Peter Scott

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: Peter, can you please tell me what your name is, and where and when you were born, where you grew up.

SCOTT: Peter Scott, and I was born in Dunedin on the 20th of the 3rd, 1961. I lived in Port Chalmers most of my life.

CRAWFORD: When you say 'most of your life', that was through your primary school, secondary school?

SCOTT: Yep. All of that. 

CRAWFORD: When you got out of school and went to work, what was your first job?

SCOTT: It was fishing. Commercial fishing.

CRAWFORD: How did you get your first job fishing?

SCOTT: Well, I used to work on boats at the school holidays. And then I slowly weaseled my way into a job there.

CRAWFORD: How did you know the Skipper? How did you know people that were running the fishing boats?

SCOTT: Just by hanging around the wharf and meeting them.

CRAWFORD: Did you have a boat of your own at that point in time? Or were you just a kid that was on the wharf, kind of kicking around?

SCOTT: I always had dinghies and outboards and stuff. So, I was catching fish, inside the harbour. 

CRAWFORD: When you were catching fish - just you - what kind of fish were you catching? How were you catching them?

SCOTT: All our stuff was setnets, gillnets.

CRAWFORD: You could setnet as an individual, and what’d you have? Like 300 yards of twine? 

SCOTT: Nah. I would only have like maybe two 100-yard nets.

CRAWFORD: What kind of mesh?

SCOTT: Mono-filament, about 5-inch mesh. 

CRAWFORD: So, you were going after fairly big fish. What species were you after?

SCOTT: Moki, Greenbone, Red Cod, all those.

CRAWFORD: Did you have any mates that you would go out with? 

SCOTT: Generally the dinghy wasn’t big enough to fit anyone else in, so you just did it all on your own. There were other kids with dinghies and nets as well.

CRAWFORD: It was just something that kids, some kids, did back in the day?

SCOTT: Then. But they don’t now. 

CRAWFORD: No, they don’t. Not so much any more. They play video games. 

SCOTT: That’s right. It's all become too dangerous to send some little kid out in a dinghy. He might drown himself or whatever. 

CRAWFORD: He might learn how to swim too. 

SCOTT: That’s right. [both chuckle]

CRAWFORD: What age did you start fishing on your own? Roughly?

SCOTT: I don’t know, probably nine or ten. 

CRAWFORD: And this was for private consumption? Or were you selling your fish?

SCOTT: I was to sell it to the school teachers. That was also a bit of a grey area [laughs].

CRAWFORD: You were a commercial fisherman from the get-go then, as an entrepreneur?

SCOTT: Yeah. I’d have to get out of bed quick smartly in the mornings, go and pick up my nets that I’d leave out overnight, so I’d have some fish to sell when I got to school.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever fish in Otago Harbour itself?

SCOTT: Only as an individual, as a kid. But never later, because I think there was some rule about commercial fishing in the Harbour. And I’m sure there is now. But then going way back to when the first settlers came, that’s where all the fishing was done - in the Harbour. 

CRAWFORD: Once you were out of school, did you go straight into fishing as a commercial job?

SCOTT: Yep. Right out into commercial fishing as a full-time job.

CRAWFORD: What age were you when you left school then? 16, 17?

SCOTT: Yeah, 16. 

CRAWFORD: What type of fishing did you do then? 

SCOTT: Bottom-trawling and Crayfishing. 

CRAWFORD: When you were fishing, generally was it waters within like a day's boating of Port Chalmers?

SCOTT: It was all around the Otago Peninsula in those days. Then after a couple of years, I shifted to a bigger boat that went further south.

CRAWFORD: To the Nuggets?

SCOTT: The Nuggets, and south of there - Chaslands, in Foveaux Strait, Te Waewae Bay up here, and down the west side of Stewart Island - we would do a lot of fishing there.

CRAWFORD: Bigger boat, but what were you fishing?

SCOTT: Still bottom-trawling and Craypotting.

CRAWFORD: These are more productive waters down south?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: In terms of boating, are they generally more challenging waters as well?

SCOTT: Yeah, they probably are more challenging, because there’s no real safe anchorages down this coast. Dunedin’s the safest one here. There's a lot of little bar ports.

CRAWFORD: These were overnight trips? Or gone for the week?

SCOTT: Yeah. Gone for maybe four or five days. 

CRAWFORD: That lasted for how long?

SCOTT: Until 1982. When I bought my own boat then, a smaller boat, 38 feet, two-man operation.

CRAWFORD: What was the name of that boat?

SCOTT: Minerva. And we just fished around the Otago coast for probably one season. We would do maybe eight or nine months around the Otago Peninsula with that, and then shift to Greymouth or Westport on the West Coast. Into the Albacore [Tuna] fishery, which was pretty much anywhere on the West Coast of New Zealand.

CRAWFORD: How did you fish for the Tuna?

SCOTT: We were trolling, just with lures.

CRAWFORD: How many lines were out?

SCOTT: Fourteen.

CRAWFORD: Why did you move over to the West Coast for the Tuna fishery? Was it a more lucrative fishery?

SCOTT: In the earlier days of the quota system, it was a good plan to go away and relieve the pressure on your quota that you actually had to catch. Because you could catch as many as of the Tuna as you’d like.

CRAWFORD: Tuna quota didn’t come in until 1984, right?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: And it was seasonal?

SCOTT: Yep. That was from January, February through to end of April. 

CRAWFORD: And then back to Port Chalmers, and the usual bottom-trawling and Codpotting?

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: How long did that kind of seasonal pattern go on for?

SCOTT: Well, we probably had six or seven seasons over there. And not just on that boat. Once we moved onto a bigger boat, we still went over into the Tuna fishery. 

CRAWFORD: And that ran on until what, ten years ago?

SCOTT: Yeah, I guess it did. We had two boats going at that stage. We had both the Argo and then the Lady Anna going.

CRAWFORD: So, the business then had two vessels, you were owner of both. You were the Skipper of one, and then you hired somebody else to Skipper the other? 

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: The Argo was the boat that you worked on?

SCOTT: Yeah, the Argo. We had someone else working towards the end who went Tuna fishing, and then the Lady Anna was pretty much the boat we used for feasibility with the Sharks.

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS 

CRAWFORD: Have you had any direct experience with Māori culture or Māori knowledge? 

SCOTT: We were brought up with the whole Māori cultural stuff through school. So, you picked up a whole lot of stuff there. And we went to school with a whole lot of Māori people. I had some really good friends that were Māori. Exposure would be reasonably high, I think.

CRAWFORD: And you can't have friends that belong to a different culture, without some of that culture rubbing off. Getting to know things, right? 

SCOTT: Yeah, that’s right. 

CRAWFORD: So, Medium Level then? 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: When you were a kid going through school, was biology or Science your favorite subject? Or you’re least favorite?

SCOTT: Probably least. I didn’t want to be there. I had things to do.

CRAWFORD: But you have had some fairly significant experience with Scientists. You’ve worked with them, you know them personally. It's not formal training, but when you spend time with Scientists, you just naturally talk about things. Are there people who are Scientists who you have interacted with?

SCOTT: Oh yeah. See the first documentary we did on that Shark Nicole ...

CRAWFORD: That was the New Zealand natural history film? 

SCOTT: Yeah. But in 2008 we were working with a scientist [Ramón Bonfil ??]. He was on that shoot because he tagged that Shark Nicole in South Africa. 

CRAWFORD: With a classic tag, a regular anchor tag?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAFWORD: He was here in New Zealand, or somebody saw the tag, looked it up and then told him "We’ve got your Shark over here." 

SCOTT: No, it was all ... like the filming was done down here - for stock footage of Sharks for them. They did a wee bit of him pretending, actually well he tagged a Shark. But he was with us down south.

CRAWFORD: Ok. I understand now. But you spent time with him. Did you talk with him about White Pointers?

SCOTT: Yeah. Quite a lot of stuff. It's like when you’re waiting on a Shark, there's plenty of time to sit around all day.

CRAWFORD: Sure there is. And he’s a very knowledgeable guy. 

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Who was the next Scientist of any kind that you would have met?

SCOTT: Well, the next one to come along was Clinton [Duffy - NZ Department of Conservation].

CRAWFORD: When did you first meet Clinton?

SCOTT: That would have been early in the piece too. Maybe 2009. 

CRAWFORD: What was the circumstance in which you met Clinton? 

SCOTT: Well, he came aboard, and he was tagging off our boat.

CRAWFORD: DOC [Department of Conservation] had requested access to your boat to help them tag White Pointers?

SCOTT: Pretty much. We offered them the boat to do it. 

CRAWFORD: How did they know that they were looking or ... 

SCOTT: They’d done two years of tagging prior to that.

CRAWFORD: On another vessel? 

SCOTT: Yeah. On their own vessel that they have to pay money for. So, we thought that by offering them a boat for nothing for a couple of weeks, that would sort of help the whole project out. But then it became more political you see? They couldn’t be seen to be tagging off our boat - because we had permits pending, and all that sort of thing.

CRAWFORD: There was a real or perceived conflict of interest?

SCOTT: That’s right. There probably was at that stage.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you spent time with Clinton. And you got to understand what his thinking was. Both Clinton and Malcolm [Francis - NZ National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research]? Or just Clinton?

SCOTT: No. Just Clinton. 

CRAWFORD: What do you remember about what Clinton said the purpose of the work that he was doing was? 

SCOTT: It was purely to tag the Sharks in those earlier stages, to see where ... no one knew where they were going, what they were doing.

CRAWFORD: Was he tagging elsewhere at that time?

SCOTT: I think they tagged out at the Chathams, as well. 

CRAWFORD: I think you’re right. I’ve got an email from Clinton, I think that says that Kina Scollay had started it somehow. I don’t know why. I’ll talk to them about that.

SCOTT: Yeah, and I don’t know what Kina Scollay’s involvement was out there. Apart from he was a Pāua diver, and he did get bitten by a White Shark. 

CRAWFORD: Right. I'm hoping that Kina will agree to participate as well. But interestingly enough, Clinton has identified Kina as being a major positive force in getting all of Clinton’s work, and DOC’s work on this, going. 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you were poking around down south round the Titi Islands. Clinton had already been here for whatever reasons ... 

SCOTT: Well, he was tagging. 

CRAWFORD: I know, but why did he care where the White Pointers where going?

SCOTT: Because I think he was possibly doing it for his thesis or something, maybe. I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: That was in your first year? When you were doing your poking around?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: He had already been there, the year prior - so he was in his second year?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: As far as you can tell, he was also working mostly around the Titi Islands? Or was he poking around in different places too? 

SCOTT: Oh, he definitely was. He’d been out to Ruapuke, and did a bit of work up there. Over all those years. It was the second year I was down here, actually he was tagging Sharks off our boat. 

CRAWFORD: DOC contracted you? 

SCOTT: No. We just had him on the boat for, I don't know, a week or so. 

CRAWFORD: And this was prior to the satellite tags - he was using the regular tags, harpoon tags?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, Clinton's tagging White Pointers on your boat. And you get to know him, and some of what he knows. And he gets to know you, and some of the things you know. If you had to think of maybe two or three things about White Pointers that were important - that you learned from Clinton - that you didn’t know otherwise, or perhaps you saw it differently after talking with him ... what would be some of those things that you learned from Clinton?

SCOTT: I don’t know really. Like I guess there was stuff that we picked up from him. There would have been a few facts that he gave us. Just normal facts, but nothing out of the ordinary.

CRAWFORD: After the tagging work with Clinton, and informally in year two when he jumped on board with you, then did you get into more formal kind of arrangements with him? Where you were doing tagging, or he was coming on your boat?

SCOTT: No. Because that’s about when all the politics kicked in, you see? And they started talking about permits and all sorts of stuff. So, then it became a conflict of interest - that he would use our boat, if we were in line for a permit, you know? And I understood that.

CRAWFORD: Right. And you’re still friendly with Clinton. But he has to do things independently, for understandable reasons. 

SCOTT: I believe he will be on our boat this season. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you believe that?

SCOTT: Because he told me he’s coming, that’s why.

CRAWFORD: Just to observe, or to work?

SCOTT: Probably both. We have a mutual friend - Mark Enarson. Clinton gets a lot of info from Mark. Mark comes here every year; he’s come here twice this year.

CRAWFORD: When does Mark come next?

SCOTT: He’ll be here in January apparently, and he'll be here again in April.

CRAWFORD: April's too late for me, but January's not. When Mark’s here, will he be full-time, or is he doing other business?

SCOTT: No, just this. He generally comes in 10-day stints.

CRAWFORD: How did you meet Mark?

SCOTT: He got in contact with us. Wanted to take photos. And he has been ever since.

CRAWFORD: And that was what? Five years ago?

SCOTT: Right at the start, almost. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Roughly how much time do the DOC and NIWA Scientists spend on the water, working with the White Pointers?

SCOTT: Clinton and Malcolm always come at the same time. That whole job that they were doing there - it's now finished. There’s no more funding. They’re finished doing what they’re doing.

CRAWFORD: It was the end of that White Pointer research program around Stewart Island. Now they’re tagging juvenile White Pointers up around the North Island?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Using Scott Tindle's boat?

SCOTT: That’s right. And I’ve also said to Malcolm that, you know because he was going to miss coming down here and all the rest of it ... I said "There’s always a place on our boat, if you want to come." You know, maybe we might see him in the future. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. For Clinton and Malcolm's previous tagging program, after the regular harpoon tags, they got some research dollars and bought some of the satellite tags. Did they ever put satellite tags on White Pointers off your boat? Or was that other vessels?

SCOTT: Off their own boat. 

CRAWFORD: And at some point in time, Clinton starting working on visual identification of individual White Pointers?

SCOTT: I think they’d always been doing a certain amount of it. But in saying that, they’re only there working for a week or two weeks per year. Whereas we’re there for pretty much six months. So, we’re getting a far bigger photo ID base than what they would ever have. How that all came to be ... we had like hundreds of photos. We had to take photos like Shark, Shark, Shark - send it off to Clinton, and he would go right to that particular Shark, that particular Shark, that particular Shark, and he knew.

CRAWFORD: He used ID numbers or names for individual White Pointers?

SCOTT: He’d use numbers to start with. But we changed those to names. So then all of a sudden, it's names of this fish, this fish, this fish. And then with his tagging he would go "Right. That fish there is up there" you know? So, the information started coming back us.

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

CRAWFORD: Now we’re going to start to talk about this region in general - Otago to the Nuggets. I want you to tell me about patterns. Where, from a White Pointer’s point of view, where do they hang out? Where are they seen? Why do you think that they’re there? 

SCOTT: I would believe the hotspot around here would be from the entrance of the Otago Harbour, Taiaroa Head, right away round to Tomahawk, Bird Island. And that’s purely because of the huge Seal population that’s out there. 

CRAWFORD: Was the Seal population huge back in the day, when you were a kid?

SCOTT: I believe it was. Probably not as big as it what it is today though.

CRAWFORD: It wasn’t like elsewhere? Where the Seals had been hit hard?

SCOTT: No. Oh, I guess it was at some stage. But there were always Seals around here. 

CRAWFORD: Did you ever see White Pointers taking Seals in this region?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: When you first came down to Foveaux Strait, you knew that White Pointers were down here, but you were fishing here for other things anyways. You started poking around, checking here and there. Why did you choose Foveaux Strait and around Stewart Island, as opposed to any place else in coastal New Zealand to look for White Pointers? 

SCOTT: Well, mainly because I was fishing here. And I’ve got a reasonably good knowledge of all this coast. And there’s been a lot of known sightings and captures of Great Whites in this area for years. 

CRAWFORD: Even informally, there will be reports of White Pointers throughout the country in coastal waters. But there were more observations, more recordings, more encounters here around Foveaux Strait?

SCOTT: Yes. Although the Otago Peninsula is another hotspot. Or it used to be. But that was only because of the few people attacked. The thing that put me off looking there is the Human population. 

CRAWFORD: What about the Human population?

SCOTT: Well, like you've got this huge population, you've got these huge beaches, heaps of people swimming. I could image there would be a lot more resistance to a Shark cage operation setting up right here. More than what we thought would be at Stewart Island. But instead of having a few people moan about it there, we've got the whole town moaning about it.

CRAWFORD: How would you have known, in general, about distribution or abundance of those White Pointers? Would it be because you have talked to other commercial operators? Or did you maybe know people that were recreational Shark fisherman? Or you would have seen it on TV or read about it in the paper?

SCOTT: No. It was all knowledge from other fisherman, who have seen and caught or interacted with Great Whites in their fishing operations.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Based on what you know, is the ecosystem down south different from the ecosystem up north? Say, compared to the Banks Peninsula - is that a different ecosystem compared to this region Otago Peninsula?

SCOTT: It definitely is. Because when you're north of Otago, there’s very little Seal population, until you get to the Peninsula. It's all shingle beaches. It's not good for Seals to be hanging out. So, there’s that. But the fish, even the fishery from ... well even through to North Otago, even Oamaru, it is generally a flat fishery. The likes of Soles, Flounders, and that sort of thing.

CRAWFORD: Is there a difference between what's happening here at the south end of the South Island, when you get past Chaslands? Are the ecosystem, the fisheries - are they different from Otago to Oamaru?

SCOTT: Pretty much the same. Nah.

CRAWFORD: My understanding is that there aren't too many that have experience actually on the water, down around the Catlins. Some local expertise. But a lot of the  people that do have experience there come out of the ports from around Otago, and head south to go fishing.

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Have you seen Sharks generally, in Otago Harbour?

SCOTT: Only Sevengill Sharks. I’ve never seen a White Shark in the Otago Harbour.

CRAWFORD: Have you ever heard of White Pointers in the Harbour?

SCOTT: Heaps, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Back in the day, or even more recently?

SCOTT: Yeah, it's not even that long ago, you know. Like back in the maybe early-, late-70s, early-80s.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But not within the last decade or so?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: And the recreational guys that were out Shark fishing most weekends - they were targeting smaller Sharks?

SCOTT: Yep. They would have the odd encounter with Great Whites, but very, very few.

CRAWFORD: When they were fishing - it was Makos and Blue Sharks?

SCOTT: Yeah, but they would see the odd White every now and then.

CRAWFORD: Right. Getting back to the commercial fishery - it’s many different activities, right? You’ve got longliners, you’ve got setnetters, Codpotters, Crayfisherman, Pāua divers. It’s not just one thing. Of all of those different types of fishing activity, which type of fishery is most likely to encounter a White Pointer?

SCOTT: I would say more likely the longline.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, why?

SCOTT: Well, because you’ve got live fish struggling on a piece of string. Codpots, they’ll have a go at them. Again, you’ve got fish struggling in a pot as they’re coming up or on the surface. But the longline fishery, those guys lose a lot of bait. And we get Sharks with hooks, longline hooks. So, they’re obviously interacting.

CRAWFORD: You mean now with Shark cage tour dive operations - you see White Pointers with hooks or scars, like that? You think some of these fish have run into longlines?

SCOTT: In my opinion, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Do you get any instances where people are out there recreational fishing for whatever else, and a White Pointer comes up investigating, bumping, or doing anything like that?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: I’ve heard that if I go talking with some of the commercial guys down at Port Chalmers, I’ll hear talk about a White Pointer there that was named after a sail boat … what’s the big yachting race here?

SCOTT: KZ-7.

CRAWFORD: That’s the one. It must have been the name of a boat ...

SCOTT: It was the name of one of our America's Cup boats. 

CRAWFORD: Oh. So, it was a New Zealand entry in the big race?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Why the hell did they name the White Pointer after that boat? Was it the shape of the fin?

SCOTT: No idea. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. I’ll try to find out. When you heard about KZ-7, what did you hear? 

SCOTT: I’m pretty sure they were talking about around here, Otago Peninsula. Because most of the recreational Shark fishing was done around here. Like it’s all the tides and stuff, flows through here every day. And they would probably set up down here somewhere, and their berley would go wherever. For the recreational stuff, I think you’d be best to go to the Tautuku Fishing Club. 

