

CRAWFORD: On the Titi Islands?

SHAW: On the Titi Islands. At the dump sites, they're smelling a food source where there is no Seals, where it is just a roadway for them. And that’s where they swim when they're not feeding, potentially. If they're suddenly coming in to look for food in these areas, it is for a distinct reason. 

CRAWFORD: Potentially they could just be exploring as well, but I see what you mean.

SHAW: They could be passing by, because they do. And that’s what I tell people "There's no fences." I have friends of mine, and they’re like "We can go diving there. There's no Sharks there, right?"

CRAWFORD: There are no fences.

SHAW: Yeah, there’s no fences. Don’t kid yourself. I believe where there is no food source, they adjust. Moving along.

CRAWFORD: You had also talked about following behaviour by White Pointers, in this regard?

SHAW: Yeah. It’s one that frustrates me.

CRAWFORD: Do you believe that White Pointers follow boats - for whatever reason? We won’t get into the reasons just yet, but have you ever seen a White Pointer follow a boat? 

SHAW: The only thing I’ve seen is when that Shark followed the dinghy that Zane had at that time. But he was moving slowly. And he was within the aggregation area.

CRAWFORD: So, the circumstances in terms of where the following takes place, and the spatial scale of it - those are important things. But also, the speed of the vessel. 

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that there would be some auditory or chemosensory or visual cue from a boat that would attract a White Pointer's interest? To a level that they would act on that interest by following a boat?

SHAW: I think that the interest to follow the boat could be there, due to the associations with hearing, vibration - any of that. The will to follow a boat at a sustained speed, over a distance ...

CRAWFORD: We’ll get there in a second. Something you said before was that these Sharks are naturally curious. So, for instance if a person in a dinghy is off Bench Island or Edwards Island - and the animal looks up, or otherwise uses senses to know that there is something floating up there - some of the Sharks there will be attracted to that floating thing. 

SHAW: Yes, yes.

CRAWFORD: And if that thing was moving on the surface, would a White Pointer's curiosity extend to the point of following that thing?

SHAW: I have an example that might be interesting.

CRAWFORD: Yes, please.

SHAW: During the second season, last season, we did have a fishing boat coming in and around Edwards.

CRAWFORD: A recreational fishing boat or a commercial fishing boat?

SHAW: Commercial. From Bluff.

CRAWFORD: A Codpotter? Do you remember?

SHAW: Yes. But also netting.

CRAWFORD: Setnetting?

SHAW: Setnetting for the Greenbone. Although we worked in with them ... "If we are under operations, can you not net there?" And "Look, we’re almost finished. Yep, good as gold." We had sort of a gentlemen's agreement just how it was approached. They would arrive, their dinghies would go out to the different islands, and they’d sit there. The rumble of the engine, the smell of the offal going into the water ... We’d have to sit there and wait our turn, because the Sharks that had been previously at our boat would go over to that boat until it moved off. 

CRAWFORD: What was the time lag on that response? When the commercial fishing boat showed up?

SHAW: It wasn’t long. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of distance away?

SHAW: Oh, maybe a couple hundred metres, a few hundred metres. 

CRAWFORD: So, fairly close. And the Sharks that had been around the cage, you had berleyed and attracted them to the cage. All of a sudden, they bugger off. Can you see them going off in that direction? Or do you just know that they’re gone?

SHAW: Oh, yeah. Because I can see the fins - they're over at the other boat. And you can see them leaving. 

CRAWFORD: I’m very interested in the response of these White Pointers. What appears to be the consistent message that curiosity rules the day with these animals. If anything moved into their realm, within their senses ... they’re going to go check it out.

SHAW: During season one, Haines used to be quite away from us.

CRAWFORD: He was quite a distance away?

SHAW: Quite a distance. He would arrive second. He would have to wait for a while.

CRAWFORD: For what reason?

SHAW: Because he wouldn’t get any Sharks. He would arrive later in the morning ... that early morning is quite a high energy for the Sharks. He would arrive later in the morning, so they were more subdued coming on to 10, 11, 12 o’clock. But they would not go over to his boat, even if he was berleying.