CRAWFORD: You remember anybody there by name?

SCOTT: Billy Marshall. He’s Brent Marshall’s old man. Bill Marshall, he could tell you pretty much ... he’s old old. About 100. 

CRAWFORD: That’s good. Sometimes 100-year-olds are the best ones. Was there any season when people would find more White Pointers around the peninsula? A season where they would or would not be around here?

SCOTT: I don’t know. I know there was one caught around here in a setnet a couple of years ago, in December. The one I saw there was in February. Now from where we’re operating further south in the Foveaux Strait, I would say the season at Otago would coincide with the seasons further south.

CRAWFORD: Starting early to mid-December, going till when?

SCOTT: June. Maybe into July. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that season might be the case around Otago as well?

SCOTT: I would say it’s the same. We believe that the population at Stewart Island increases when those Seal pups are there. It’s purely got to be for food. There’s no other reason. 

CRAWFORD: And that's a common denominator? A lot of Seal pups here, a lot of Seal pups down there. 

SCOTT: That’s right. They’re all starting to swim around about the end of December, into whenever they leave, you know?

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's talk about other people's experience over a broader region. For this purpose, you didn’t spend any time that I know of up in the North Island?

SCOTT: No, no. Very little. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Around South Island then, based on what you know of other people's knowledge, where was the greatest density of White Pointers?

SCOTT: In a fisheries sense, we quite regularly heard them coming out of the Hokitika Trench, which is here. It is very heavily longlined by the Greymouth fisherman. 

CRAWFORD: This was when you were Tuna fishing?

SCOTT: Yeah. But I had friends who were fishing in that fishery, and you’d be talking to them. Even on one side on the country to the other, stories about there being some quite large White Pointers that come out of the Hokitika Trench. 

CRAWFORD: But the only reason people knew about it was that they were longlining in that region?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: If the White Pointers are around, and people are longlining, then is it the same as setnetting? They’re going to get tangled?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: And did you say anything previously about Cook Strait, Marlborough Sound?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: But back then you already knew about White Pointers at Stewart Island, as well?

SCOTT: Yep. Back in the early 1990s, when we first went to Stewart Island on holiday one Christmas-time, they caught two at the wharf at Halfmoon Bay. A big one and a small one. 

CRAWFORD: You were there?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Allan Anderson said he was there too. He was in Paterson Inlet then.

SCOTT: He was with me. That’s right. In his little yacht. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Different people have said that these White Pointers were coming around, about 11 o’clock every day. And maybe a hundred people would go down to the wharf to see these Sharks come in. 

SCOTT: Right. So, then they decided it was a big Jaws scenario, someone was going to get eaten. So, they killed them. 

CRAWFORD: Somebody put nets out, and they caught two of three White Pointers. And the third one never came back?

SCOTT: Probably not.

CRAWFORD: Have you ever heard of White Pointers specifically in Paterson Inlet?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: What did you hear?

SCOTT: I heard there was one swimming around Ulva Island, around three days ago. There was another one swimming up and down the beach on New Year's Day, while they were having a picnic when the acoustic buoys were in there. No one knew it was there. There was a big female, spent about two weeks right out at the end of Paterson Inlet last year, probably eating Sevengill Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: Where did you get that from? Did you see that animal?

SCOTT: No. I was just getting information given to me. 

CRAWFORD: People that live on the Island, or spend time on the Island, shared that with you?

SCOTT: Scientific information.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Has anybody ever discussed similarities between Paterson Inlet and Otago Harbour?

SCOTT: No. But they're in there too. I guarantee it.

CRAWFORD: Right. Getting back to this idea about three White Pointers swimming together in Halfmoon Bay ...

SCOTT: I don’t ever remember there being three. The story I heard was that they saw one to begin with. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Were you on the wharf? Saw these White Pointers when they came in?

SCOTT: Yeah, after they caught them.

CRAWFORD: I’m talking about before they were netted. When they were still alive?

SCOTT: No. I never saw them when they were alive.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Why the Foveaux Strait - Stewart Island region? Why does that area have such high abundance of White Pointers?

SCOTT: I think it's pretty much the food source.

CRAWFORD: Food source meaning what?

SCOTT: The Seals. The Fur Seals. It's ideal. Like where we’re working [Edwards Island] - it's ideal hunting for White Sharks. You’ve got deep channels, heaps of currents. The Seals have got to go through these channels to get there, you know?

CRAWFORD: For Foveaux Strait specifically, describe the conditions - in terms of depth, in terms of water current, in terms of temperature. 

SCOTT: Foveaux Strait is not very deep - as you can see on here. The deepest is like 50-odd metres. And a lot of this region is a lot less than that. And you've got a tidal change through there every six hours. Flows one way, turns round and flows back the other way. The current ... generally it's quite clean water, because it’s coming out of the Tasman [Sea], or back out through the Pacific. So that water is changing every six hours. 

CRAWFORD: And in terms of water temperature?

SCOTT: It probably peaks around 15 or 16 degrees C, and it probably goes back down to 8 or 9 in the winter.

CRAWFORD: In general, prior to your cage dive operation experience, as a commercial fisherman ... did you, or your contemporaries, or the old-timers have any knowledge or observations regarding White Pointer-Dolphin interactions?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Nothing in terms of predation, or in terms of Dolphins harassing or giving a hard time to Sharks in general, White Pointers in particular?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In the time that you have been doing the Shark cage dive operations, have you ever seen Dolphins around Edwards Island - or wherever else you happen to have been working?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: What other places around New Zealand coastal waters would there be relatively high numbers? What is the common knowledge on that?

SCOTT: This is something that no one really knows. They could be in high numbers everywhere. But you get the likes of Clinton who works a lot now in the Kaipara Harbour.

CRAWFORD: Which is where?

SCOTT: North of Auckland. He’s in the Kaipara doing tagging, and in Manukau.

CRAWFORD: Specifically tagging juvenile White Pointers?

SCOTT: Yeah, pretty much. They’ve got a reasonable population there.

CRAWFORD: What does Clinton do to bring White Pointers to him?

SCOTT: Same as what we’re doing.

CRAWFORD: 'Same' as in berley, a fine mince of fish?

SCOTT: Yeah. Albacore, generally. And it was him who put me onto decoy stuff. Like the decoy stuff, the boogie boards - you know? And it's his Department that are now saying, "You’re not allowed to do that anymore." But this is all stuff that’s happened way in the past, that we’ve probably evolved from, I suppose. Where I’m coming from is that there could be a huge population all around the whole country.

CRAWFORD: It would be interesting, for instance, if someone would design a coastal White Pointer chumming survey.

SCOTT: Yeah, well see ... So, Clinton knows they’re in the Kaipara, he knows they’re in the Manukau. Over in Leigh, which is on the opposite side of the Kaipara, there’s quite a big Snapper longline fishery - those guys see a lot of White Pointers. And they’re only seeing a lot because of the fishery.

CRAWFORD: Because they happen to be fishing there?

SCOTT: That’s right. The guys in Greymouth, who are lining at the Hokitika Trench, they get reasonable numbers, because they’re doing what they’re doing there. But because we’re not seeing them in all these other places - it doesn’t mean to say that there’s not a good population there. And I have looked in some other places, now when I think about it. Because we had a look in the top end of the Fiordland Park, on the bottom side of Big Bay, north of Milford.

CRAWFORD: Which is where I was doing interviews last week. 

SCOTT: We spent a day piddling around there one day, with a day like this. A day where if there was a Shark there, we would have seen it. And I’m adamant there wasn’t any. There weren’t even many Seals. 

CRAWFORD: You’re still strong on the idea that when these White Pointers are in New Zealand coastal waters, Seals form a strong attraction for them?

SCOTT: Yep, yep.

CRAWFORD: Strong ... Would it be fair to say, a stronger signal than fish? If you had aggregations of fish, the Seals would still trump the fish?

SCOTT: Although when they’re travelling, generally they won’t travel along the coast, they’ll travel out on the shelf. 

CRAWFORD: Why is that?

SCOTT: I don’t know. 

CRAWFORD: Feeding on fish out on the shelf?

SCOTT: One of the White Pointers that was tagged a number of years back, spent a lot of time on a few of the seamounts going north, where there is a lot of Bluenose. And Groper ... which is, you know, they’re a big enough fish that when they grabbed hold of one, they get a pretty decent feed out of it. So, I’m pretty sure they eat the likes of Bluenose and Groper when they’re on the run. But then it could also be a mating issue in there, but an equation in that as well, you know? 

CRAWFORD: What do you mean?

SCOTT: Clearly there’s the odd White Sharks, I believe, mate at Stewart Island. They clearly pup in the North Island, in the likes of Kaipara and Manukau. There are a lot of juveniles living in those sorts of places. But then again, that’s only my thinking.

CRAWFORD: I’m not familiar with those waters up North. Are they sandy bays? Or rocky bays? 

SCOTT: Sandy. That’s Kaipara there. It’s a huge big waterbody, full of Stingrays, and all those sort of things that they like to eat. And the Manukau is down here, of course. So then again, there’s a lot of mudflats and stuff in there. Stingrays and all that sort of rubbish, as well. 

CRAWFORD: This is where Clinton's spending much of his time now?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And they’re both sandy bays, relatively speaking, sandy muddy?

SCOTT: Heaps of tidal flow in there too. 

CRAWFORD: And lots of food?

SCOTT: I reckon so. 

CRAWFORD: Not the offshore Gropers and things like that, but maybe more estuarine fish. And every once in a while, they see larger White Pointers up north, is that the case?

SCOTT: I believe so, but I don’t know how big. I know there’s never been too many in there. But they’ve seen a few out round D'Urville Island and that.

CRAWFORD: Not juveniles, you mean bigger adults?

SCOTT: Yeah. Well, you see there used to be a big Whaling station in Tory Channel, just in there. 

CRAWFORD: Yeah. You had previously recommended I try to find the old spotter, the Whale spotter up there ...

SCOTT: Yeah, [Kebbles??] 

CRAWFORD: Ok. But those bays on the North Island, that's where Clinton is investing most of his time tagging the White Pointer juveniles?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Is he working out of Wellington, or is he out of Auckland?

SCOTT: Auckland. 

CRAWFORD: So, this is half an hour's drive for him. 

SCOTT: That’s right, it makes sense.

CRAWFORD: So, then this was a big deal for him coming down here to work Stewart Island. That work is over now, he’s focused full-time up north?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Any of these other bays that would be recognized as juvenile White Pointer bays? 

SCOTT: The other place where I’ve heard that there are a lot, well a reasonable amount of numbers, is up here eastern side of North Island. And that’s only because of the Snapper longlining up here, you see? In a place called Leigh - but I can’t actually see it on this chart. 

CRAWFORD: But once again, it’s based on the observations from the fisheries, right? The people are either investing the effort, or they’re doing something with the fisheries that they would have seen the White Pointers? 

SCOTT: Yeah. 

4. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - DIRECT EXPERIENCES (NON-CAGE DIVING)

CRAWFORD: When did you see your first White Pointer in the wild?

SCOTT: It was maybe ‘82 or ‘83, I saw my first White swimming around.

CRAWFORD: This was the first one you personally saw alive?

SCOTT: Yep, that’s right. And that was at Gull Rock. That was in probably 1982 or '83, February it was. And then the next one I saw was about 25 years later in Te Waewae Bay, which is to the west of Bluff. I’d only ever seen two White Pointers in 33 years. And that’s in the commercial fishing operation where you've got fish, blood and guts, and heads and offal. Nothing otherwise. 

CRAWFORD: This region of New Zealand coastline, the Otago Peninsula, there are rocky areas along here as well. Is it a major area for New Zealand Fur Seals?

SCOTT: Sort of. And the other reason I think, and I don’t know about this one ... but your Great Whites are not just eating Seals. They’ll eat the likes of Groper, Bluenose, and other fish. Yeah, that’s pretty much proven, because they’ve had fish inside them when they’ve been caught. Plus, they’ll also spend a lot of time on seamounts and stuff where there’s a lot of Groper - nothing else lives there. And close to the Peninsula, you’ve got the Seal population here. And you’ve got these deep canyons coming in really close to the shore, so your food is right there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, in your 35 years commercial fishing, you saw two of these White Pointers alive in the wild. When you saw your White Pointers, what were the circumstances under which you saw them? 

SCOTT: At Gull Rock, we were just linefishing in along the shore there, just lining for Blue Cod.

CRAWFORD: Commercial linefishing?

SCOTT: Recreational fishing, but on a commercial boat. And a head just came up and rolled over, and looked, and then went back down. Never to be seen again. Didn’t come back. Just came up for a look.

CRAWFORD: Did you see its dorsal fin first?

SCOTT: No. He came round ... he obviously surfaced behind us, came round the back of the boat, and was on his side then, and was looking at us as he went away and down. That was it. And the second one, in Te Waewae Bay, he was just cruising along.

CRAWFORD: Given the fact that you’ve now seen a lot of these White Pointers, how big would those first fish have been? 

SCOTT: I would say maybe 12 or 13 feet. 

CRAWFORD: Is it possible to identify anything about the fish, other than the fact that is a White Pointer, under those circumstances? 

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Can you get the sex of the fish? Do you know male from female, when you see it from the surface? 

SCOTT: Yeah but, oh I don’t know. If I see one now, that’s the first thing I’m looking for is male, female, size …

CRAWFORD: Ok, but that’s your more expert knowledge now. You didn’t have that expert knowledge back then. 

SCOTT: And when you’re seeing a White Pointer for the first time up close, all you’re seeing is Shark!

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Ok. Fast-forward now to you being a seasoned veteran. When you see a White Pointer from the surface now, what can you tell about that fish that you couldn’t back then? Can you tell sex? 

SCOTT: Probably 90% of the time. 

CRAWFORD: Based on what?

SCOTT: Just its genitals underneath. They’ll roll ... generally they’ll roll when they go away, when they go off to the bottom. Generally, you get a look.

CRAWFORD: When they do a drive-by, it’s not always just the fin breaking? Sometimes they’ll come up and roll on their side?

SCOTT: Or if they turn away, you’ll see if it’s a male - you’ll see it straight off. 

CRAWFORD: What about body shape? Have you seen patterns in shape between females and males?

SCOTT: If it’s really big, like I’m talking 18, 20 feet, then it’s more than likely a female. Whereas the males are generally ... if you get an 18 foot male, then he’s reasonably slim. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Back to your second sighting.

SCOTT: Yep. Te Waewae Bay. That would have been early-90s.

CRAWFORD: What were you doing that time?

SCOTT: Bottom-trawling. Just towing across the bay there. Nice sunny day. It didn’t even stop. It just swum past the back of us, and kept going.

CRAWFORD: So, you had the trawl out at the time? I would have thought it would be very rare that trawlermen see White Pointers?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: So, it was a simple observation. And nothing else? 

SCOTT: No. There was a one in a gazillion chance of seeing one, you know? It didn’t stop. It didn’t show any interest. We weren’t cleaning fish at the time, we were just bottom trawling. So maybe if we had been cleaning fish, it may have interacted with us, it may not have. Who knows?

CRAWFORD: Was its head out of the water? 

SCOTT: It wasn’t out of the water - he was right under the water, just cruising along. Looking, definitely looking. 

CRAWFORD: And then there’s the White Pointer that Allan Anderson saw at Karitane, and you were on board. I think he said it was New Year's Day. He saw it, but he said you didn’t - but you were both on the same boat at the same time?

SCOTT: That’s right. I’m sure I didn’t see it. But I vaguely remember them seeing something there.

CRAWFORD: That was Karitane, just off the bar?

SCOTT: That’s right.

5. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS

CRAWFORD: What was the first time that you remember hearing from other people about White Pointers? At what stage did they kind of come into your world - were you a kid, an adult?

SCOTT: It was definitely at younger stages. When I was in the Otago Harbour. There were a couple, at least one or two caught at the entrance to the Harbour in setnets. 

CRAWFORD: This was inside the Mole, the breakwall at Aramoana?

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: Inside by how much? Were they up to Port Chalmers? 

SCOTT: Yeah. And they caught one outside the pub at Carey’s Bay. There were never really too many sightings, because these Sharks keep a really low profile. Generally, the only time you would see one is when someone actually caught one. 

CRAWFORD: That’s a really important observation, right there. Because when you’ve got White Pointers that are showing up in setnets, it’s pretty damn obvious. But people could have been past those waters numerous times and not seen them. 

SCOTT: That’s right, quite likely.

CRAWFORD: If the White Pointers don’t break the surface ... if they’re not doing things that are attracting the attention of people that are living at the surface, then you’d either have to have some way of sensing them - including potentially being below the surface of the water, or have some type of inside knowledge. They don’t have to be conspicuous. And when you hear an observation like White Pointers getting caught up in nets, and people not even having known that they were around - that’s an indication that for at least some of the time, these rather big fish are behaving in such a way that people would not see them. It goes back to this principle in Science about the absence of evidence; not having evidence that they’re there doesn’t mean that there’s evidence that they’re not there. 

SCOTT: That’s right. And you’re dealing with a fish that pretty much is all about ambush, when it comes to its prey.

CRAWFORD: So, there you were, you’re a kid. The very first time that you knew about White Pointers was when one or two of them got tangled up in a net?

SCOTT: I think there were two at the entrance to the Harbour. There was also a guy that got his leg bitten off about the same time there. He was diving alongside the breakwater there. 

CRAWFORD: That would have been Graham Hitt, scubadiving at the Aramoana Mole in 1968.

SCOTT: And then there was another one caught almost outside the Carey’s Bay Pub. Right by the fisherman’s wharf.

CRAWFORD: It was caught accidently, or somebody had seen it and then set the net?

SCOTT: No, they hadn’t seen it. But way back then, I was maybe eight or nine or something like that, there was still a lot of those old - like really old, old Shark fisherman, from way back in the days. They were still living there. 

CRAWFORD: Do you remember what their names were?

SCOTT: The Lewises. And the Attfields - there was a guy called Bill Attfield. These guys were like ... I don’t know, probably like well into their 70s and 80s when I was there, you know? So those guys probably, originally started making a living within the Harbour on the Flounders and stuff. In the earlier days, those old blokes targeted White Pointers in the Harbour. 

CRAWFORD: Why?

SCOTT: For their living. 

CRAWFORD: Really?

SCOTT: That’s right. And maybe their teeth, I don’t know. And going way back then, I don’t know if the teeth were such a big thing. I think they seriously went out just to catch these big fish. I’m sure they may have made more money out of one White Pointer, than out of a whole lot of other fish for the rest of the year, you know? I think the main reason they targeted them was for their livers, because the livers in those things are huge. And way back then there was ... I don’t know what they did with them, maybe cosmetics or something like that. The liver oil.

CRAWFORD: Those guys, back in the day - they were primarily a Harbour fishery?

SCOTT: They only had dinghies, you see? Little clinker dinghies. 

CRAWFORD: What’s a 'clinker dinghy'?

SCOTT: It’s made out of a whole lot of planks. That plank overlaps that plank there, and then the next one. So that’s a clinker dinghy. I don’t know if there’s one round here at the moment. There was for a while. 

CRAWFORD: But we're talking like 12 foot, right?

SCOTT: Probably a bit bigger than that. Some of them used to have 15, 18 foot, and maybe even ex-Whaler boats. You know? Way back then.

CRAWFORD: Alright. You were a boy, you were nine or ten, something like that. This was late 1960s, early-70s. Did you actually see these White Pointers? Or did you just hear about them?

SCOTT: No, I saw the Sharks. They had one on the beach. But if you go back, there were a lot of photos floating around at the time. Another of the guys I used to work for, Evan Kenton, the Kenton's were another big fishing family. But Evan was working for Old Bill Attfield at the time, and they had a net shed on the point, where they used to set all of the fishing nets. And they set ... I’m not sure if it was a line, a hook and line, or a net. I would almost put money on that it was a hook. And that’s how they all, the old people, used to catch them - with a hook and line and drum.

CRAWFORD: A baited hook? And a drum for a float?

SCOTT: Yep. And a drum. And then they would row round the harbour.

CRAWFORD: Dangle or tow the line?

SCOTT: No, it would be tied to something. It would be anchored to them. They used to tie them to the markers in the Harbour. They could see all of that from their houses, you see? And then when they saw the drum going, they would chase the Sharks in their rowboats. And then they used to spend like half a day trying to keep these Sharks under control, you know? Being towed all around the place. And then they would harpoon them. 

CRAWFORD: I could imagine. I mean you’ve got an 18 foot White Pointer - that’s going to take the drum for a helluva ride. And even when you catch up, it doesn’t mean the Shark is played out. What would they do when they got to it? Shoot it?

SCOTT: No. All the photos I’ve seen, and I’ve got some at home, it looks like they harpooned them, once they got them.

CRAWFORD: But it was a definitely a harvest, as opposed to a cull. As opposed to somebody running around going "Oh, we’ve got a White Pointer in the Harbour. We’ve got to kill this thing." Right?

SCOTT: That’s dead right. They would catch them for their living. 

CRAWFORD: They were fisherman. Shark fisherman. Ok. That was your first experience with the White Pointers?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You said previously that you’ve always had a thing for White Pointers …

SCOTT: And I don’t know when that came about, it was just there. 

CRAWFORD: These are just some of your first experiences. And it’s all very local, it’s not sensational or anything. It’s just what was happening. While we’re talking about Otago Harbour - any other direct experiences within the Harbour? Either what you knew from your own experience, or what you have heard?

SCOTT: Once these sorts of things started happening, like someone would catch a Shark, you know ... and then you would get all of these older guys talking. And that would bring back their memories, you know? A story came out ... they caught a Shark down here at Aramoana. They were tied up to the wee spit wall there, and the Shark actually towed them out to sea! It must have been when the tide was going out. But then it towed them back in again, when the tide was coming back in! It was all these stories. I don’t think anybody actually lost their lives through this, but it must have been a very, very fine line.

CRAWFORD: And these are the types of stories that got told from a commercial guy to other people in town. And if he was bullshitting, chances are somebody would say "You're bullshitting!" I'm guessing maybe they had their own kind of internal quality control on the knowledge in that community?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Was there any indication from the old-timers, or your contemporaries, that there were some White Pointers with distinguishing features that were known around the Otago Peninsula? That were around for prolonged periods within a season, or as repeat visitors over years?

SCOTT: Well, no. Because the old guys, they went out and caught them. I don't think they named them. They caught them, that was their business.

CRAWFORD: They didn't give names to these fish, or anything like that?

SCOTT: No. Well, see the average fisherman never saw a White Shark. 

CRAWFORD: But were there some instances where individual Sharks with discriminating features, like a scar or coloration or something like that?

SCOTT: Not that I know of.

CRAWFORD: Ok. How many other incidences had you heard about? You might have heard of other people seeing or experiencing things. How many encounters, roughly?

SCOTT: It would be very, very few. Like most of us guys who were bottom-trawling. like Brock Anderson’s old man, Allan. Have you talked to him? Did he tell you about the one he caught?

CRAWFORD: Yes, when he was longlining. And you know the story as well, right? He didn’t measure it, but he did have it up on the winch, and he knows the height of the winch. And part of the tail was still on the deck. I believe he said it was a 19 foot animal.

SCOTT: Well, it got away in the end.

CRAWFORD: Because he thought it was dead. Then all of a sudden, this thing starts up …

SCOTT: Well he actually was stamping on it. It was tangled up in his longline. He climbed outside the boat, and had it winched up, and he climbed out. He was standing on it. And he was cutting this line off, and then he was thinking "Shit, this thing's not dead!" And it had started getting more and more livelier. And then it just about pulled the mast down … [both laugh]

CRAWFORD: Right. Outside of the commercial fishery, you also said that there was an attack at Aramoana. What do you know about that attack?

SCOTT: That’s only from what I was told about the story. I wasn’t there.

CRAWFORD: So, as it was told to local people, like from Port Chalmers ... When did this attack happen, roughly?

SCOTT: I don’t know, most of these attacks that happened around here were in the '70s, maybe late-60s. 

CRAWFORD: Including the one specifically at Aramoana?

SCOTT: Yeah. And that was a group of divers, on the surface. 

CRAWFORD: Scubadivers?

SCOTT: I believe they were. And the Shark swum around them a few times, them came in and grabbed one. 

CRAWFORD: You don’t know anybody that was involved in that incident? 

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: Was there anything, other than the White Pointer circling around, that was noteworthy about that attack?

SCOTT: Well only that the guy died. 

CRAWFORD: Yes, that was noteworthy. But was there anything else that was unusual about the circumstances, that you know of?

SCOTT: Nah.

CRAWFORD: They got him to shore, and he died on the scene or onwards to the hospital?

SCOTT: That’s right. I think he died quick smartly.

CRAWFORD: There were other attacks here back then, in the '60s ...

SCOTT: Well, the only other attacks, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find that these are all around that same period of time, were the ones at St. Kilda and St. Clair. Those attacks were on this bathing beach there, you know? But even the attacks that happened in that area were clustered in a fairly small timeframe. And that’s weird in its own.

CRAWFORD: And it comes back to that question that I asked you before, about how is this place different from the adjacent shoreline? I mean, for example, you said this is Seal territory.

SCOTT: For sure, yeah. But there’s no Seals on the beaches.

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that White Pointers would be off the beaches there then?

SCOTT: I have no idea. One suggestion was that it was only one Shark. 

CRAWFORD: Right. And even if a single person saw that Shark at different times, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell if it was the same animal.

SCOTT: They would not have recognized him.

CRAWFORD: Well no, unless there was something specific to it. 

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: As you were growing up, did you ever see any White Pointers in Otago Harbour?

SCOTT: No. I saw one animal in the Harbour when I was about 20, 21. Maybe. About 1982, 1983.

CRAWFORD: Did other people ever talk about seeing White Pointers there?

SCOTT: No. I don’t think they ever saw them, though. You never ever hear about people saying that they'd seen a White Pointer in the Harbour. But you'd always hear about it, if someone caught a White Pointer in the Harbour. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Let's go back to the setnets. When you were a kId, when you were growing up, some people were catching White Pointers in setnets?

SCOTT: The University of Otago also caught a couple down here at the Mole. Released two, I think. 

CRAWFORD: Animals caught off the breakwall at Aramoana?

SCOTT: Inside it. I've got photos of that too, somewhere. 

CRAWFORD: The University caught them in setnets?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Anybody else fishing with setnets in the Harbour catch a White Pointer, that you remember?

SCOTT: Not that I remember.

CRAWFORD: So really, the only White Pointers that you recall in the Harbour were specially targeted with baited hooks and the drums.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: But there were White Pointers, on at least a couple of other occasions, caught in setnets at the mouth of the Harbour.

SCOTT: And they were also caught in the Shark nets at St. Kilda and St. Clair.

CRAWFORD: Those were the Shark nets that the Dunedin City Council operated?

SCOTT: That’s right. And that was mainly from a guy here called Johnny Malcolm, who I believe is still alive. Very interesting character. I’ve got an idea he lives in Ranfurly. And he wouldn’t be hard to track down, I think. He was the contractor to the City Council.

CRAWFORD: I think they actually went through a series of different contractors, because there are other people that I’ve been directed to. People who also worked those Shark nets.

SCOTT: Johnny was the main one. Back in the early days when they caught some. But see the Council will tell you that they have no records of any being caught. But I remember him bringing Sharks here [Port Chalmers] in his little boat.

CRAWFORD: Johnny sailed out of Port Chalmers?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Went around to St. Clair, and came back, and brought the White Pointers back? What did he do with them once he brought them back?

SCOTT: I don’t know what he did with them. I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: Anyone else you know, apart from Johnny, who worked those DCC Shark nets? 

SCOTT: Graeme Fraser. But I don’t know that he ever caught any Whites. I’m pretty sure he didn’t, actually. He was the last contractor. He’s still a bit pissed that I had something to do with getting all of that shut down. Because it was probably a fairly good little loop for him to make a dollar.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean you had something to do with 'getting all of that shut down'?

SCOTT: We pushed really hard to have those nets out of there. 

CRAWFORD: Who’s we?

SCOTT: Me and Andrew Scott [University of Otago biology student - no relation]. He produced that video 'Tangled Waters'. He and his girlfriend. There were a number of other people involved. 

CRAWFORD: And this all put pressure on the Dunedin City Council to stop deploying their Shark nets?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Was there strong support in any other circles? Did you have other groups that chipped in with you?

SCOTT: No. We had major opposition within the Council itself. The first time we tried, we bloody missed out by like three votes. They have to vote on it, you see? The second one, we managed to, there was one vote in our favour. One of the Councillors, his cousin or something had been killed by a Shark. So, he was quite keen to see them there.

CRAWFORD: To see the DCC Shark nets off St Clair and St Kilda?

SCOTT: Yeah. And they were going "They’re going to stay. It only costs like 32 thousand dollars a year that they pay this contractor to go and do it. So, it’s a good investment." And like Andrew and his girlfriend, they were quite smart with all the research they did on it, you know? And at that meeting with the Council, where they said it only costs 32 thousand a year - we were going "Yeah but, it’s also going to cost the ratepayers 150 thousand dollars a year next year to replace all those nets, because they’re ruined. They’re old. They’re worn out." So that was a swinging factor in it. We knew quite a lot about what was going on. 

CRAWFORD: When did the DCC Shark netting program get shut down?

SCOTT: Oh shit, it's not that long ago. 

CRAWFORD: Like ten years ago?

SCOTT: No, maybe 2010 or '11 or something. It’s not that far back. Maybe 2012. It would be on that 'Tangled Waters' thing.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's get back to the first White Pointers you saw. They were targeted catches in the Harbour, with baited drums, and some incidental catches in setnets.

SCOTT: Yeah. I don’t know what the University would setnet for ... maybe for food for their aquarium or something, I don’t know. But a guy called Jack Jenkins. He caught two. One of them was quite big. And the jaws of that, I believe, are in the museum in town.

CRAWFORD: Jack Jenkins, he was a commercial guy or what?

SCOTT: He was the caretaker of the University aquarium. 

CRAWFORD: The Portobello Aquarium?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: With setnetting, we're talking about catching in a completely different category. Because in most cases people don’t see what they’re catching in their setnets. And that might be a little bit different if you’re a recreational Shark fisherman, where you’re specifically going for it. If you saw an animal, and you want to catch that animal, right?

SCOTT: Right.

6A. OBSERVATIONS FROM cage tour dive operations

Exploratory Phase

CRAWFORD: Even before you had a Shark cage, you said you went down south, and chummed to see if you could bring the White Pointers in, that kind of thing?

SCOTT: That’s right, we looked in a whole lot of places. Well, around the south there.

CRAWFORD: Right over to Fiordland?

SCOTT: No, no. Ruapuke to Stewart Island. Because we were commercial bottom-trawling up and down, and all around there anyway. So, every now and then we would just stop that and go off and have a look for Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was that?

SCOTT: 2006 or 2007. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. That was exploratory. And you didn’t even have a cage at that time?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: Was it on the basis of that one exploratory season, that you figured you were bringing in enough big Sharks? That you could probably do this as a business, as an eco-tourism business?

SCOTT: No. But what we did find was there’s a lot of places where there are no Sharks. We spent hours and hours looking.

CRAWFORD: Yes. And you already know that an ecologist as interested in where they aren't, as much as where they are. And I’m also as interested in when they’re there, versus when they're not there. 

SCOTT: That’s right. It would have been a couple of years before we actually decided. The biggest barrier was, we couldn’t start a Shark cage operation - before they were protected. 

CRAWFORD: Why not?

SCOTT: Because as soon as everybody knew that there was a Shark population there, they would come in and kill them. Guaranteed. So, we had to be very careful how we played that card.

CRAWFORD: Who would come and kill the White Pointers? And how would they kill them? And why would they kill them?

SCOTT: Well, the Stewart Islanders hate them with a vengeance. So, they’ve been culling them for years. Which is a fact. 

CRAWFORD: Just on principle? That if somebody hears about a White Pointer, somebody goes out with a gun? 

SCOTT: Yep. That’s right. Setnets or a gun. 

CRAWFORD: On principle?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Why?

SCOTT: Because I think it’s something they’ve always done. And it's all this hype on "There's a Shark. Let's kill it."

CRAWFORD: How did you know that people ... was it people from the Island, people from mainland, a mix? Or was it just people from the Island? 

SCOTT: In probably the early-90s, we were in Stewart Island. And two White Sharks actually came into the bay, swum around there, so there’s this big hype about "We need to kill these Sharks before they eat somebody." They got Shark nets sent from the mainland, and they caught them, killed them. 

CRAWFORD: How did you know that the Islanders, or somebody, was likely to come out and kill the animals? Back in the day when you were scoping? How did you know?

SCOTT: Even like your recreational fisherman ... it was all about catching a Shark.

CRAWFORD: Sharks in general, or White Pointers in particular?

SCOTT: All Sharks. But White Pointers at the top of the list, because of the size, the teeth, the whole thing. So, you’ve got these guys going around, and trying to make themselves bigger by catching big Sharks. Simple as that. 

CRAWFORD: When you were scoping out potential sites for Shark cage diving, I think you said you had an idea that there were particular places that you could run an operation around Foveaux Strait?

SCOTT: Well, we were bottom-trawling at the time. So, we had a lot of offal and stuff that we’d keep for balls. We would just park up, and we thought we may see one - just do a bit of chumming there for a few hours, while we were cleaning fish or had not a lot to do. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of places did you pick, and why did you pick them?

SCOTT: Ruapuke was our first ... the first place we looked, and actually saw one. That was on the east side of Ruapuke. 

CRAWFORD: You picked the east side because it was leeward to the prevailing winds?

SCOTT: Well, it was just that we were trawling there at the time. And there was a lot of Seals and islands and stuff round here that the Seals were living on. And deep water. 

CRAWFORD: So, you were actively looking for places where Seals were in the water, in order to see if there were White Pointers there. And there are Seals on the eastern side of Ruapuke Island?

SCOTT: They’re all round it. 

CRAWFORD: So, you found White Pointers at Ruapuke. I don’t expect you to remember every single other instance ... but for the ones that you do remember, what were some of the other places that you checked - and what did you find?

SCOTT: We had pretty much looked at every island in the Titi Island group here, with mixed results.

CRAWFORD: Why were you focusing on the Titi Islands?

SCOTT: That was pretty much tidal flow, depth of water, and again there’s a huge Seal population. 

CRAWFORD: In general, all around the Titi Islands?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Where else did you try?

SCOTT: We tried down at Weka Reef here at one stage, but that was a waste of time. Never seen anything down there.

CRAWFORD: What was the most you ever saw, when you were doing the exploratory work?

SCOTT: We never really saw big numbers. Like one's and two's around here. But that was when we decided we would build a [Shark dive] cage, and have a better look. It wasn’t until we actually had our cage, and spent a bit of time in one spot, that we started to see there were more Sharks. Because I think one of our biggest problems, in those early days, we would look there, "Nah, none there." Get bored, go somewhere else, go somewhere else, go somewhere else. It’s a game of real patience.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean? What is 'patience' in this context? 

SCOTT: Well, you want to just sit it out. It could be a couple of hours, even be half a day. Because you could miss something by an hour, or two hours. 

CRAWFORD: But the Idea is, nobody had berleyed [chummed] for White Pointers in most of these waters prior? Or had Clinton Duffy [DOC] been working down there yet?

SCOTT: He was there a year before me. 

CRAWFORD: So, he was chumming first in this region. Do you remember where he was working? Was he in the Titi Islands as well?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Did that affect your decision making?

SCOTT: They weren’t very forthcoming with any information those two, at first. Now we have a reasonably good relationship, because they can see that I’ve got a lot to give to them. And they can give a lot back to me as well, you know? It’s a two-way street. And I can understand them when we first arrived - they were thinking "Oh yeah. We’re not going to give this guy any information. He’s done nothing to [work for] this information." Then later, "Well, he’s done a wee bit." 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Is there one place there that stands out as heads-and-tails more White Pointers than anyplace else? 

SCOTT: Pretty much. There are two places that really stand out in this whole group. And that’s possibly because of ... and I still believe it's because of the Seal numbers on those particular islands, you know? One of them is Edwards Island. The other one is Bench Island down here.

CRAWFORD: And those would be the places you’d go to see White Pointers pretty regularly?

SCOTT: Well, not for us anymore. Because they’ve told us we can only go here - Edwards Island. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's focus again on the days before the DOC permit. To start out with, where did you sail from in the early days? Out of Bluff to start with, and then Oban in Halfmoon Bay later on?

SCOTT: No. Once we started doing tours, we were out of Oban.

CRAWFORD: It’s a shorter trip to Edwards?

SCOTT: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Even when there were no constraints, you were focusing on the northern Titi Island chain because they were convenient? Back then, did you keep logbooks of what you saw?

SCOTT: No. And if we did, they would be very vague. And life during those first two years, where we never took any tourists - it was purely trying to get our heads around how all of this was going to work. Without getting eaten, you know? 

CRAWFORD: Did you notice any general patterns when you came back to certain places? Based on what you've said, I’m guessing there was decent consistency associated with Edwards and Bench?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Did you notice that there was an increase in the number over time? Were you seeing more of them as time went on, when you went back to the Islands?

SCOTT: No. I don’t believe so. I don’t believe we’ve seen any more numbers now than when we started. And that’s a population base thing, I guess. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you say 'a population base thing'?

SCOTT: Well, it’s not getting bigger, it's not getting smaller - I believe. It seems to have stayed ... in my experience, it’s stayed fairly consistent. And there’s been animals taken out of that population of course, through commercial fishing. But then I guess they’re replaced by a few smaller ones. We’ve seen a number of smaller ones last season, that we haven’t seen before. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. But that’s post-permit. Pre-permit though, you were conducting your business in different ways ...

SCOTT: I don’t think they’re much different, really.

CRAWFORD: Other than not working out of Bench Island anymore. You would have been still working Edwards Island back then - just not exclusively?

SCOTT: That’s right. And still doing exactly the same as what we’re doing now. Apart from we’re only allowed one place now, for some bizarre reason. 

CRAWFORD: At any point did Clinton talk with you about what the number of the animals in that population was?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Was that early on? 

SCOTT: Pretty much, yeah.

CRAWFORD: It would have been a natural question to ask. And what approximately did he think at that time?

SCOTT: He didn’t know. No one knows. Early on, he thought 100 to 150 Sharks. But since then, with all our photo ID stuff, I think he’s pretty consistently coming up with that 50-ish range. And stuff that we’re seeing every season. I’m reasonably confident that anything that comes past our boat, we’re getting a photo of it.

CRAWFORD: He's thinking population number actually went down?

SCOTT: Yeah, but in those early days - before we did all of our ID stuff.

CRAWFORD: Maybe early on, you were seeing animals and double counting them? That kind of thing?

SCOTT: Well, I don’t even know how he came about that. But he decided that the population base was maybe around that 100 to 150. No one knew, you know? In those early days.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Did you get the feeling that perhaps he thought it was a resident, local population of White Pointers at the Titi Islands?

SCOTT: That would have got dispelled pretty early on, with his tagging, you see? Because he was getting tags from a long way away.

CRAWFORD: Those fish swim.

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: It seems common knowledge that there is a relatively high abundance or density of White Pointers around Stewart Island and Foveaux Strait.

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you scoped areas for a couple of years. The presence and frequencies, relative abundance of White Pointers. And then you said, “Right. Let's give it a go. We’re going to do this as a business”?