CRAWFORD: That’s a very interesting observation. Nobody planned it that way, the accident of having two Shark cage tour dive operations running in the same place at the same time. But the practical experience of having it happen that way, is that you can’t run one and have another one set up and expect to be as successful. 

SHAW: I think possibly that had to do with the time of day we started. I think possibly that had to do with potentially the noise coming from his boat being different from ours. Ours being a wooden boat, his being metal. We’ve surmised that a couple of times. We don’t know whether that’s having the effect or not. This last season, my season two, we had initially spent a lot of time with the boats a lot closer, depending on conditions. So, we weren't putting two lots of berley out. We were putting two lots of bait out. We were almost working in conjunction.

CRAWFORD: That was year two, not year one?

SHAW: Year two was "Right. Let's work together. We’ve got permits. We can’t be separating everything."

CRAWFORD: By being in proximity, you were also minimizing the distraction effect. It appears as if there is a limit, an upper limit, on the total number of White Pointers that will come around a cage tour dive operation - or perhaps to investigate a new vessel of any kind, at a particular location. Perhaps there's a saturation in terms of the number of Level Three animals at any given time. Even at the daily or weekly level, it’s not as if there is a million Sharks out there at any place and time. It gets back to this idea of what 'residency' means to these animals.

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: The only other follow-up question in this regard, before we get back to following behaviour ... When an individual or group of White Pointers were distracted to that Bluff fishing boat, in general did it take a little time before those animals came back to the Shark dive boat? 

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Roughly how long was that? Would it have been minutes, half an hour, hours?

SHAW: Half an hour, to an hour. I think on one other occasion, on the east side of the island, we started getting the odd locals come out for recreational fishing. One person I knew quite well. We didn’t have a problem with them, they didn’t have a problem with us being there. And the same sort of thing happened ...

CRAWFORD: So, you guys got the cage operations up and running. They come in ...

SHAW: We’re set up and running. They come in, and they start fishing. I surmise that it’s because of the stress of the fish possibly, that the Sharks went over to their boat to investigate. It didn’t take a long time for them to come back.

CRAWFORD: Roughly how far away?

SHAW: Probably one hundred to a hundred and fifty metres. 

CRAWFORD: So, fairly close. Completely consistent with your account of the commercial fishing boat that had come over from Bluff. 

SHAW: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: In your first season, had recreational fishing boats from Bluff or Stewart Island ever come around the cage tour dive operations? 

SHAW: Not really. 

CRAWFORD: When it happened in your season two, was that something that had happened in previous years? Or was it a relatively new thing? 

SHAW: Not that he said. We’ve got people, not only recreational fishing, but others coming to watchdog. And also, the odd one from out of the area, coming to have a go themselves. 

CRAWFORD: What do you mean 'have a go'?

SHAW: They haven’t got the cage setup, but they’ve got a berley bag, they’ve got live bait on the end of a line on the surface of the water ...

CRAWFORD: Ok. That’s where we're going. If I am getting this correctly, it's a relatively recent phenomenon - where there are a greater number of vessels coming to Edwards Island, for different reasons. That Bluff commercial fishing boat, they’re not at Edwards because of the White Pointers or the cage dive operations. They're just there fishing for their own purposes.

SHAW: There was one occasion, just while I remember, Pete said one of the guys from Bluff that would come over to Pāua dive near Edwards Island. He’d wave out to Pete and go "Hey Pete, you stay there and feed them, eh? I'll be around the corner. You just keep them there." And then he’d go around the corner to the other side of Edwards Island and Pāua dive. 

CRAWFORD: When was that? 

SHAW: This was before my time.

CRAWFORD: Oh, so Pete was telling it.

SHAW: Pete’s story. The guy from DOC who drives the boat for the scientists, Steve Meads, he's a friend of mine. He was saying that DOC arrived on the boat near Edwards, and yelled out to people on one of the Pāua boats, saying "Just to let you guys know, we’ve been here for the last two or three days - and we’ve had nine or ten Sharks consistently. And we’ll go somewhere else. We'll go over to Bench Island."

CRAWFORD: For DOC's White Pointer tagging program?

SHAW: Yeah. So, this was before me. The boat person just let the divers carry on. They finished their day, before they came in. I think the crew's thinking was "Well, you wouldn’t want to tell them. It's the thought that that puts the fear into them when they're underwater." 

CRAWFORD: It gets back to that issue of fine-scale distribution and aggregation. The idea that a Pāua diver might actually think he's more safe over there, if the cage dive operations attract the White Pointers over here.

SHAW: I’ve had somebody in Bluff, a good friend of mine who’s a Pāua and Kina diver who actually works for that fishing boat we were seeing - and he said "You know, the only thing that makes me nervous is that you’re putting food in the water, and then they’re not being fed."

CRAWFORD: The frustration element?

SHAW: No. "Feed them, feed them, feed them. Don't stop feeding them until their full." That’s what his outlook was - which I found sort of different. 

CRAWFORD: Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, that is different. 

CRAWFORD: Getting back to that idea about floating things, the floating newspaper in particular, attracting the attention of White Pointers? Why is that different than berley? 

SHAW: It’s visual. It’s a shadow on top of the water to be investigated from underneath. The way they hunt is like that. Coming up. They spot something up there floating, they get the signal of 'possibilities.' So, they come up to investigate.

CRAWFORD: Ok. And potentially somewhere in there, they make a Go No-Go decision, in terms of engaging with that item as potential prey?

SHAW: Yeah. Pete said to me once he was out there, Sharks were fully engaged with the bait, and doing what they do. They were Level Three to Four. A plastic garden chair floated past, and suddenly all operations stopped because they were following this plastic chair for miles. Nudging it, and giving it a chew.

CRAWFORD: Which is something that is floating down the surface casting a shadow. In your year one prior, to the DOC permit coming in to effect, did Pete's operation ever use anything but berley or bait on a line? 

SHAW: We were allowed to use the floating Seal.

CRAWFORD: A decoy?

SHAW: A decoy, which was made by a Stewart Islander who isn’t now alive. It was made out of a thin timber, shaped like a Seal

CRAWFORD: This was something that was thrown out? 

SHAW: It would only ever be brought out if we were not seeing anything. A lot of the time that first year on the west side of Edwards Island, if we were restricted to there because of the wind on the other side. It would take a lot longer for the Sharks to come. So, if they hadn’t arrived yet, we would put it out.

CRAWFORD: In addition to the berley that had already gone out? 

SHAW: In addition to the berley - which was only in the bags for season one. Very limited berley. And our bait out, as well 

CRAWFORD: The bait being a piece of Tuna on a line?

SHAW: Yeah. As soon as a Shark was spotted, the decoy was back on the boat. It was not kept out there.

CRAWFORD: Why?

SHAW: Because we didn’t really want the Shark interacting with the decoy so much. Well, it could be damaged. And it could be a harm to the Shark, potentially. 

CRAWFORD: And potentially, a White Pointer could figure out the ruse? "Ok. Well, I’m not gonna go for that one again?"

SHAW: That as well. It would have basically no interaction with the decoy. Pete did tell me that one of the seasons, Discovery wanted to put the decoy out, and Pete’s like "No, that’s not really going to get you the effect you want."

CRAWFORD: Breaching, and teeth, and all sorts of stuff?

SHAW: Yeah. So, I think they were towing it - this is well before permits - they were towing it, the Shark come along, looked at the decoy, come up to the boat, look at them, and had no further interaction with that decoy whatsoever. It was almost like a "Yeah. I’m not that stupid" sort of thing. [both chuckle] 

CRAWFORD: Mike Haines during our interview series, he said something about pre-permit he was using a piece of carpet in a similar way. Cut out in a shape, but it was entirely two dimensional - that was the implication. Had you seen this?

SHAW: I saw a picture of it, afterwards. Of Haines going "This is all it was. It's a piece of carpet - same sort of thing - in a Seal shape." When it first came into the public eye, it was on YouTube footage that his punters had taken from inside his cage. And it looked like a small child with a wet suit on. And the rumors were, that it was stuffed with bait and all that sort of thing. And Haynes went "No, no, no. It was a piece of carpet!"

CRAWFORD: That’s very interesting in terms of having multiple perspectives on the issue. If I remember correctly, I think Mike said he was using this piece of carpet without berley - and getting the White Pointers to come in.