SCOTT: No, no. Not even as a business. I’ve had a bit of a fascination of White Sharks going way, way, way back. For some reason, it just happened. So, we scoped out early - like 2006 into 2007. And then we had a reasonably good idea where we were getting numbers of White Sharks. So, we built a cage purely as a recreational cage for fun - "Let's just go out and do it."

CRAWFORD: For you and your mates?

SCOTT: That’s right. It was never a commercial operation.

CRAWFORD: And this was about 2007?

SCOTT: Yep. It was just after they’d become protected. It was April 2007, they were protected.

CRAWFORD: And that was important for you, because once the animals were protected, then it didn’t matter if people saw the cage tour dive operations in a particular place? It was a hefty fine if anyone’s caught killing these animals?

SCOTT: There’s a hefty fine for killing these animals. If they get caught, and the Department of Conservation can get sufficient evidence to prosecute.

CRAWFORD: Fair enough. But definitely protection status was an important part of your operational and business plan?

SCOTT: That’s right. Well, it wasn’t even a business plan at that stage.

CRAWFORD: It was informal, wasn't it? You were thinking "Well, we can't go into business, because once we do this, then this will happen, and then it won't work out so good"?

SCOTT: Yeah and no. It still wasn’t really a business. It was that we couldn’t go out there and do what we wanted to with a cage. Because we knew someone would hop in on that and, take a few of these fish out.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, when did you actually start up the business?

SCOTT: 2009. But we were only doing small-scale from the start, you see? Because how it all came about was ... we were only doing our own thing. We had a cage, we had the boat, we were doing a few dives. We sort of had a very vague idea of what we were doing. And then we were approached by a film crew company to do a documentary. 

CRAWFORD: A New Zealand film company?

SCOTT: Natural History New Zealand. Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. And they wanted to make a documentary, I’m presuming? Or, was it fiction?

SCOTT: No, no, it was true. On a Shark called Nicole from South Africa. 

CRAWFORD: Oh. So, they wanted to use this as a surrogate? They needed some stock footage?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: The point is, that they said "Hey, we understand that you know where there are some White Pointers. Maybe you'll take us out, and we'll do some underwater photography?" You’ve got a cage at this point, only for your own purposes, but sure they’ll go in there. They did that, you had a contract, and that was all prior to you running the eco-tour cage diving operation?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Then at some point, you made the decision, and said “Ok, maybe this could be a business”? 

SCOTT: Well all of a sudden, all of these people wanted to come out, you know? 

CRAWFORD: How would they even have known? Word of mouth?

SCOTT: Well, pretty much, yeah. So, then it got to the stage where we had to start charging some of these people. Because we couldn’t just take them all out for nothing. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Because you've got a boat. It's not just paying off the boat. You’ve also got maintenance, insurance and all the rest of it. Ok. So, the business model comes in. And we're talking five years ago, right? It's 2015 now, so approximately 2010, when you started the cage diving business for real?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And from 2010 to the present, were you still doing any commercial fishing? 

SCOTT: I don’t do any more fishing, no. I mostly stopped fishing in 2011, when I sold the Anna. I still do a wee bit, if someone wants a boat driven, or whatever.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That represented the formal end of your commercial fishing, of your focus on commercial fishing. And the Shark cage diving was your major operation from then?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. When did Mike Haines start his Shark cage dive operation?

SCOTT: Well that’s debatable. He reckons he started in 2010 or something. But he didn’t, because we actually leased a boat off him in 2009, I thought it was. Maybe 2010. And that’s when he got the idea. Because we leased his boat to do a film shoot that we were doing. And then, I don’t think it was the year after, it was the year after that - that he started. But he always says that he’s been there since day one and blah blah blah. And I go "Oh, you and your dreams." 

CRAWFORD: 2011. So, maybe three or four years ago.

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: He’s got a time series of observations as well, but yours is almost twice as long?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. When you were doing that early scoping, was there one place around Stewart Island that stood out as, head-and-tails, more White Pointers than any place else? 

SCOTT: Pretty much. There were two places that really stand out in this whole group of islands. And I still believe it's because of the Seal numbers on those particular islands, you know? One of them is Edwards Island. The other one's Bench Island down here.

CRAWFORD: And those would be the places you’d go to see White Pointers pretty regularly?

SCOTT: Yeah.

Cage Tour Dive Operations

CRAWFORD: Where are your cage dive operations located?

SCOTT: DOC have told us we can only go to Edwards Island.

CRAWFORD: That was part of the DOC permit?

SCOTT: Yeah. That was something that they dreamed up, not something that we came forth with. 

CRAWFORD: They said, of the two hot spots, you’re not allowed to go to Bench Island?

SCOTT: No. We’re not allowed to go anywhere else, anymore. 

CRAWFORD: There’s only Edwards island?

SCOTT: We're only allowed to go ... I think its 250 metres off it. We’re not allowed to go any further. 

CRAWFORD: And was there ever any documentation about why those constraints in space were made?

SCOTT: No, no.

CRAWFORD: Was there ever any discussion with you on that permit document?

SCOTT: No, no. Never consulted on it. They said here’s your permit, here’s where you can go. 

CRAWFORD: Your kidding? There was no discussion?

SCOTT: No, no. At least not with me, anyway.

CRAWFORD: So, you don’t know why the constraints?

SCOTT: Oh, I’ve got a fairly good Idea why. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. If you feel alright saying ...

SCOTT: Because they were under pressure from members of the public and the Pāua diving community. It could be the only reason why. They wanted to restrict us to one area. Fortunately, they picked one area that was reasonably productive. 

CRAWFORD: Do you know, for the other operator [Mike Haines], does he have a similar restraint? Similar constraint?

SCOTT: Same permits.

CRAWFORD: Both of you that are out there ... and if you happen to be out there at the same time - you're both along the lee side of Edwards Island?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Within 250 metres of the shore?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: And you can’t be anyplace else.

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But still, within the Northern Titi Island chain, those two places had the most consistently high White Pointer numbers. Why not those other islands in the chain? Are they just simply ... are they not good boating, or they don’t provide enough protection, or what?

SCOTT: It's pretty much a protection thing. 

CRAWFORD: From the wind?

SCOTT: From the wind. Or the bottom conditions may not be right. Or it's too deep to anchor.

CRAWFORD: That’s Important. What’s your target zone for anchoring?

SCOTT: Well, on one side of Edwards we’ve got 18 metres. Yeah, so it’s close to 20 metres. And the other side - we’re into like four and five metres some days. 

CRAWFORD: So, too shallow on the other side of Edwards?

SCOTT: Yeah, it's really shallow on the other side.

CRAWFORD: What’s the minimum depth that you typically target for the cage tour dive operations?

SCOTT: Oh, four or five metres. Not very much. And then again, that’s all to do with weather, and that sort of thing, if we need to get closer to the Island.

CRAWFORD: What's your maximum depth, in terms of anchoring?

SCOTT: Probably about 20 metres.

CRAWFORD: So, you operate in the 4-20 metres range?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alternate locations for your Shark cage diving. You talked before about the early days, checking around Bench Island. And you tried at least a half dozen other spots?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that currents and tidal flow are important factors in where the White Pointers are?

SCOTT: I think they use the currents and the tidal flows to pick up where their prey may be. If they can smell something in the current, they know it's that way.

CRAWFORD: And they follow it, upstream?

SCOTT: That's right. And that's how they find us from the berley. And that could be a Seal, a Whale that's dead, anything.

CRAWFORD: In terms of all the time that you've been using berley, what proportion of White Pointers do you see first that are coming up the berley trail - as opposed to animals that might be coming in from different directions?

SCOTT: I'd say 99% of them come up the berley trail. 

CRAWFORD: That's very strong incidental information that they are smelling their way to you.

SCOTT: That's right. But that's not just to me. That's to their prey of anything, like Seals. Anything.

CRAWFORD: Right. In terms of alternate locations, did you ever try Ruapuke Island? 

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: What was your experience there?

SCOTT: The fish there were very, very slow. The weather was shit. For a Shark cage operation, you need calm water - and Sharks, of course. And it wasn't really very good for any of those. The Sharks were there, but they were slow to come in, and slow to find. Which is a bit unusual, because there's a lot of Seals there. Mike spent time at Seal Rock, which is just north of there. And he's had some reasonable success there. Apart from the waters being generally dirty.

CRAWFORD: Lower visibility?

SCOTT: Yeah. See, you've got some major rivers coming out along that coast, so you've got dirty water. Not all the time, but you're open to the sea, as well.

CRAWFORD: If there was going to be future consideration of alternate locations, other than the northern Titi Islands, Edwards Island in particular - what is your thinking about the feasibility of having that right combination of wind-wave conditions, with the presence of White Pointers that would actually respond? Are there any other places that you have tried, or that you know of that would be effective alternatives?

SCOTT: We've been pushed down to one Island, you know? That's what we've been pushed to. One island. And we're not allowed to go any further than 250 metres away from that Island. We've been pushed into a corner here. At the meeting yesterday [with DOC], we did discuss alternative locations that we may go to. Like, say we go to Edwards twenty days a month, but we're also allowed to go to Ruapuke for five, and the Bishops for five - something like that. So, if the weather was really good, we go to Bishops or somewhere, and spend five days up there, then do something different - say, Ruapuke for five days. 

CRAWFORD: Has there been any consideration of actually designing the plans in an experimental way? So that if there were questions about the nature of - for example - the response of White Pointers in a new place ... that you could actually test predictions by incorporating those tests into the deployment of where and when the cage tour dive operations actually happen? Historically, was that kind of learning through management ever a discussion with DOC?

SCOTT: That's a discussion we're in right at the moment. Because Lou Sanson [DOC Director-General] and them, when they go to the Island [Stewart Island], they get told we have to go further away. Well, Lou Sanson goes "Where is another option?" Maggie Berry [DOC Minister] she's going "Where is another option for these guys to go?" Right at the moment there's no Sharks there [Edwards Island]. And we've said to DOC "This is a prime time for us to research other sites." The answer is "No, you are not going anywhere else." So, we're stuck there.

CRAWFORD: DOC has said they're not open to the possibility of searching for other sites?

SCOTT: Nope. Nope. Because once this happens, we'll go look at the Bishops, look here, look there. No. It's not happening. 

CRAWFORD: Why did they say no?

SCOTT: I don't know! Because they can. 

CRAWFORD: They didn't give any explanation?

SCOTT: Nope. Like these permits ... there's nothing in the legislation there, you know. Someone, higher up from Phil Melgrun [DOC Conservation Partnerships Manager], the likes of Alan Munn [DOC South Island Conservation Director] or Maggie Berry or whoever, could say "Righto, there's a change to these permits. These guys can go there, there, and there to research other options." But that's not being given, you see?

CRAWFORD: Is there any research being done on the effects of cage tour dive operations here in New Zealand?

SCOTT: No. No.

CRAWFORD: Did DOC talk about it?

SCOTT: Well, who's going to do it? They've got no money.

CRAWFORD: Really? Regarding integration of your operations with research, you do have an informal with some individual DOC researchers?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: In terms of discussion about a permit, in the past, was there any discussion about the incorporation of research within the conditions of the permit?

SCOTT: No. Not in the past, there wasn't

CRAWFORD: Has that changed? Has there been a discussion about the possibility of incorporating research ...

SCOTT: There was no discussion. It was just on our permit that "You will supply this, this and this." Which we were already supplying anyway [informally to the DOC scientist].

CRAWFORD: Ok. Different topic. Have you ever seen, or have you ever considered, viewing platforms where your clients are not in the water? Some type of floating viewing box, as opposed to a cage?

SCOTT: Yep. Been through all of that. It had a number of issues. One was actually the whole survey of your boat. You've all of a sudden become into some form of semi-submersible survey, which was getting me to be some kind of submarine commander. It got too hard. But most people who want to go Shark cage diving, or see a Shark, they want to get in the water with it. Simple is that. And that's right from whether you're 2 years old, or 90 years old. People want to get in the water with the Shark. Unless they want to watch from the deck - some are quite happy to watch from the deck.

CRAWFORD: Most want to be submerged. But inside a container? Not immersed, but dry?

SCOTT: We didn't think there was a market for it. Because we asked people when we were thinking about it, and that was their answer.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to your existing operations, are you typically at one station at Edwards Island, per day?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: You make a decision, "We’re going to work here today"?

SCOTT: Yeah. Very rarely will we shift. I’ve bloody shifted from ... like at the end of the Island, because the wind was too strong, to the middle of the Island. We had good Sharks around us. And then it took them two hours to find us over there! And you could still see them swimming around over there. Two hours!

CRAWFORD: That is an interesting observation.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Because if they were tracking the boat, you'd figure they would have simply followed you.

SCOTT: That’s right. And even some days you can be sitting there, you can be chumming, you can be doing whatever you like. And you can see them, swimming around way over there by that rock wall, way over there that far away. Swimming at the surface.

CRAWFORD: And they’re just not following your berley trail?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Is there anything particularly attractive about those other places?

SCOTT: No. They're exactly the same as where we’re parked. Apart from I don't know, they just don’t care. Yeah, they just don’t get a sniff of something, and come charging up to the boat. Some days it’s quite frustrating while you're sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. And you can see them down there, you’re waiting, waiting, waiting. Wait some more, and then you’ll see one swim up the berley trail a wee bit - and then just bugger off somewhere else!

CRAWFORD: So, the standard protocol is ... you’re out there, you’re on station, you start chumming, and then some time later one or more Sharks come up the berley trail?

SCOTT: It might even be before we start chumming.

CRAWFORD: There might be some Sharks right there from the get-go?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. The point is that you anchor, then start chumming, and that's just with fish berley?

SCOTT: It's very, very fine.

CRAWFORD: Minced.

SCOTT: They can’t eat it. And I think it says in the permit that it's got to be less than 25 millimetres, or something like that.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, a mince that can be smelled, but the White Pointers can’t eat it. Have you ever gone out, under any circumstances, without berleying in those waters? Specifically, to observe or interact with the Sharks - if they were already there? And I don't mean necessarily just for business. It could have been during that exploratory phase of your operation. But something when you were paying attention to the Sharks, rather than trawling or doing whatever else?

SCOTT: Yeah, there are times where we haven't used any berley, because sometimes on the way over there ... if we were going over there to pick up a charter the next day, we would stop at maybe 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and we would put a bait out, that's all. Because we don't have time to dick around, chopping up berley and mincing it. And we’ll still see them. Just on bait. 

CRAWFORD: At what time of day?

SCOTT: In the afternoons. But that could be in the morning too, of course. But it's just if we’re going to pick up a charter in the mornings. We’ll go over the night before. So, we might drive there at 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the afternoon, drop the anchor, throw a bait out, sit around, get all the gear ready, and it's just while we’re sitting there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That leads to a good question, then. In cases where you have put bait out - and only bait - no berley ... do you notice any differences? Any patterns, in terms of what you get with berley? What you get with bait only?

SCOTT: No. Not at all.

CRAWFORD: Pretty much the same responses, in general?

SCOTT: Pretty much.

CRAWFORD: I mean there’s variability with berley, and there’s variability with bait.

SCOTT: Yeah, but it's really no different.

CRAWFORD: In terms of the responses?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You’re as likely to get nine or one or five with berley as you are with bait. Ok. And what kind of percentage of the time would you be baiting only? Minority of the time? Like 20 percent?

SCOTT: Maybe only 10.

CRAWFORD: It's kind of rare but ...

SCOTT: Yeah, that doesn't mean we’re pissing around filling in time.

CRAWFORD: Right. Let's think then about the White Pointers - if you hadn't been doing any berleying at all.

SCOTT: Up until they dished our permit out, we went through a phase of mincing shitloads of berley. And then bloody almost dropped completely on the head, because it was just a bloody waste of time and money and all the rest of it. Mixing up all this berley and putting it in the water. 

CRAWFORD: Well, explain that a little bit more. A little bit of berley would have done as much as a lot?

SCOTT: Yeah. I believe so.

CRAWFORD: And by 'a little bit', how much would that mean in this context, roughly? 

SCOTT: We used to put one small Albacore in a hemp sack in the mornings, jump on it, and then hang it over the side over the water. So, it's just dipping in and out of the water. There’s bugger all coming out of that bag, apart from oil and the smell of it. That's all we were using. And then when we got the DOC permit, they said "Righto. No more hemp sacks in case the Shark eats one and chokes itself. Rah, rah, rah. But you can use as much berley as you want though."

CRAWFORD: No limit on the volume of berley?

SCOTT: Nah. 

CRAWFORD: So, once that permit condition came in, how much berley did you start putting out? Do you remember?

SCOTT: Well yeah, because then all of a sudden, we came down to one bait. And if we lose that, we’ve got no option but to try and keep those fish around with as much berley as we can. So, things have changed. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Once you’ve settled in then, was it the case that you used berley to bring the White Pointers in - and then the bait to kind of draw them in closer proximity to the cage? Is that the purpose for the bait, as opposed to the berley?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: It's a proximity thing?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Let's not worry about the bait for a second, just the berley. Once you kind of stabilized in the new permit regime, they said “No more hemp bags. You can only use berley. Or a bait, so long as you take great care, do everything you can to make sure the Sharks, including Arthur, don't take your bait.”

SCOTT: That's right. 

CRAWFORD: Once you stabilized in that new system, typically what volume of berley would you put out?

SCOTT: In a day?

CRAWFORD: Sure. You get on station to begin with, and then how much would you put out?

SCOTT: When we first arrive?

CRAWFORD: Yep.

SCOTT: Quite a bit.

CRAWFORD: A litre?

SCOTT: Oh no, shit no. Like we’re talking bloody anywhere between ... I don't know, 200 and 1,000 litres a day. 

CRAWFORD: Wow. That's a substantial amount.

SCOTT: Yeah, because that's the only option we’ve been given. We didn't have a bloody choice, you know? Without any consultation, all of a sudden, we go from using bugger-all berley - because we didn't think it was that necessary if we had the bait as the attractant, ok? And now they changed it ...

CRAWFORD: That bait would have been the equivalent of like a litre or less. Well, it's soaking, but you know, if you took that one single fish and ground it up, it would be a couple of litres of volume.

SCOTT: That's right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And then DOC comes and says "That's not going to happen anymore. You can only use berley with this kind of size restriction. But no limit on the volume."

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: So, did you just automatically go up to ... how did you even know? 50 versus 100 liters, or whatever?

SCOTT: Well, a barrel holds 200.

CRAWFORD: You dumped a whole barrel in at once? In the morning when you started?

SCOTT: Well, that would take possibly half an hour, to an hour to pump.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, over the course of an hour - one drum, 200 litres, goes over to start the day?

SCOTT: Yeah. And continues on, depending on the length of the day. Once that's empty, we fill it up again. But then once there's a few Sharks around, we don't put much in. But then, if they disappear somewhere, we put some more in. 

CRAWFORD: Yes. And there are no conditions in the permit about anything with regards to how much or when or ...

SCOTT: No. Only the size of the stuff that's coming out, where it's got to be less than 25 millimetres.

CRAWFORD: Well, you answered my question. It starts out with a 200 litre dose. A barrel of berley. 

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And then, if it turns out that that dose brings in decent numbers of White Pointers, are you thinking as a businessman, not to put any more berley in?

SCOTT: It's a bit of both. It's a business decision, because if we don't need to be, we don't do it.

CRAWFORD: Sure. It's a cost.

SCOTT: But also, I would need the crew who’s dishing out the berley, to be down getting divers in the water when the Sharks turn up. So, we don't do any berleying while the divers are in the water. 

CRAWFORD: And across the different kinds of days ... some days you put a barrel in? And you don't have to put any more in for the rest of the day?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: A typical dive day is what - eight hours long?

SCOTT: No, shit no.