SHAW: Quite possibly. Berley only works to a certain extent.

CRAWFORD: In your first season, did you guys ever run with no berley?

SHAW: We would quite often bring the berley out, and later stop berleying. 

CRAWFORD: That’s not what I was asking.

SHAW: At all? No berley beginning to end?

CRAWFORD: Yeah.

SHAW: Not from my recollection. It's all tidal-dependent, as well. If the tide is going out this way, or the other way. Normally, if the tide is running this direction, northerly - it's optimum. And you don’t want the tide to be running too fast or otherwise the Sharks won’t work against the tide. If it’s running too fast, they're on the bottom, or they’re not interacting. The Level Threes and Fours - they go away, or they drop to the bottom in a general sense. I tell people "Right. What we're going to do first, is put out the telephone line. The tide's going the optimum way." When we send berley out that way, we seem to get a lot better result time-wise, and individual-wise of turning up. In the morning we're all at spurts, you don’t need to have a huge plume. It’s a telephone line. Sploosh, sploosh, sploosh - you just want a consistent feed.

CRAWFORD: A trail.

SHAW: A trail. When one arrives, turn it off. Sometimes we will do a little bit of intermittent berleying, to keep a bit of interest or if they go away. But generally, we found especially with season two - and what we were trying to tell the Discovery people who were saying "More berley! More berley!" ... what we were trying to tell them was, once they’re here, more berley is not going to do anything. That is basically their first sensory system going "Right. Go that way." Once they’re there, they’re looking for a visual. So, the berley itself is the call. Actually, sometimes we haven’t had to use berley, because the Shark was there [snap] before we put the anchor down. 

CRAWFORD: And what percentage of occasions would that have been? Less than five percent?

SHAW: Yeah. Maybe ten.

CRAWFORD: So, rarely. Imagine a situation where all it really takes is a plastic freaking chair ... and you throw plastic chairs out there, and up come the Sharks, and then eco-tourists in the cage - there's no blood in the water, there are no chemosensory cues - other than the floating thing and them being there in a cage. But the thing that actually potentially drew those animals in to proximity was a plastic chair. So, only for other people that happen to be in a floating-plastic-chair-rich-environment would you be having that type of association.

SHAW: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Sounds a little bit strange, but I think you see my point. DOC has already told Mike that he can't use the carpet cut-out. He can only use fish berley and fish bait. Food cues. What if the operators could attract the animals solely on their inherent curiosity with an entirely artificial cue - no blood, no guts, no bait? No food cues at all?

SHAW: But on some occasions the plastic chair went by every day. Would they still be interested?

CRAWFORD: Learned behaviour. And yes, you do get habituation, a lessening of effect for that specific cue.

SHAW: Well, unless that’s some of the reason last year why we got a different consistency of Shark individuals.

CRAWFORD: They were nearly naive animals consistently coming through?

SHAW: Or whether it’s something totally different. We were using minimal berley the year before. Last year we sort of toned it down as the season went on, because we realized that the effectiveness of the berley throughout the day would lessen. 

CRAWFORD: I wonder how much the resident White Pointers remember from day to day. Would they just have to follow a perceived berley trail, even if they followed it yesterday without any payoff? Would they actually remember? Regardless of remembering, could they resist? Or does basic curiosity simply run the show?

SHAW: I remember being at Jacky Lee, which is right next to Edwards Island. That was season one, we were in the lee on the south end of the Island, and we’re berleying, berleying, baiting - we never got anything. and it was Tim that said that he did see one once or twice out there, from being on the ferry, or the semi-submersible. So, it’s also to do with location, I believe. Location and sensory and interest.

CRAWFORD: Over your two seasons, was there any other substantial eco-tourism at Edwards Island? Specifically, for the White Pointers?

SHAW: Last year, the boat that came out, the Southern Cross, came out once while we weren’t there. They're not locals. New Zealanders, but not locals at all in Southland, as far as I understand. And that was when their tender got bitten. 

CRAWFORD: Their what?

SHAW: Their tender. Their blow-up dinghy.