CRAWFORD: On station, I mean. I don't mean your day, I mean…

SCOTT: Well, I guess we’re on station ... yeah, four or five hours. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. A barrel goes in at the beginning, over the first hour or so. And then if it was the case that Sharks were around the cage, and up and down but pretty much were there all day, you wouldn't necessarily put any more in?

SCOTT: Well, you don’t because your divers are in 25 minutes, and then they’re out. Change over, next lot are in. And by the time you’re getting up to 11 or 12 o'clock, everyone's had enough. They’re too cold, you see? Or they’ve seen enough. So, you pack up and go home. 

CRAWFORD: Well, that’s what I meant about being on station. So that's coming to the station, anchoring, berley in the water first ... no, you put the cage in the water first, right?

SCOTT: No. Sometimes we don't put the cage in until we see a Shark. 

CRAWFORD: Right, right. So, berley in the water first. Then if you see a White Pointer, in goes the cage, But the clock starts ticking once the berley goes in the water. Then an average day on station would be about four hours, because people would get cold. They’ve done their cycling in and out of the cage. 

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: What I’m trying to get to is ... what percentage of the trips would that first barrel go in, maybe 10%?

SCOTT: No. I think it would be more than that. Maybe 20 to 30%.

CRAWFORD: Ok. A more substantial percentage of the time. One barrel just to bring them in, and then for the next four or five hours ...

SCOTT: Well you see, when there’s only two of us [crew], we haven't got time to be doing berley and all the rest of it. I do the bait, and our Dive Master does the divers, so we don't have anyone to berley.

CRAWFORD: You don't have a Berley Master.

SCOTT: No Berley Master. 

CRAWFORD: What would be the maximum number of barrels that would go in, on any given day? Or an extreme day? 

SCOTT: Well your maximum’s up to like four or five barrels, you know? So, you’re looking at 1,000 litres. But in saying that, 1000 litres will only be four or five Albacore.

CRAWFORD: Roughly one minced Albacore per barrel? 

SCOTT: That's right. It's quite diluted, you know? 

CRAWFORD: Yeah. Thank you, that's clear. And 30% of the days would be a one barrel per day?

SCOTT: Yeah, that's right.

CRAWFORD: What percentage of the days would be a two or three barrel day? Would that be equal split with the four or five barrel days? 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: So, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3?

SCOTT: That's right. 

CRAWFORD: When you put the first barrel in, if there are no Sharks in sight from the get-go, approximately what time-range until you see a Shark? I know that there’s quite a variation, but it's going to be roughly what?

SCOTT: Generally, it's going to be within that first hour to hour and a half that we’re going to see something. 

CRAWFORD: Typically, more than 10 or 15 minutes?

SCOTT: Generally, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Well, there are a couple of different possible explanations. One is the animal was there, but for whatever reason was cautious or did some kind of bigger circling that nobody could see. Another possible explanation is that they weren’t actually right there, they were downstream by some distance, which related to their sensory abilities then, they smelled it and maybe they did a B-line. Or maybe they cruised over, whatever the case may be?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: But it took them 10 or 15 minutes to show up at the cage. Do they come in bunches? Or individuals?

SCOTT: Generally, you will get one. Yeah, generally you’ll just get one. One for a start. But then it might be followed by the next one, within five minutes or ten minutes.

CRAWFORD: But they generally come in as individuals?

SCOTT: That's right. And then maybe another one. Very rarely would you get five all of a sudden turn up.

CRAWFORD: Good point. That tells us something about how they’re responding, as well. And when they come, do they sometimes come in -and then they bugger off? 

SCOTT: Yeah. Sometimes they’ll come in and go. Sometimes they’ll come in, and follow a bait, and then go. And not come back. 

CRAWFORD: And sometimes they’ll come in, and hang around for a bit?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: For those that hang around a bit, how long might they hang around for?

SCOTT: Some will hang around all day. While we’re there.

CRAWFORD: So, four or five hours?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And is it everything in between?

SCOTT: Well, generally they won’t hang around the whole time, you know? They’ll come in, hang around for maybe 20 minutes, half an hour, and then they might disappear for 15, 20 minutes. But they’ll be back you know? So, they’re obviously doing bigger circles or whatever.

CRAWFORD: Gone elsewhere?

SCOTT: Yeah. Even with all the berley in the world, all the bait in the world, we’re not holding them there. They’ll come in, have a look, and go sometimes, you know? And sometimes we’ll have a bait out there all day, and it never gets approached. Not even remotely interested in it. And then you’ll get them, and they’ll swim round and round and round and round all day - and then all of a sudden jump you for some reason. And you’ve been caught out because you’re not concentrating. 

CRAWFORD: What do you mean by 'jump you'?

SCOTT: Well, grab your bait you know? He’s showed no interest for like hours. And all of a sudden, someone will come up and eat it. 

CRAWFORD: Prior to the DOC permit, you said it was just half a Tuna in a hemp bag?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: The rough equivalent of - according to the later calculations that we discussed - about a half a barrel of mince. 

SCOTT: Yeah. Oh, we would put a fish in there some days, you know? We generally keep the head and put the rest in. Use the head for bait. For our throw bait. 

CRAWFORD: Right. In general, what was the performance when you were using a half a fish in a hemp bag versus berleying?

SCOTT: Pretty much the same. But for a lot less. Well, I tell you what we did try ... when we tried using decoys, we had a Deer skin, not a Seal skin, a Deer skin that looks very much like a Seal on a piece of string out the back of the boat. Had it there for a week. And not once did they go anywhere near it, when we had Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. On average, over the course of you being on station, you might see two or three Sharks per day?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: More if it’s a good day, less if it's not so good?

SCOTT: Yeah. I think our best day was sixteen.

CRAWFORD: Sixteen per day is a lot of White Pointers!

SCOTT: Yeah. But on average, once we're into the middle of our season, it's sort of like eight’s and ten’s. 

CRAWFORD: Oh, ok. So, it's not two’s and three’s then?

SCOTT: Early in the season it could be two’s and three’s. 

CRAWFORD: That’s an important observation.

SCOTT: And once we get to the middle of our season, you’ll get five’s to ten’s in a day. But this past season was totally different to any other season, you know? Because we had very little fish in the middle of the season. Started off alright, and then it went to one’s and two’s, and then none. 

CRAWFORD: And then it went back up?

SCOTT: Right in our last week. I don’t know because Clinton hasn’t told me, but it would have to be double figures the last days we did operate. In fact, it's probably on our ...

CRAWFORD: Wait a sec. Why would Clinton know what you were seeing?

SCOTT: Because of all the photos we give him. And the day that we saw sixteen, I wouldn’t have picked it at sixteen.

CRAWFORD: That’s sixteen different White Pointers? That’s not one White Pointer, seen sixteen times?

SCOTT: That’s right. Because I think on that day, I wrote down maybe ten or something like that. And he said “No, there’s definitely sixteen on that day.” 

CRAWFORD: Wow. Getting back to the berley, have you always used Tuna? Or did you start out with local fish species?

SCOTT: No, no. Back in the early days ... early, early research days, pre-us even putting a cage in the water - there was just fish offal we had retained on the boat from our commercial operation, our fishing boat. So, it could have been a number of things.

CRAWFORD: It could have been Blue Cod, Red Cod, or just about anything?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: What caused you to switch to Tuna?

SCOTT: Because that's what Clinton was using. He was here a year ahead of me, and he was using Albacore as White Shark bait.

CRAWFORD: And by your reckoning, it worked better than what your experience had been with local fish?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Any idea why Tuna would be preferred by the White Pointers?

SCOTT: I don't know, maybe the oil content? Or maybe they're feeding off of it at some stage? When the Sharks go up to the Pacific, like Tonga, Fiji, those sort of places, warmer climates - where I don't believe there's a lot of Seals. What are they going to eat there? The only thing that lives up there is Tuna and pelagic fish, you know?

CRAWFORD: If I recall correctly, you spent at least one season Tuna fishing, didn't you?

SCOTT: A number. I don't know, seven or eight.

CRAWFORD: In the Tuna fleet, amongst all the guys who were up there fishing Tuna, was there ever any interaction between White Pointers and Tuna that you had heard of?

SCOTT: Nope. Makos, Tigers, Hammerheads. Never even seen a White, even when we were surface-lining. 

CRAWFORD: That raises another interesting question ... Do you ever get other Shark species coming up the berley trail to the cage?

SCOTT: If you do get a Mako turning up, which I’ve only seen two or three in the whole time that I’ve been there, they’ll generally only hang around until about lunchtime. And they’re looking pretty battered. But those White Sharks will have a crack at anything else that’s there. That includes Makos that turn up, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to the videos and pictures ... when tourists are on board, and are taking pictures, are you taking pictures sub-surface as well? Or are they sharing theirs with you? Or what happens?

SCOTT: Some people do. And if there’s a particular Shark that we don’t think we have good enough stuff, we ask them can you please send that to Clinton if you feel like it, you know? Or if we suspect it’s a new Shark, we send it to him.

CRAWFORD: And that is a suspicion based on your surface observation? 

SCOTT: Yep. And sometimes we have a look at the videos or photos at night-time and stuff. Go through it see what we’ve actually got.

CRAWFORD: Right. But you don’t have any cameras underwater? You mean the clients' cameras?

SCOTT: No, we’ve got pole cameras. We’ve got cameras on the deck on poles. And if we see one, yeah - we take videos.

CRAWFORD: What do you have on them - GoPros or something?

SCOTT: Yeah just GoPros. Just put them on. I’ve got one, Nic’s got one. That’s my crew. So generally, one of us has a camera ready.

CRAWFORD: Nic - he’s with you for the entire season?

SCOTT: She. She’s been here ... this is her third season.

CRAWFORD: Nic as in Nicola?

SCOTT: I wouldn’t call her Nicola. She’d probably whack you. [both laugh]

CRAWFORD: Is she a Bluffy or what?

SCOTT: No, she’s from up north.

CRAWFORD: But she crews with you for the season?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And has for the last three years?

SCOTT: Yep. Well, this will be her third season, this one coming up.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to the images ... you take a picture, and then based on ...

SCOTT: Pretty much all of our stuff is video. We take very few photos.

CRAWFORD: Right. That’s fine. You can grab a still image off a video anyway.

SCOTT: That’s right, and that’s why we do that. Because you get so many people that say “Oh, we’ve got these photos.” You look through them, and its water, air, tip of a nose. 

CRAWFORD: Right. About the baits. Did you ever have any reason, or opportunity, to use artificial baits?

SCOTT: Yeah, of course. It was DOC and their research when they were tagging, they were using boogie boards. And that was like an early warning system. They had the board way, way, way out the back of the boat. First thing the Shark came to. Then you pull it in, and you're in business.

CRAWFORD: But in terms of using artificial throw baits, you found that a Tuna head was superior to artificial bait?

SCOTT: They’re very curious. They'll come up to look at anything, you know? If it's artificial, or whatever. You could have anything out there. They're going to come up and have a look. If they’re on the bottom and something changes on the surface, they will come up and have a look.

CRAWFORD: Give me an example.

SCOTT: In the past, we used to use decoys, Seal decoys. 

CRAWFORD: Something that was constructed out of what? 

SCOTT: Wood or polystyrene or boogie boards - whatever we had available at the time.

CRAWFORD: Did you dress them up, or did you do something to shape them in a particular way?

SCOTT: No, it can be anything. A boogie board - whatever. If things go a bit quiet, and they're down at the bottom, you can see them on the bottom, they won't come up for bait. They won't do anything. If you throw a decoy or anything on the surface, they will come up to the surface. Guarantee it.

CRAWFORD: Doesn’t matter if you’re in three or four metres or eighteen metres?

SCOTT: That’s right, they’ll come up and have a look.

CRAWFORD: How long does it take for that type of cue ...

SCOTT: Pretty much immediate.

CRAWFORD: So, boom. They come up?

SCOTT: Yeah, pretty much. 

CRAWFORD: That’s an Important observation. I was asking all of my questions in two dimensions. The third dimension is an important factor. And you’ve actually brought up the idea of being on the bottom, versus up to the top. 

SCOTT: Because like one time we were there, and we get a lot of tide that goes past us, you know? So, there’s all sorts of shit and rubbish and kelp, seaweed. They’ll generally come up and have a look. Or have a go. Just open their mouth ...

CRAWFORD: What do you mean? If a piece of something floats by?

SCOTT: Yeah. But one day we were there, and a white garden chair floated past, you know? And we had bloody good numbers. There was like four or five Sharks, everything’s going good. And this bloody chair floats past and goes away. And the whole bloody lot of them disappeared, and we could still see them, like way over there, messing round with this bloody garden chair! And we lost all our Sharks to a garden chair, you know? So, they’re plenty, bloody curious alright. [both chuckle]

CRAWFORD: Let's go back to the vertical dimension, down to the bottom. Do you think that when the White Pointers come in, first come in, they're coming up to the boat?

SCOTT: Most will come in on the surface. 

CRAWFORD: You’ll see them come in?

SCOTT: Yeah, most will come in on the surface. Some days we will see ... and this year in particular, we had a big male there one day. And he swam up and down on the bottom all day. Never came to the surface. We could see him. Or he would come halfway up to the boat, but never come to the surface. And we had bait and berley and everything out there. But sometimes we can have a bait out there all day, and they will never go anywhere near it, but they will still hang around the boat you know? 

CRAWFORD: One of the things that other people have mentioned is this idea that if they were coming up, their profile would be pretty small.

SCOTT: No. When they’re coming up ... if they come straight up off the bottom, that’s when you’ll get the jump on them.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean 'get the jump on them'?

SCOTT: Well, you’ll be on to them, before they get to the bait. Sometimes when they come in on the surface, and you’re looking down on the top of them, on that colour ...

CRAWFORD: Their counter-shading? Grey on top, white below?

SCOTT: Yep. You can’t see them. It's very hard to see some days when they’re coming in. If they’re coming in from the bottom, you’ll pick up the white every time. Guarantee it. Unless they’re lucky enough to come up with their back to you - which very rarely happens. 

CRAWFORD: So, they don’t roll on the way up?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: You don’t see animals coming up, and then at the last minute, appearing out of no place?

SCOTT: No. 99% of the time, when they’re coming up off the bottom, straight up - you’ll see them coming.

CRAWFORD: When they do, do they come with speed?

SCOTT: Sometimes. 

CRAWFORD: But sometimes they’ll just ...

SCOTT: Sometimes they’ll just come up.

CRAWFORD: Swimming up.

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And sometimes they’ll come up with speed?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: If they come up with speed, do they breach?

SCOTT: Only the head, not a full breach. You’ve got to be going bloody quick to get a full breach.

CRAWFORD: No, I didn’t mean that. I was just thinking, it wasn’t with so much speed that they can’t stop?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Just the follow-through carries them up out of the water. You get some of the head, whatever. Ok. Why did you use Tuna heads as your throw bait, prior to the DOC permit? The permit said you can't use anything but organic fish material. But back in the day why weren't you using carpet cut-outs or other artificial things, if they were cheaper and just as effective?

SCOTT: Well, you still have to have the smell. To keep them there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. This season [2015/16], with your new boat, and Mike's new boat ... was there any indication, early in the season, that the animals were perhaps less responsive to these new vessels?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Were they coming in at approximately the same numbers as they were before?

SCOTT: Yep. And there's two parts to that question. Because in the early stages of the season, we get a number of Sharks that we may or may not have seen before. The second part of that question will become apparent when those bigger Sharks that turn up. Sharks that we see every year.

CRAWFORD: So, it's not just the numbers. It's also the identities?

SCOTT: And there is one fish in particular, that I'm waiting for it to turn up. To see whether he recognizes me with the new boat.

CRAWFORD: Which one is that?

SCOTT: That's Marble-Tail. He would always come, have a look. He'll bring his head out of the water, and have a look - to see who's there.

CRAWFORD: He's a big male?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: How many years in a row?

SCOTT: Maybe since 2009.

CRAWFORD: Six years? And he comes every year?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Wow. Ok. About the two boats ... What percentage of the time are the two cage tour dive boats doing things together? Roughly?

SCOTT: Well, every day we’re interacting with each other. Because he was always later than me. I’m always there first. So, we’re talking in the mornings anyway. Just say "Right, we’ve got X amount of Sharks here" or "It's no good on this side, we’re gonna have to work the other side" or "I’m going to work that side." That kind of thing. But there are times when we don’t use anything, if there are Sharks that turn up, and they’re hanging around.

CRAWFORD: Then you stop berleying?

SCOTT: We don’t berley or bait.

CRAWFORD: What’s your decision-making regarding the bait? Once they’re swimming around, you want to get them in closer? Or what’s the specific rationale for using bait, the Tuna heads?

SCOTT: That is pretty much to control them around the cage. Bring them a wee bit closer, so the people can see them. But once the Sharks have come in, and they’re comfortable round the boat, just doing their shit - well you don’t need any of that, you see?

CRAWFORD: What would happen if you did still use the bait? Would it change their behaviour anymore?

SCOTT: Probably not. Well, they would chase after the bait.  Also, what we’re trying to achieve is that we haven’t lost the bait for the day. That's a lot better for us. Because we’re not feeding them. We’re not out there to feed them. And this is the big thing. "Oh, you’re going to feed them. You’re going to change their habits. Blah, blah, blah."

CRAWFORD: On your daily DOC report, there’s a thing there that says, "Did you lose your bait"?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And you have to report that?

SCOTT: How much it was.

CRAWFORD: In terms of size, roughly?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. And sometimes it happens just because it happens. But you try and make sure it happens as little as possible. What are we talking about, maybe 10% of the time you might lose the bait?

SCOTT: Generally, the first week we lose it fairly quick smartly in the mornings. Because we’re not that clever, we're still getting up to speed. And then if one particular fish turns up, you just go "Ohhh shit" you know? You’re going to lose it for sure, you know? 

CRAWFORD: You mean an individual White Pointer?

SCOTT: Yeah one fish. One fish called Arthur. If Arthur turns up ...

CRAWFORD: He’s going after that bait? And he’s pretty good at getting it?

SCOTT: He’s small. He’s a small fish. He’s getting bigger. He’s probably grown a metre, since we started dealing with him. But even when he was a smaller Shark on the block, he would take the bait out from a bigger Shark’s nose, you know? And there’s a definite pecking order in all of this. 

CRAWFORD: In general, other than Arthur, how do the Sharks respond to the bait. Do all White Pointers respond to the throw bait?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: What percentage of fish do respond - roughly?

SCOTT: The percentage is probably fairly small that they don’t. But you’ll get the odd one that ... they’re not remotely interested in the bait. And that could be a cagey thing, you know? They may have had an interaction with bait and fish hooks, or something before, you know? They’re reasonably clever. But to actually catch one, you’d have to be fairly patient I think - with a hook and a bait. Generally, they just won't come charging in and take a bait. 

CRAWFORD: They follow, but they don’t take?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Alright, but the majority of them will follow - if I understood what you said?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Are there some White Pointers that are fixated on the bait? In the same way that there are some that ignore it? That there are some that just can’t get enough? 

SCOTT: Well, the likes of Arthur and them. Shit, he’s just bloody off his face. He’ll take a bait at every opportunity he can. 

CRAWFORD: But most of them, they just follow?

SCOTT: They’ll follow, yeah. For a while. But then I guess they’re following because we’re pulling that bait away from them at a speed that they probably can’t get it anyway. Because we’ve got to be careful that we don’t lose the bait. So, we’re pulling that away as they’re following it through. And that's where you’ve got be very careful, where you’re actually pulling that Shark through. 

CRAWFORD: Have to be careful in what sense?

SCOTT: That it’s not coming into the front of your cage. It’s got to be coming past your cage. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. I know it's a different set-up on your new boat, but generally where are you when you’re deploying the bait?

SCOTT: In the back corner. 

CRAWFORD: You want to bring them around that corner of the boat?

SCOTT: Up the side each time, yep. 

CRAWFORD: And then, on the boat, you’ll walk along?

SCOTT: No. I only bring it up to there, and then pull the bait up. And generally, they’ll swim up round, and come back down.

CRAWFORD: Let's go back to the other types of bait. Or other types of visual attractants. What have you used in the past?

SCOTT: We’ve used boogie boards. 

CRAWFORD: What's that - maybe a metre long?

SCOTT: Up to a metre. 

CRAWFORD: And it's flat, and it hits the surface, and it floats. It's on a line and it gets towed?

SCOTT: No. It just sits out the back of the boat. 

CRAWFORD: It just sits?

SCOTT: It doesn’t get towed.

CRAWFORD: So, it's equivalent to that famous floating plastic chair?

SCOTT: Pretty much, yeah. We had some Seal silhouettes at one stage. They were useless. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. You've used a boogie board, a Seal decoy.

SCOTT: Yeah. Then we had some almost real-looking Seal decoys.

CRAWFORD: And then any other type of decoy?

SCOTT: Nah. That's about it. 

CRAWFORD: I think you said you used the boogie board first? It was Clinton that suggested it?

SCOTT: They were using them, so we thought "Oh shit, that's a good idea."

CRAWFORD: What was the experience you had with the boogie boards then?

SCOTT: When they were using them, they were using them purely as an early warning system. 

CRAWFORD: Just letting them know the White Pointers were around? Because they needed them in close for tagging?

SCOTT: That's right. But you would get an early warning that there was one there, because it would start circling around the boogie board. Then if you’re clever enough, you could get it back in again - before it paid too much attention to the board. 

CRAWFORD: Because it would mouth it, maybe break it?

SCOTT: Yeah, all of that. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Were you using a boogie board for early warning as well?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: How did these White Pointers behave with these boogie boards? I mean did they mouth them? Did they submerge them? Did they knock them out of the water? 

SCOTT: Most of the time, they would just swim around them. If you were on to it, you’d get it in as soon as that happened. You’d know there’s one there, so you get that out of the way. But if you were off doing something else, they might take a chomp out of it while you weren’t paying attention. But that all goes back to the whole visual thing on the surface. They’ll come up and have a look at it. You could put anything out there. You could put your chair, your boogie board, your whatever. It wouldn’t matter what it was, they’ll come up and have a look at it. 

CRAWFORD: When I come out with you, I want to test that. 

SCOTT: You won't be allowed to though. Because we're not allowed to use decoys any more. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Well, I guess we can’t.

SCOTT: Unless you get a permit to do it. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Getting back to the point. There’s a floating visual cue. Plastic chair, boogie board, whatever.

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Although you could argue that a boogie board is approximately the shape of something that would be prey-like. But now we’re going to move into other decoys - specifically the Seal decoys.

SCOTT: But it didn’t make any difference. They would do exactly the same thing. They would come in, have a circle around it, you know? They didn’t come in at a full out. We thought they might attack it, you know? Nah. Not even. 

CRAWFORD: And these decoys were not towed - they were just floating?

SCOTT: That one was towed. Well, that was really, really interesting ... because we towed the Seal decoy up and down, and up and down, and up and down the Island. And it was quite good, because it was pissing down with rain.

CRAWFORD: You were towing the Seal decoy behind a moving vessel?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: As opposed to being on station? So, this is completely different.

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: The Seal decoys, before you talk about towing them - did you ever use them, just on station?

SCOTT: No. Well ... yeah. The story gets better, because when we stopped ... that again was for a film shoot we were doing. In South Africa and everywhere else, they can actually get them to breach out of the water on the Seal decoy - if it's being towed. And they thought that would be happening here too. And it was quite interesting, because when we were towing them, the Shark would swim up beside it, and it would pass it, and it would come right up to the platform and watch what was happening on the platform. And then just, yeah - lose interest in that, and go away. But when we bloody stopped to get the decoy in - that's when they got it! When we stopped towing it. 

CRAWFORD: I know that you didn’t have comparisons or anything, but do you think it was the quality of the facsimile of the Seal that was contributing to this? Or do you think that it was the towing, the movement of the towing? And potentially the stopping? Like the starting, the cruising and the stopping? 

SCOTT: Well, maybe they were waiting for it to stop.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that the Sharks really cared that it looked real? "Wow, that's a really good-looking Seal" as opposed to ...

SCOTT: No. No, I don't think so. 

CRAWFORD: When something - anything - is moving through, or on the surface of the water, there are sensations?

SCOTT: That's right. The boogie board and the second Seal decoy were only ever mouthed when they were just sitting there. And the third Seal decoy that we towed, and then stopped - he was only even taken when we stopped.

CRAWFORD: That's very peculiar.

SCOTT: Nothing was ever taken while we were towing them. And given they were 100 dollars each, it was interesting.

CRAWFORD: Let's consider the idea that almost all of the White Pointer observations are coming from daylight hours. But there are a couple of observations that come from night-time experiences. As far as you know, are the White Pointers responding to day-night conditions, not just in terms of their curiosity, but maybe also in terms of moving onshore and offshore?

SCOTT: I don't think they move much, from around that Island.

CRAWFORD: You think they hang around in proximity?

SCOTT: Yep. They hang around there all day. We're just some kind of sideshow that's turned up. Fill in the day. But definitely, come evening and into the dark, they smarten up.

CRAWFORD: By 'smarten up' - what you mean?

SCOTT: Well, they're a lot quicker in their movements. They can be quite docile through the day. But they can become ... bordering on a lot more, aggressive come dark. A lot quicker in their movements.

CRAWFORD: Speed? Sharpness?

SCOTT: Yep. Yep.

White Pointer Seasonal Aggregation

CRAWFORD: Before DOC started issuing you a Shark cage diving permit, did you notice any kind of patterns in terms of size of the animals or anything like that? Over that eight-year period?

SCOTT: Definitely. The smaller ones, and I'm talking maybe 12-15 feet, they’re always there early. And that’s generally the males. And then there’s the odd female that turns up at the end of February into March. Females, which are bigger, which might be up round 17-18 feet. And then you roll into the end of March into May, and you get some bigger, bigger females that may increase up round to 20 feet. Different fish, they haven’t grown that much, they’re different fish. And we don’t see those big, big females every year. 

CRAWFORD: But in general, that's a pattern that’s consistent from year to year. Was that a part of your early poking around? That you were trying to figure out when and where the fish would arrive?

SCOTT: Pretty much. But then, once we’d been there for like a year, that’s when Clinton decided that we were going to be a use. So, we actually started working a wee bit with him. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. But the pattern, in terms of whether there are White Pointers there all year round?

SCOTT: I think there are some Sharks there all year round. But not big numbers. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you think there are some residents, year-round?

SCOTT: The seasons that we’ve gone and gone and gone until they disappear ... It's generally like we’ve been out there, and have gone right the way through until say end of June, July. And then within a week, we’re not seeing any at all. 

CRAWFORD: That’s at the end of the season. At the beginning, if you were to go out there in November or December, would you find White Pointers there?

SCOTT: Possibly. Mike [Haines] always goes out in early December. We always started in early January.

CRAWFORD: And that’s not a boating thing - that’s a consistency of Shark observation thing?

SCOTT: Yep. But, in saying that ... Mike's seen one up at the Saddle here, maybe like two or three months ago [August-September]. And that was a big fish, he said.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember the circumstances that he saw?

SCOTT: Oh, I don’t know what he was doing. It was round the boat. He was up there fishing or something.

CRAWFORD: So now we get back to that idea about residency. To what extent are the White Pointers resident in these waters? Do they stay here all year-round? Or to what extent are they coming in from away, and then maybe taking up temporary residency? 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You’ve mentioned before that individual behaviour ... if you’ve got two or three White Pointers, maybe even upwards of six or seven around the cage at one time. Those animals are not randomly swimming around. They do show interactions at an individual level, between themselves?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: What kinds of interactions are the animals showing amongst themselves, when they are around the cages on the boat?

SCOTT: Well, generally they’re stand-offish of each other, you know?

CRAWFORD: If one's here, the other one will kind of peel off? That kind of thing?

SCOTT: Generally. 

CRAWFORD: It's not like they swim in any kind of formation?

SCOTT: No. I've got pictures of two swimming beside each other. But it's very rare.

CRAWFORD: They’ve got their own kind of personal space - that type of thing?

SCOTT: Yeah. And if they’re getting close, they’ll go like that [hand motion] with their mouth, and that’s a sign.

CRAWFORD: Like jaw rattling or snapping?

SCOTT: Pretty much.

CRAWFORD: They’re not flaring?

SCOTT: No. You can only just see their mouth open, and go like that you know? 

CRAWFORD: Get out of my face?

SCOTT: Pretty much, yeah.

CRAWFORD: That’s what you interpret?

SCOTT: Well, that’s what Clinton seemed to think.

CRAWFORD: Clinton has both local and scientific knowledge. Getting back to this jaw snapping ... well, I don’t know what kind of word you would use.

SCOTT: Oh, there’s a word for it… gaping or something? It's a swim past. And they think things are getting a bit close. Even round the cage sometimes, you will see them do it. You know? If you’re looking at them, they will go like that.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That’s something you can’t see from up top, but you can see down below when you're in the cage?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Inter-individual behaviour. In terms of size, I think I remember you telling me that if you get a couple of little ones around the cage - if they bugger off, often within 60 seconds or so, a big White Pointer comes around?

SCOTT: That’s right. And that’s why I always believe there’s a distinct pecking order, which I still think there is. Apart from Arthur who doesn’t care about anything. He does not care. And I never ever thought to this day that he would live as long as he has, for those very reasons. Because sooner or later, if you keep stealing the fish out from some big Shark’s nose ...

CRAWFORD: What fish are there to steal? Because you’re not feeding ...

SCOTT: But if you have a big Shark coming in, just following the tow bait - they don’t come in fast, they’ll follow it. And then you get this little shitbag Arthur who comes from the bottom, and takes the tow bait from underneath their nose. 

CRAWFORD: Or tries to ...

SCOTT: No, not even try. He’ll get it. Every time, you know? Every time. That’s where the behaviour is dangerous.

CRAWFORD: And there’s a bigger White Pointer that was just following it thinking "This is mine"?

SCOTT: And I’m only talking like this far away [<1 ft].

CRAWFORD: How does the bigger White Pointer respond to Arthur, when that happens?

SCOTT: Well it's all in shock, because this has just happened.

CRAWFORD: I know, but how do you know 'shock' from a White Pointer's behaviour?

SCOTT: I don’t know - it's just the way I read it.

CRAWFORD: How did the bigger animal respond? Did it follow Arthur? Did it chase him?

SCOTT: No, no, no. Generally, they’ll pull away because they’ve had such a fright, you know? They’ll react. They’ll go away. Because they haven’t seen it coming, you see? Arthur is the only one that will do it.

CRAWFORD: When White Pointers get surprised, they bugger off? Do they scoot?

SCOTT: They won't scoot away and disappear completely. They’ll just pull away.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What are the other types of inter-individual behaviours you've seen? We’ve got the jaw rattling, or whatever we're going to call it. And we’ve got a kind of personal space thing - for which Arthur cares nothing. We’ve got a size-based dominance hierarchy that that you think is there. And is it the case that you see levels or grades of the hierarchy? That the smallest ones will defer to the medium ones, who defer to the biggest ones? 

SCOTT: That’s right. That’s the way I would pick it.

CRAWFORD: And have you seen any kind of extreme behaviours in terms of the biggest Sharks? Do they behave differently than the medium or the smaller Sharks?

SCOTT: Definitely. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. How do the smaller ones behave, generally?

SCOTT: The smaller ones are generally a lot quicker, and more inquisitive.

CRAWFORD: How does a Shark show 'inquisitive'?

SCOTT: Well, getting up close to the cage.

CRAWFORD: Having a close look?

SCOTT: Yeah, pretty much. 

CRAWFORD: And the medium size and the big ones, they will not come into proximity so much?

SCOTT: Yeah, the medium size ones - generally like the 15, 16 foot sort of mark ... they're still the same as the smaller ones. They’ll come in, have a look. Whereas the biggest of the biggest will very rarely come near the cage. Like that 18 to 20 foot plus range. They’ll just drive-by slowly. Very rarely will they come in.

CRAWFORD: And if so, they won't stay very long or what?

SCOTT: Oh, they’ll hang around, but they’re in the distance. They won't come in close. Very rarely will a really big, big one come ... I don’t know, maybe five or so feet of the cage. We’ve got one big female who will swim past the cage, she’s about 18 feet. She’s there every year. We’ve seen her since day one, so she knows the boat, she knows the cage. But a lot of these bigger Sharks that come in from time to time, very rarely will they come right to the boat. They swim past.

CRAWFORD: The bigger White Pointers then, are usually stand-offish?

SCOTT: The way I see it ... is that they’ve been there, they’ve seen it, they’ve done it. It's not something that they need to go and check out. 

CRAWFORD: Because they just don’t move fast?

SCOTT: I would Imagine that they would move pretty quickly ...

CRAWFORD: Sorry - I didn’t mean they can’t. I meant they don’t move quickly around the cage, anyways. 

SCOTT: That’s right. They’re very, very subdued. Swimming slowly. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And it’s the little ones - and Arthur - that are faster, they’re more ...

SCOTT: You would almost put it into a teenage-adult thing. We’ve got a little fish called Mort. He’s only ... he was probably less than two metres this year. And he would just swim round, like not quick, just slowly, go round, having a look. And seriously, if someone else turned up - he was back off to the bottom. He would only show himself if nothing else was happening around the boat. And he is very small.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that Mort knew enough to realize that he could end up in somebody else’s mouth? 

SCOTT: Potentially, yeah. And I don’t know whether it was Clinton told me or someone told me that, like even when they give birth - those young are off, they’re out of there. And I think that’s for the reason that they could very well get eaten.

CRAWFORD: Inter-individual behaviour ... we’ve got individual space, observations that you’ve made.

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: We’ve got the kind of jaw ratting associated with it. We’ve got general size-based dominance hierarchy. 

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And we’ve got some size-based behaviours in terms of proximity. What, if anything, about male-female behaviours? Small to intermediate size, males, females? Do they behave pretty much the same way?

SCOTT: Well, we see very few small females down there.

CRAWFORD: Almost all of the White Pointers that you see in the small to medium size range are males?

SCOTT: Pretty much. In the early part of the season, most of those fish are males. 

CRAWFORD: And that changes over the season?

SCOTT: Yeah. But that’s only generally when you’re getting into late February, into March when you get the odd bigger female that turns up. Sort of like that 16 to 18 foot sort of mark. Very rarely do we see a small female. And I don’t know why that is. 

CRAWFORD: That’s true over the years?

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: This is a very helpful thing what you’ve got - your experience over the two exploratory years, plus seven years as a Shark cage diving operator. You’ve got the ability to start forming some time-series observations that no one else has really been able to mull over.

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: With the larger White Pointers, do you see both large males and large females around the cage?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: But there seems to be a time thing there, that the large females tend to show up later in the season. You think these larger females are perhaps sexually mature, and ready for reproduction?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: And if you see a large White Pointer early in the season, it's likely a male?

SCOTT: Generally. Just about 100 percent. But we very rarely see any big females before the end of February. Sometimes into the end of February.

CRAWFORD: Specifically, in terms of the big males or females now, have you ever noticed anything that was distinctive in terms of smell? Any type of smell with the big animals?

SCOTT: No. I don't think so.

CRAWFORD: I've heard it mentioned about an ammonium smell. People smell this ammonium thing, and then there's a big White Pointer shortly after.

SCOTT: No. How would you smell that?

CRAWFORD: I don't know. Just smell from the surface, I guess. But when you see both big males and big females, are there any differences in behaviour?

SCOTT: Not generally.

CRAWFORD: They’re big, and they’re cruising casually around at some distance.

SCOTT: Yep, that’s right.

CRAWFORD: And kind of taking their time. Do you ever see big White Pointers without seeing smaller animals around?

SCOTT: If we do, it's later in the season. And that could also be because if you’ve got big animals round the cage or round the boat, those wee ones, they may not even stick around. They may be down on the bottom, or somewhere else.

CRAWFORD: Right. Let's just take another stab at that. I realise that’s a more Important question than I had originally thought. For the most part, if you see big animals, there are smaller animals around as well?

SCOTT: Generally, somewhere.

CRAWFORD: I think that's important. Do you see little animals without big animals?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: So that’s an asymmetry between the two cases.

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: You almost never see singleton large animals?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: But you will see singleton small to mediums?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And at other times, you'll get groups of small to medium size White Pointers together?

SCOTT: Yeah. That small to medium group of fish will sort of ... well, I guess they interact around the boat at the same time.

CRAWFORD: Two or three, maybe five or six - smallish to medium sized animals?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you know of anything, from your own knowledge or others - maybe the old-timers, that might have suggested they get together? That these White Pointers can get together in social packs of half a dozen or more - anything like that?

SCOTT: Oh, I’m fairly sure they work in pairs.

CRAWFORD: In pairs? What have you seen?

SCOTT: We’ve got ... well, we still have I believe, two females which will work together around the cage. If you’ve got the bait out there, one of them will swim up and down, up and down, so you’re watching that one. Its swimming up and down, up and down, doing nothing. But the other one will just sneak off, and we’ve watched it from the cage. She’ll swim right down the middle of the boat, and then pop up from underneath the cage and grab that bait. 

CRAWFORD: And you are convinced that ...

SCOTT: They’re working together, those two. I'd put money on it.

CRAWFORD: And that is something that you’ve seen not once, but several times?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Those two animals?

SCOTT: Yep. Those two animals. 

CRAWFORD: And do you see any other type of cooperative behaviour?

SCOTT: Not really.

CARWFORD: Do you see any other type of swimming in formation? But I need to remember that you can only see a certain radius around the deck of the vessel, right?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And to a certain extent, you can only see so far down into the water. And you can’t even see much of that, when you’re on the surface. Although the water's pretty clear.

SCOTT: I can see the bottom most days. 

CRAWFORD: So, 20 metres?

SCOTT: Well at the extreme, we can see the bottom at the 18 metres that we are at. But we're working on the east side in that. Anything from that, from four to about to about eight metres, we can see the bottom every day. So, we can see what’s happening down there.

CRAWFORD: And if you’ve got a big White Pointer, or a couple of big White Pointers ... some people have suggested that it's possible to get these packs with bigger animals in the middle, and then intermediate and smaller animals around the middle. That they would sort of move as a group. And if one on the outside would find something ...

SCOTT: I don’t think so. 

CRAWFROD: Why don't you think so?

SCOTT: I would have thought that if they’re a pack animal, they would hunt together. I think that they’re individual hunters. Unless when they find something, they become opportunists, and everybody turns up. How they all know about that, I don’t know. 

CRAWFORD: Do you see any other types of behaviours, common or rare, that give you some indication that the animals communicate or recognize or respond to each other in any way? Males behaving differently to other males. Males to females?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Do you ever see any type of male-female chasing around, anything like that?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Do you ever see large animals with small animals swimming together, in some kind of formation? 

SCOTT: No, I don’t think so. Although there’s Arthur and a fish called Tear, which is a female. She’s not as quick as him, but almost the same colouring and size, quite dark. Possibly them.

CRAWFROD: Do they interact with each other?

SCOTT: They’re generally around at the same time.

CRAWFORD: Is she hyper-active as well?

SCOTT: Probably more than normal, but not to the stage that he is.

CRAWFORD: Shapes, body condition ... are all the White Pointers pretty much the same kind of girth? Are the males different from the females in girth?

SCOTT: Yeah. Definitely. 

CRAWFORD: How?

SCOTT: Males are trimmer, and females have more girth, on average.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that has to do with the fact that females are carrying, or what?

SCOTT: I don’t know so much. 

CRAWFORD: Have you ever seen an animal, a female that was just trim?

SCOTT: It would be hard to distinguish between a female that’s carrying and one that’s eaten.