CRAWFORD: Their inflatable got bitten by a White Pointer?

SHAW: It was quite a big boat. The tender usually sits on the roof, and it was out the back. There is information, write-ups around it as well. So, they came in. We weren’t there when that incident happened. For some reason, we thought it might’ve been Marble Tail - who is not an aggressive animal. But that’s surmising way too much. But I think it might’ve come from a comment from Haines, because he was there a little bit longer than us that day. And they came in to Edwards later that day.

CRAWFORD: Where did they come in from? They came in from Bluff? Or they came in from Halfmoon Bay or somewhere else around Stewart Island?

SHAW: All I know is that they went into Halfmoon Bay that night. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. And what kind of vessel were they in?

SHAW: They were in a big yacht

CRAWFORD: Sailboat or a power boat?

SHAW: A power boat. With a second level.

CRAWFORD: A decent-sized yacht. Ok. They show up at Edwards after you were gone ...

SHAW: Yeah. So, nobody was in the dinghy. The Shark basically mauled their dinghy. They take the story back to the pub at Halfmoon Bay. With a picture of this inflatable, well and truly deflated with a hole in the side. Just one hole. 

CRAWFORD: Once again, there's something flat on the surface. But in this case, it’s being towed behind the yacht, as well. Did you get the impression that they had steamed right through when this had happened? Or they had slowed down? 

SHAW: This came from them, because we saw them later and we saw what they were doing a second time as well. We were told they were out there to look at Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: Which suggests they slowed down or stopped or whatever. 

SHAW: Yeah. So, they were out there less than a week later, and we were there. We got footage of what they were doing, because Pete thought that they may have been using stronger lines. Same sort of rods that you’d use for Tuna - game fishing rods. They had live bait on the end of them ...

CRAWFORD: You're kidding. They were trying to catch a White Pointer on rod-and-reel?

SHAW: Well, we were getting quite confused about this. We were guessing that they could have been. It made us very nervous of how they were operating. They had a berley bag in the water made up of plastic, and they were jiggling that. They had live bait on the end of rods. They were also leaning over with GoPros right in the water, without a strap or anything like that behind them. Sometimes we do that, but we have more of a sense of character of some of the Sharks. And there was a couple of Sharks in the water that day that may have given them a surprise. Sharks that are literally drawn to those types of cameras. We took some footage, and we basically just let DOC know. DOC went out and talked to them, because we were quite concerned that they’re back out there doing this after their dinghy had gotten shredded, and they're doing it again. They were quite oblivious, they were sort of waved out. DOC went out to talk to them, and said "Well, they're not actually doing anything wrong." But they kind of gently moved along.

CRAWFORD: Well that’s an important point. It gets to this idea that anybody who wants to, can go out to Edwards Island, or anyplace else where these White Pointers are aggregating for whatever reason - whether it’s because of the cage tour dive operations, or they were simply aggregating there because they would aggregate there anyways. Imagine somewhere over on the eastern side of Stewart Island. I’ll have to do my homework on this, but as far as I know - there’s nothing preventing anybody from going out there, and feeding the White Pointers. Doing stuff that the cage tour dive operations are explicitly not permitted to do.

SHAW: That’s exactly right.

CRAWFORD: Not just berleying, but actually feeding the White Pointers for boat-based eco-tourism just to see them. Do you think that that is starting to happen? Or have people always been doing that? 

SHAW: I think it’s been starting to happen, since this last season. That same commercial fishing boat from Bluff came out and had a day to get the Sharks in, with bait in the water, throwing over berley. Just for family members or friends on board. On one occasion.

CRAWFORD: Have you heard of other occasions, with people coming out of Halfmoon Bay who will head over to the Titi Islands to see if they can see a White Pointer? 

SHAW: I know some do it. 

CRAWFORD: For personal, recreational purposes?

SHAW: For commercial purposes. A fishing charter boat, plus they can pay extra to see a Shark.

CRAWFORD: Are they consistently seeing White Pointers? 

SHAW: Well, they’re across from us.

CRAWFORD: Oh, that’s when you’re there and the cage dive operation is up and running.

SHAW: Yeah. 

Copyright © 2020 Nicola Shaw and Steve Crawford