CRAWFORD: One that’s just eaten recently. That’s an Important distinction. But let's go back to just the observations. Every once in a while, you see an animal, male or female with a huge girth?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Well, clearly if it’s a male and it's got a huge girth - it don’t have no babies inside.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: But females have to eat as well. So, if a non-pregnant female of that size eats, as does a male of that size, then will the female look like that too? Do you ever see anything that looks different than a female in terms of shape? Like a different type of bulging, or anything like that?

SCOTT: No, no.

CRAWFORD: There’s nothing like "That’s a pregnant female" type of thing?

SCOTT: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to your comment before, there’s a period of time at the end of the season when you’re getting consistent observations. And then - boom - they’re gone? 

SCOTT: Yeah, that’s right. 

CRAWFORD: That happens pretty much every year?

SCOTT: Well, I don’t know. Because now we pull out a month earlier than when that used to happen, you see?

CRAWFORD: When did it use to happen? 

SCOTT: Generally, the end of June into July.

CRAWFORD: And you pull out now in May?

SCOTT: Yep, end of May.

CRAWFORD: Because of the permit? Or because of something else?

SCOTT: No. Just because of what we’ve learned. Because they could just disappear any day, and if you booked a whole lot of charters and there’s no Sharks ... well you’ve got a problem. 

CRAWFORD: And that’s an Important thing too. Because you’re running a business that’s responding to things like predictability. And if the predictability goes down, then the business side of it would be ...

SCOTT: But we also know these patterns now a lot more. Yeah, we know more about these patterns now. After working with Clinton and Malcolm, who are satellite-tracking these fish backwards and forwards. 

CRAWFORD: Their information, that's Science-based information. And that’s where we have overlapping knowledge systems. But of the nine years that you’ve done cage tour diving, how many times did you notice that pattern - where you go out there and the White Pointers have just disappeared? 

SCOTT: Well, it was only those first two years that we were still putting in around then. Both of those years, that’s what happened. We got to a stage where we would go out there, and see no Sharks. At the end of this last season, when we finished in June, it was the biggest numbers we’d seen for the whole season. Was at the end of our season.

CRAWFORD: That was at the end of your season's bookings?

SCOTT: Yeah. It was a funny season. 

CRAWFORD: But you weren’t out there as late into the season as the disappearances?

SCOTT: No, no. We’re not.

CRAWFORD: And that’s on purpose.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Because you don’t want the unpredictability in bookings and so forth?

SCOTT: That’s right. And it also revolves around the weather. Once we get into June, you know ... the weather's shit, and it's bad enough in May without going into June. 

CRAWFORD: Right.

White Pointer Feeding

CRAWFORD: In general, how much are these White Pointers feeding on fish, versus feeding on Seals?

SCOTT: I think they depend on Seals way more than they depend on fish. The whole time I’ve been there [Edwards Island], I've never, ever, seen them eat a fish that’s alive.

CRAWFORD: But would you ever see them eat a fish?

SCOTT: I probably would, given the amount of fish that are there some days - like there’s thousands of them! Schools and schools of Trumpeter and those sort of things that are quite eatable. I’ve never seen them try to eat any. Not once.

CRAWFORD: But you have seen them try to eat Seals?

SCOTT: Yep. I’ve seen them eat Seals.

CRAWFORD: Let's talk about that. What kind of Seal-Shark interactions have you seen?

SCOTT: Yet again, very few. Only two. Well, maybe three, actually.

CRAWFORD: That’s from when you started the tour dive operation to the present - how long is that now?

SCOTT: Nine years.

CRAWFORD: Right. And In that period, having been out there a lot - whenever you had tours booked, and the weather allowed - with everybody onboard looking, and if anything happened within visual sight - somebody would likely see it. Based on all that sampling effort, you personally have seen two instances of a White Pointer taking a Seal?

SCOTT: And possibly a third one. It had to have happened, but we actually didn’t see it happen. The first one was inshore of us. In really, really shallow water.

CRAWFORD: Off a rocky shore?

SCOTT: Yep. A Shark took a Seal out - between us and Edwards.

CRAWFORD: On the east side of Edwards island?

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: What do you remember seeing?

SCOTT: Just a whole lot of thrashing round, then shit loads of Seagulls.

CRAWFORD: No breach or anything?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Just thrashing, white water?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And then Seagulls?

SCOTT: Yep. Because there’s shit everywhere. They just thrash these things to bits. 

CRAWFORD: Some people talk about White Pointers making an original hit, and then it backs off. The White Pointer lets the prey bleed out. And then it comes back in.

SCOTT: Yep. And there was an example of that with the second one - that was a breach. And that was an animal in deeper water. We've seen quite a few breaches in a year, and why they breach I have no Idea. But this was definitely a hit. It hit the Seal, and then came back and had a go at it. But it killed it on the first hit. I still believe it killed it outright. And that Shark clearly knew that it killed it, because it came back in and hopped back into it. There was a speed boat flashed by us - he went out and had a look, and he said there was just heaps of fat and shit everywhere in the water. And a tiny little piece of Seal left.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That was a breach hit that you saw, with the White Pointer rising out of the water?

SCOTT: Yeah. Then the third one. We had a Seal swimming around the cage for ... I don’t know, maybe half an hour or so. And the Sharks were there as well. And we’ve never seen this happen before. The Seal disappeared, but the Shark, when he came back, had the intestines of a Seal hanging out through its gill plate - which wasn’t there when he first turned up. We’ve never seen that otherwise. It couldn’t have happened on the surface. I guess they hit them underwater sometimes, I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: If I was hearing you correctly before, you think that there is a very strong association between where you find White Pointers around Stewart Island, and proximity to Seal colonies?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Specifically, at the time of Seal pupping? Or just in general?

SCOTT: Well, I guess that all goes hand in hand. Because the pups, I don’t think are quite swimming in December. But into January, February and that, they must be starting to swim a wee bit, you know? Well, like they caught a Shark in a setnet I think, I don’t know when that was actually, but DOC will have the information on that. At Bunkers just there. That Shark was only - I think it was only 13 feet long. And it had nine little Seal pups inside it. And that was caught in a setnet in the kelp. Right in the kelp.

CRAWFORD: Who’s setnet?

SCOTT: Campbell McManaway.

CRAWFORD: A commercial fisherman?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: So, Cambell’s out there fishing for ...

SCOTT: Greenbone.

CRAWFORD: And he incidentally catches a White Pointer. In the cases that were reported, you’re going to get very useful information from the incidental catches. Information that you would otherwise never even imagine getting. Like the Shark's stomach contents that you were describing.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: And that’s the type of thing I’m looking for. So, if for an animal that was incidentally caught up in a setnet, and they cut it open and it's full of Seal pups ... sample size is still small, but at least you know what that individual animal was eating anyway.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Is it a big hassle in terms of paperwork to report incidental catches like that?

SCOTT: No. But everyone’s running scared, you know? Like, you’re dealing with a protected species. And say if I catch a couple today, and you catch a couple tomorrow, and someone else catches a couple, and everybody starts reporting these ... you could find that entire fishery could be closed down tomorrow, you know? So, everybody’s just scared about giving out too much information. 

CRAWFORD: I think I understand that. There could be under-reporting. You think that there’s a strong incentive to under-report?

SCOTT: Well of course there is, you know?

CRAWFORD: For those cases where an incidental catch of a White Pointer is reported, I'm presuming the carcass has to be examined by a biologist. Then there has to be some form of an autopsy report for that incident.

SCOTT: Even if a fisherman catches a Shark, the first thing he will want to do is cut it open and see what it's eaten.

CRAWFORD: Always. That's just what fisherman do.

SCOTT: Yep. And whether it's been reported or not, it generally comes back to myself.

CRAWFORD: I need to re-inquire with Ian Angus [DOC]. I made an inquiry to him about the possibility of me getting those reports for the incidental catches. The ones that were reported. Obviously, there are no reports for those that are not reported. But word of mouth gets around about them - and some of that gets back to you as common knowledge, right?

SCOTT: But they know that as well. Surely DOC knows that too. 

CRAWFORD: How do you know that DOC knows about the unreported kills? 

SCOTT: I’ve told Ian Angus this, you know? I even showed the bloody photos, you know? And I say "Look, you’ve got to bloody sort this out."

CRAWFORD: Someone else’s incidental catch that didn’t get reported? 

SCOTT: That's right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Like I said, I’ve asked for access to those reports. But I haven’t heard anything back from DOC yet. Maybe they won't share those data with me either.

SCOTT: If you come up against a brick wall, I can get that out of MPI actually, Fisheries. They’ve got it all too. If it's been reported. 

CRAWFORD: Ok, thanks - I appreciate that. Getting back to feeding ... If the White Pointers, as you’ve said before, are at the Titi Islands for food, what comprises most of that food in that region? Your thinking is that it's the Fur Seals, and in particular the pups?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Remind me - when's the pupping season for these Seals?

SCOTT: They should have already pupped by now. It's been November. But the pups should be swimming sort of towards the end of January, February.

CRAWFORD: Right. So, the White Pointers are down around Stewart Island by early- to mid-December?

SCOTT: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And the pups are not in the water yet?

SCOTT: Well, I’m not sure. Because I don't know too much about Seals.

CRAWFORD: That's alright, I’ll find out more about that. But that's one of the key uncertainties - to what extent is there overlap in time when the pups start to go in the water. I mean these White Pointers will take a juvenile Seal, or potentially an adult Seal as well. But you think there is a preference for pups?

SCOTT: I guess they’re easy prey, when they’re learning to swim. But yeah, I guess they’re not there just to eat the pups. Because they’re clever enough to catch a full-grown, adult Seal. You know the potential of getting a full-grown Seal for a feed is way better than getting a dozen small ones for a feed.

CRAWFORD: In those waters where you’re working, there are definitely Seals there, and they’re definitely there in numbers. And those numbers appear to be - from everything I’ve heard do far - increasing over the past decades. If it is the case that these White Pointers make some kind of migration, or they aggregate in that region, and they were capable of getting Seals - they’d probably get a very good feed?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: The point is, we were focusing on causes and effects. You have the opinion that the White Pointers in that region, in that time that you are attracting them to the cage diving boat, are primarily there for the Seals. There’s an overlap with the pupping season, so they might be especially easy prey. Combined with the fact that there’s a lot of them around. But then also, you add evidence that comes to you from other people about the contents of the White Pointers that are incidentally caught, reported or not - that when they cut open their stomachs sometimes, there are Seal pups in there.

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That's important, because even informally, this is what people do. Evidence is only scientific. It isn’t. Evidence is just another fancy name for reasons that people have for believing something.

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And you had at least three different reasons for believing that the Sharks are there primarily for the Seals. It doesn’t mean that they’re not going to eat fish. And this is the point that I wanted to come to, because you’re not putting Seal blood out there as berley for the cage dive operations.

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: You’re putting out minced fish. 

SCOTT: That's right. It says in our permit that we’re not allowed to use Seals. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. But just to clarify - the permit doesn’t say why for any of these decisions, right?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: They're simply "Do this. Don’t do that"? 

SCOTT: Well, it actually says 'no mammal products'. It doesn’t say no Seals. 

CRAWFORD: Right. No mammal products. So, you couldn’t put Horse or Sheep blood out there either?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: You can only use fish mince. 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Right. The point is, you’re putting a fish mince chemical attractant out there. Into a region that you believe the White Pointers are there primarily for non-fish prey at that time?

SCOTT: Yeah. At some stage of their travels, they probably hunt Tuna as well. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that? 

SCOTT: Well, I know they rob them off commercial fishermen's longlines. And that may be just be an opportunistic thing too, you know? "There’s a fish caught on a line, that's easy - I’ll have that on the way past."

CRAWFORD: Or a Groper, or Cod frames, right? 'Opportunistic' I think is an important word here. And that's about as far as I want to go on this topic. The idea that the White Pointers can show preference for a particular kind of prey. You are now constrained by the DOC permit, in terms of what type of berley. Before the permit, did you ever use any berley other than fish?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: What kind of non-fish berley did you use back then?

SCOTT: One of the first documentaries we did, the Sharks were very slow on the ground. So, the people doing the doco decided we needed blood. So, they sent over like ... it was either two or three barrels, that would have been 600 litres of blood from the abattoir. Which is either Sheep, Cattle or whatever. Useless. Absolutely useless. Bloody stinks, and makes a mess everywhere, but had absolutely no effect on anything. 

CRAWFORD: It didn’t bring any White Pointers in?

SCOTT: No. Well, it certainly didn’t make any difference to what we had.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you do have some limited experience with this. And in that limited experience, mammal blood in general - non-Seal, but still mammal blood - it wasn’t having any great effect?

SCOTT: Well, how are they going to? If these Sharks are clever enough, how are they going to relate to that? A Sheep, or a Cow, Cattle, whatever, blood. It's got to be different to the Seal. So, they’re going to smell that and go "What the hell is that?" And it absolutely bloody stinks, and it tastes like shit.

CRAWFORD: "Boat ran over a swimming Cow here, boss."

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Did you ever see White Pointers take a Mollymawk?

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: What happened?

SCOTT: Generally, they'll eat them, and spit them out. They'll bite them, take them under, and spit them out.

CRAWFORD: Did you get the feeling that it was a mistaken hit?

SCOTT: No, I don't believe that. They're not exactly sure what it is. Like a person ... try it, and spit it out. if they latch onto a Seal, they must know that the fat content and that bulk - that mass is worth pursuing. But if you get a mouthful of feathers, even you or I are going to spit it out, you know? Their opportunists. They'll take whatever they can get, and sort it out after they've got it.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Maybe not a mistaken hit, but more curiosity? That they would've maybe taken that thing into their mouth, not knowing what it was?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Well, it's got to be either intentional, or maybe kind of screwing around. Or the Shark thought it was something else and was mistaken.

SCOTT: They don't screw around. They're not playing.

CRAWFORD: There's a phrase that some of you Kiwis use ... that these White Pointers 'aren't silly.' Meaning these Sharks are clever. But that doesn't mean that they can't still be goofy on occasion. You can be smart and still goofy, and kind of dick around once in a while. Just because you're a big, apex predator doesn't mean you can't play.

SCOTT: Well ...

CRAWFORD: Okay, hang on. Let me rephrase ... Have you ever seen anything that you would interpret as a White Pointer playing?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: They're always dead serious, all the time?

SCOTT: Of course, they're serious! You can't runaround with a set of these teeth, and not be serious! They haven't got time to play. They're right at the top of their game. And if they can take something out - they're not going to play with it.

White Pointer Mating

CRAWFORD: Do you think White Pointers mate in the waters around Stewart Island?

SCOTT: There’s the odd White Sharks, I believe, mate at Stewart Island. They clearly pup in the North Island, in the likes of Kaipara and Manukau. There are a lot of juveniles living in those sorts of places. But then again, that’s only my thinking.

CRAWFORD: Anything you’ve seen that would specifically suggest courtship or mating by these White Pointers?

SCOTT: There are times where you could suspect that. That a female has been mating. But that’s only through the bite marks around its gill plates and head.

CRAWFORD: What kind of bite marks? Are we talking about punctures or scrapes? 

SCOTT: No, no. Definite punctures, because they hang on. When they’re mating, they bite and hang on.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen any courtship behaviour of White Pointers?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: But you’ve seen what you had a strong feeling is the result of courtship? It's always the females that have wounds, not the males?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: And the wounds are almost always around the head?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Not the pectoral fin?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: Not the caudal fin, not the body?

SCOTT: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: Head bites.

SCOTT: Yeah. And I’m not a scientist, I don’t know. That’s just my observation.

CRAWFORD: I don’t give a damn what you call yourself. You’ve seen more White Pointers than 99.99% of the Human population. 

SCOTT: But that’s only my opinion of what I’ve seen.

CRAWFORD: And that’s what I’m asking you for. Your opinion. Science is very good at some things, but in general we know a lot about a tiny piece of the pie. You know a lot about the broader pieces of the pie. And the observations that you make, are the same observations that a Science person would make. It's just we would come up with a possible explanation of cause-and-effect and call it a 'hypothesis.' You would make the same observation, and you would come up with some idea of "Gee, I wonder what that is?" or "I think maybe that’s courtship." There’s no difference between a Scientist and a non-Scientist in that regard. So ... How often do you see this kind of wounding, this head wounding of females?

SCOTT: Shit, maybe once or twice a year.

CRAWFORD: Very rare?

SCOTT: Very rare.

CRAWFORD: Bigger females, smaller females?

SCOTT: Bigger.

CRAWFORD: Bigger females. Very rarely. Any particular time in the season? 

SCOTT: Generally not that far after they turn up. Because generally when they arrive, they’re clean. And then you’ll see ... "Yeah, there are big, definite bites to that fish."

CRAWFORD: It's possible that the bites were recent, and near that location?

SCOTT: Yeah, got to be. Because they’ve only just got there. They can’t have gotten it anywhere else. 

CRAWFORD: Sure, they could have ...

SCOTT: They’re a clean fish when they arrive.

CRAWFORD: Well, yes - ok. Because you’re recognizing individuals ...

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: And in this case, you’re suggesting that based on your memory, that was the case. You had seen that individual female before?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And then you saw that female again shortly after, and it had wounding. Whereas it didn’t have wounding just before?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In terms of healing, I don’t know anything about scars on White Pointers but ...

SCOTT: They heal really, really quick. We actually had a fish that had a big bite right round the stomach. Like, really deep - that we thought "Shit, it might not even survive that." The next year - must have been the next year - it's all healed up. But there’s a definite scar. 

CRAWFORD: You could see that it had healed up?

SCOTT: Yeah, healed up. So, they clearly heal up fairly quick smartly.

CRAWFORD: You believe that wound was from a White Pointer - White Pointer interaction?

SCOTT: Yeah, definitely.

CRAWFORD: They will take a bite out of each another?

SCOTT: That’s right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Of their own species?

SCOTT: Yeah.

Dead White Pointer Incident

CRAWFORD: You mentioned to me before that there have been times when the White Pointers just seem to disappear completely for prolonged periods of time. And I know this is a complex issue that is wrapped up with personalities and politics, including the event that happened at Edwards Island between Mike Haines and Zane Smith. Can you tell me what you think about that event, with a focus less on the personalities, and more on the consequences - specifically, responses by the White Pointers.

SCOTT: My understanding is that when Mike arrived [at Edward's Island], Zane was there first, setnetting. I think he already had nets in the water, but he was still there. But go back a day or two before that - Zane watched us for days. In his little dinghy, he was out there cruising up and down, watching what those Sharks were doing. Sharks were even following his dinghy. He spent pretty much the best part of a whole day there, the day before.

CRAWFORD: Did he have his fishing gear with him?

SCOTT: No, no. Because he was in his inflatable boat with a GoPro, filming that whole time as well. He was very aware of the Shark numbers that were there. And for him to set a net, in amongst that population of Sharks ...

CRAWFORD: Roughly, to your remembering, how many White Pointers were in the region at that time?

SCOTT: I don't know. Maybe half a dozen or so.

CRAWFORD: That were coming up through the berley trail to the cage dive operation?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: So, then Mike showed up. And what happened?

SCOTT: I think they exchanged a few words over Zane being there with his net. Then Mike set up his dive operation, and continued to berley or whatever he does, and he does his diving. And Zane caught one.

CRAWFORD: You were not there that day?

SCOTT: No, I had the day off.

CRAWFORD: Then Zane went back, lifted his net, and had a White Pointer?

SCOTT: Yep. Which is still alive.

CRAWFORD: How would you have known that?

SCOTT: He said it was still alive.

CRAWFORD: Ok. And then what happened?

SCOTT: Well, then he shot it, by all accounts.

CRAWFORD: And in shooting, a bullet presumably to the brain of the animal. Then what?

SCOTT: I still believe, once you're caught like that in a net, there's a whole lot of signals coming out of that fish to the others. Without it being injured or whatever. If it's struggling, those other fish are going to pick up on that.

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that?

SCOTT: Well they're clever, you know? And they've got a lot of senses going on, and a fish struggling. That's how they pick up on a lot of their prey.

CRAWFORD: Have you ever heard, from old-timers or contemporaries, people who had experience with White Pointers caught in their nets?

SCOTT: Well, most of the ones I've heard of, have already been dead. So that hasn't been an issue.

CRAWFORD: Right. But in cases where White Pointers were caught in a setnet, and just recently caught - was there any indication historically that other White Pointers in the region would have vacated?

SCOTT: No. There's no record of that, because nobody really cared about that.

CRAWFORD: The animal was shot, by all accounts you say. And then what happened?

SCOTT: He supposedly left it there. Which is illegal. He's supposed to report that to DOC. And DOC will retrieve the carcass, for scientific reasons.

CRAWFORD: And your understanding is that he did not report it?

SCOTT: No. It's also my understanding, that he removed some of the parts off it. Fins and teeth, jaws.

CRAWFORD: So, it was not just a dead animal, with some type of a bullet in its brain. It had actually been cut up?

SCOTT: Chopped.

CRAWFORD: Then what happened?

SCOTT: Then we went into the whole 'no Shark situation.' TV3 were actually on our boat at the time, a couple days later. Up to that point, we had a hundred percent Sharks every time we went out.

CRAWFORD: Hundred percent of days with at least one White Pointer being seen?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: That's important. But then when your boat comes back to Edwards Island two days later, and you do your normal kind of operation - you see no White Pointers?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Was Mike also there? Both boats were doing their cage diving activities?

SCOTT: Yes. The good thing that came out about this dead Shark ... that was the time that Mike and I started talking to each other again. "We've got to get sorted here, and start talking, and start working out what the hell were going to do next."

CRAWFORD: Did you know at the time - just that there were no White Pointers? Or had you already heard? Did you in any way see that there was a White Pointer carcass on the bottom?

SCOTT: No. We were told. And he also reported it. It was in his logbook.

CRAWFORD: When did you find out? How many days after?

SCOTT: When the TV people were here. Because they actually interviewed him, and he showed them the logbook. The reporter who looked at the logbook, she must have a photographic memory, because the next day, she sent me the longitude and latitude of where that Shark was caught. Which was right on the south corner of Edwards. On the eastern side, but on the Halfmoon Bay end of the Island. That's where Mike saw him with his nets and stuff. We spent the whole next week plus, with Mark Enarson aboard - we spent the next week looking for that fish carcass everywhere along that Island.

CRAWFORD: How long did you try to get White Pointers again? How many days did you berley?

SCOTT: We did every day. Nothing would happen. Then we go and have a look. 

CRAWFORD: And by 'looking' you mean from the surface?

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: And from the surface, did you ever see a carcass?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Ok. How long did that run for?

SCOTT: Three weeks.

CRAWFORD: Three weeks before you were able to berley up a White Pointer. Did you try the western side of Edwards Island?

SCOTT: Yep. We tried everywhere.

CRAWFORD: This was prior to the permit - did you go elsewhere? Other Titi Islands?

SCOTT: We went all around Edwards, and bits and pieces. I think we went to Bench one day, I'm not sure. And then we had a week off. That was into the third week. And Mike continued on, I think. And then we came back, and in like two days before we came back with the Discovery TV crew, the Sharks turned up again

CRAWFORD: Around Edwards?

SCOTT: Yeah. Like as though nothing had happened.

CRAWFORD: Was it pretty much the same individuals?

SCOTT: No. And Mike and I argued about this. He reckoned it was the same ones, but it wasn't the same ones. It was definitely not the same ones. It was a change of fish. It was bigger males, it wasn't Marble-Tail and those fish. It was a totally different change of fish.

CRAWFORD: How long did it take to come back to 'normal'?

SCOTT: Well it was like that [snap]. It went from nothing, to back to normal, of four or five Sharks.

CRAWFORD: As quickly as it went from normal to nothing, it went from nothing back to normal?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: After how long?

SCOTT: Three weeks.

CRAWFORD: And did you notice any other peculiarities in the rest of that season?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: It was pretty much the same as it had been in previous years?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: But I guess every year's different?

SCOTT: Oh, for sure it is. Because last year, was a wee bit average.

CRAWFORD: Did Marble-Tail come back that year?

SCOTT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: After the White Pointer death?

SCOTT: Yes. And he was one of the first ones back in. In that group. He generally comes around that same time.

CRAWFORD: My understanding is that recently, there have been reports of one or more other White Pointers being killed. And the carcasses left or deposited at Edwards Island. What do you know about that?

SCOTT: Well I wasn't there again, because my vessel has been laid up for six weeks. But Mike was. And the word on the street is that two weeks ago there had been two Sharks caught in setnets around the Neck, and towed to Edwards Island. 

CRAWFORD: Were they just dead from the setnet, or where they shot dead?

SCOTT: No idea.

CRAWFORD: And you heard those White Pointers were towed out from the mouth of Paterson Inlet to Edwards Island?

SCOTT: Apparently.

CRAWFORD: And placed where?

SCOTT: Mike believes it was to the west of the Island somewhere.

CRAWFORD: Both animals?

SCOTT: Apparently.

CRAWFORD: In terms of what's actually causing the animals to vacate the region, what do you figure is happening?

SCOTT: Well, I think they can detect if one of their own is killed. It's proven worldwide. Like if an Orca comes in and takes one Shark on the site, they've seen nothing. Andrew Fox [Australian Shark cage dive operator] saw nothing for eight weeks or something, last year - maybe more. There was an attack on a Great White by an Orca in the Farallon Islands, and that very same day the whole lot left - every Shark in that area, including some with tags, all split - and never stopped till they got halfway to Hawaii. So, it's a known fact that if a White Shark gets taken out, it will affect the rest of the population in that immediate area.

CRAWFORD: What's your knowledge about any potential relocation of the White Pointers that vacated Edwards Island? Where might they have gone?

SCOTT: Well, if you go out at the moment, they are sitting at about 25 miles from the island, to the west.

CRAWFORD: And how do you know that?

SCOTT: We've got a lot of people out there on the water, and they get back to us "We've seen a Shark today here, we've seen a Shark there." We get phone calls fairly regularly, you know?

CRAWFORD: Where are they reporting aggregations of White Pointers?

SCOTT: The Bishops, which is 25 miles to the west of Edwards Island. A previous incident we had, Mike found them at Ruapuke, which is around 30 miles away.

CRAWFORD: Did you get the impression from Mike, because he had known them as well, that they were the same individual White Pointers?

SCOTT: Yes, I think they were. You'd have to ask him.

CRAWFORD: But in this case, the people who would be getting back to you about the Bishops - they wouldn't have known the individual Sharks?

SCOTT: That's right.

White Pointer Interactions with Cage Dive Operation

CRAWFORD: Remember when we talked about the different levels of interaction with White Pointers? [Discussion about project classification levels for Human encounters with White Pointers: Level 1-Observation, Level 2-Swim-By, Level 3-Interest, Level 4-Intense]. And it's kind of a grey zone there, because these animals are curious and they will put things in their mouths, like two-year-old kids. To explore. It doesn’t mean that they’re aggressive. It doesn’t mean that this is a 'feeding event.' So, we have to be careful about how to interpret. But now what I want to do with you is to figure out, what’s a natural kind of classification for White Pointers around the dive cage. It can be similar in some regards to that first one, so let's build on the same things. 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Is it the case that sometimes when you’re on station, either from the surface or from people that are in the cage, that they see a White Pointer that just doesn’t come close? It's just an observation? Or if they see one, does it always come around? 

SCOTT: Generally, 99% of the Sharks will just cruise around the boat fairly slowly, but they’re chilled out - you know?

CRAWFORD: Ok. But I’m asking ... is it the case that people see Sharks that are as far away as they can see? The fish could go away out of sight, and then come back in from a different direction, or whatever?

SCOTT: I don’t think they go very far.

CRAWFORD: Ok. The point is that if you see a Shark, chances are it's coming around the boat and the cage.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: So that kind of knocks out the Level 1 observation category.

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: If you see a Shark, it is usually at the very least doing a Swim-By. Based on your experience, do you get Sharks come in, Swim-By, don’t do anything particularly interesting, and then bugger off?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: What’s the relative proportion, based on your experience, of Sharks that just do Level 2 Swim-By’s versus Level 3 Swim-Arounds? 

SCOTT: The ones that will come in have a look and go straight away, that’s a very, very small percentage.

CRAWFORD: What like 5%?

SCOTT: Possibly. Probably not even that.

CRAWFORD: Because if they were interested enough to come there, they’re interested enough to stay for at least a little while?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: So, a Level 2 Swim-By is still possible, but it's much more likely that you have you a Level 3 Swim-Around?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: And by Swim-Around, let's think about that. They’re not breaking stride, they’re not going fast, they’re not herky-jerky, they’re not bumping anything. They’re just swimming round, right?

SCOTT: You’ve got your 5% that are just coming in, having a look and going.

CRAWFORD: A Swim-By.

SCOTT: A Swim-By. Then you’ve probably got your 90% that will just swim-around, go up around the front of the boat, come back, round the front of the cage, down on the bottom. They’re always there. You always see them, you know? If you keep an eye on it, it generally won't go out of sight. It’ll stay within that visual of the boat.

CRAWFORD: You just wait for it, and it will come back around again. And we’re talking about ... now realizing that this is a bigger boat, maybe 30 seconds to a minute, to come back around?

SCOTT: They’re really slow, you know? It might take them bloody five minutes to go around. You’ll see him way back there, go away back there. They give themselves a bit of room to go way back up there somewhere, turn around and then come back down. Cruise back down with the tide, same deal. Round and round. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, round and round on the order of minutes. What’s the next level of interaction then?

SCOTT: Your next level are the ones that are aggressive, and that’s really few.

CRAWFORD: What about the plain curious? Is there a kind of intermediate curious level, where they’re bumping, or they’re poking, or they’re doing something other than just swimming around?

SCOTT: Oh, very rarely you’ll get one that may not have seen a cage before, and will come up and mouth the cage. They don’t attack it, but they’ll just ... like mouth, you know?

CRAWFORD: That’s in the intermediate Level 3 that I’m looking at. And that’s the kind of thing - I’m just trying to say, these animals are curious. But you don't get the sense that they are aggressive - right?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: They might bump, but in a non-aggressive or non-hostile or non-predatory manner?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: What other types of things might be in that intermediate kind of Level 3 Curious category? What else might they do to, a tail flip or something?

SCOTT: Very rarely. Generally, if a Shark hasn’t seen a cage, it will scope it out for a bit. Then go round and round, like the rest of them. 

CRAWFORD: Meaning a White Pointer that’s new to your operation? So, if you don’t recognize ...

SCOTT: ... one that I haven’t seen before. And then it may come up and mouth the cage, you know? But that’s not aggression. It's not coming in flat out, biting. All they’re doing is touching or pushing.

CRAWFORD: Did you get any of these Level 3 Sharks sticking their heads up out of the water?

SCOTT: Yeah. There was a big male. 

CRAWFORD: I guess that’s in the intermediate Level 3 category as well. But you do get animals that will do a little tail stand?

SCOTT: Yep. And that’s generally one male that does it. 

CRAWFORD: Mouthing the cage would be Level 3. So would a tail stand. Can you think of anything else curious, that doesn’t make it to the full-on excitable phase?

SCOTT: No. The only other interaction that they’ll have that is different, is the male Shark that we’ve been dealing with, who will react totally different to the female equation in the cage.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Hold on to that male Shark-Human female interaction for a minute. Level 4 Attitude with these White Pointers. Based on what you have said already, at least one of two different kinds of things. First, it could be this animal is hungry. You are allowed a chunk of flesh as a tow bait, and you can deploy it in order to kind of entice them into proximity of the cage - if I am understanding correctly. But they should never get an actual bite on it?

SCOTT: No. And pretty much that’s a visual thing. They need to see something, you know? But once they’re swimming around the cage, and there’s a wee bit of berley going out, but not much, and sometimes not even any berley. Both boats still stop berleying and baiting. They’ll still hang around. You don’t need to keep going, because bait and berley cost money, you know? So, some days we'll have two boats tied together where we’ll use one boat to send out a little berley for both.

CRAWFORD: Yes, and we’re actually getting there. Alright, we got off target, because I was talking specifically about the classification of interactions. Let's talk specifically about Level 4 Attitude behaviours, and then we'll start getting into patterns of size or sex or whatever. But first, let's put things into perspective. Roughly, what percentage of White Pointers that you've seen this year, had you seen last year? Either from your own reckoning, or from Clinton's visual ID. We’re talking 50%?

SCOTT: No, more than that. Maybe 70, 80%. And then we have that change-over of other Sharks that we haven’t seen before.

CRAWFORD: And those other White Pointers, are they typically smaller -  or across the whole size spectrum?

SCOTT: Yeah, right through the spectrum.

CRAWFORD: They’re just different individual Sharks. Across the whole spectrum, males, females, whatever. No major patterns in terms of what the new ones are?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: How many different fish did you figure? In the 40 to 50 range? Over the course of the season?

SCOTT: High 40s to 50s.

CRAWFORD: Over the course of the entire season. So that’s not a population abundance - it's just an estimate at this time and place, Edwards Island. So, over the course of roughly six months, 40 to 50 different White Pointers will come around at least once?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: And of that 40 to 50 White Pointers, four of them are known to you as being qualitatively different from the rest - by being in that upper category, the Level 4 Attitude animals?

SCOTT: That's right. We’ve only got like four Sharks that could potentially have an attitude problem. One of them is Arthur ...

CRAWFORD: What’s Arthur’s issue? And how does he manifest it?

SCOTT: Well, we always thought he just had this 'small person syndrome' - because that’s what he came across as, you know? There’s no other reason for it. And he was just off his face. For no reason, you know?

CRAWFORD: Ok. What does 'off his face' mean, in this context?

SCOTT: Well, he would jump out of the water. One day I saw him jump out of the water three times and kill three birds - for no reason.

CRAWFORD: He didn’t eat them?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: What kind of birds? Gulls?

SCOTT: No. Like the Albatross things. And this is happening in front of the customers. It's like, "Oohhh no. He’s eaten the birds!" Then you know, a guest says "Have you got a gun? You should shoot the bird." And I'm thinking that’s the last bloody thing I need, is someone taking photos of me shooting an Albatross, you know? We can’t do anything, so we say "Unfortunately it's Nature. This is Nature, we’ve gotta let it take its course, you know?"

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, Arthur will aggressively pursue the bait. And he will kill birds for whatever reason. Does he do anything sneaky to catch up on the them? Does he come up directly from beneath it, or what?

SCOTT: He comes from underneath the cage, he'll come from places you can’t see. He'll go right to the bottom, and come straight up. And he’s black. He’s quite a dark Shark. You can’t see him coming.

CRAWFORD: And he comes up with speed?

SCOTT: Heaps of speed. So much speed that he leaves the water, you know?

CRAWFORD: This one breaches?

SCOTT: Even to the stage where I’ve had him bounce of the top of the cage one day, you know? And this is all not good stuff when you’ve got people on there. 

CRAWFORD: Right. So, you figure, Arthur ... he’s a high-energy, high-maintenance kid?

SCOTT: Yep. Yep. Guarantee it. 

CRAWFORD: He’s a little one? 12 feet?

SCOTT: He’s getting up to about 3 metres now. Probably a wee bit bigger.

CRAWFORD: And you’ve seen him for the past how many years? From the beginning?

SCOTT: No. Probably about the last four years.

CRAWFORD: Is Arthur consistent from year to year? Not just in his identification, but his behaviour?

SCOTT: His attitude. 

CRAWFORD: He’s just high-maintenance all the way?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And it's not just the bait, it's also the birds?

SCOTT: Yep. On birds generally. Or whatever else he’s trying to chase at the time. And that's because everywhere he goes, he’s doing 100 miles an hour. So, when he hits the surface, he’s got nowhere to go but up.

CRAWFORD: Right. This Shark needs to be on Ritalin to calm down a bit?

SCOTT: And I keep saying, "If he doesn’t smarten up by the time he gets to 18 or 20 feet, he’s going to be a Shark to be reckoned with." You know?

CRAWFORD: Right. That would be Arthur. Getting back to our Level 4 Attitude - you said there are three other White Pointers?

SCOTT: Well, we’ve got Arthur. And then there's Slash. He was a particular fish who was reasonably subdued round the cage, round the boat, all the rest of it. After he’d got this cut down the side of his face, from the interaction with those guys, I guess. He was bloody fast. He was in your face. His whole attitude had changed. And unfortunately, when we came back, it was when we had the Discovery crew with us who were filming ... I don't know, some weirdo film. And Slash was all over them - which they loved. Which didn’t do us a lot of favours, because he was bloody showing signs of reasonable amounts of aggression. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, we've got Slash. With an obvious sign of ... what you believe is a previous interaction with Humans. And you said before you have reason to believe that it might be associated with Scientists catching it? Hooking the animal in an attempt to get a satellite tag on him - but it didn’t work out?

SCOTT: That’s right. But it may not be anything to do with that, you know?

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, let's specify what makes Slash a Level 4. What puts him in that Attitude category?

SCOTT: He’s big. And he’s aggressive around the cage.

CRAWFORD: But what does that mean?

SCOTT: He’s quick ... 

CRAWFORD: He’s herky-jerky or ...

SCOTT: His whole attitude. His fins are down. If he’s got his fins out there, he's generally happy. But if they start to bring their fins down, start to watch out, because things are going to happen. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of things are going to happen?

SCOTT: That’s when they start amping up.

CRAWFORD: What does that mean, in terms of behaviour? What exactly does the Shark do that equals 'amping up'? 

SCOTT: Well, they become a lot ... they come a lot quicker. And at the cage.

CRAWFORD: Quicker coming in? 

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Are they coming in horizontally? Or are they coming up ...

SCOTT: And after your baits, the whole lot. Everything.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, the speed in general picks up.

SCOTT: Yeah. He’s amped up.

CRAWFORD: What about the swimming? Is he doing any kind of head-flicking or tail-flicking?

SCOTT: Yeah, but it's all with speed you know? Everything’s just faster.

CRAWFORD: Ok, faster. Anything else? Or is it largely just a speed thing with Slash?

SCOTT: No - just a speed thing.

CRAWFORD: Is Slash doing anything with the birds as well?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: Does Slash do anything with the cage?

SCOTT: He will come in toward the cage. Be really close. 

CRAWFORD: Proximity? He’ll come much closer?

SCOTT: And he’s looking too. You can see him. He’s looking. You can see his eye moving round. Freaks people out too.

CRAWFORD: I can imagine. 

SCOTT: But a lot of his aggression is not at the people in the cage, it's purely the whole bait thing. He’ll have his head right out of the water when he’s coming in, like fast. Most Sharks that are chasing a bait will have their head under the water. They don’t stick their head out, come in like that.

CRAWFORD: For bait that’s at the surface of the water?

SCOTT: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Or in, but still close to the surface. So, Slash comes in with his mouth open, but above the surface?

SCOTT: Yeah. Which is a bit scary for people who are bloody sitting down close to the water, you know?

CRAWFORD: But your interpretation is Slash is all about the bait?

SCOTT: Yeah. That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Anything else Slash does that is kind of distinctly Slash?

SCOTT: No, that’s pretty much it for him.

CRAWFORD: Who's the next one of the four Level 4's?

SCOTT: The next one’s Caro. She’s a female Shark that’s got a satellite tag screwed on her.

CRAWFORD: What size?

SCOTT: She’ll be maybe 4 metres.

CRAWFORD: What's Arthur's size, for the record? 

SCOTT: He’s probably about 3 metres. 

CRAWFORD: And Slash?

SCOTT: He’s probably getting up to 4, 4 1/2. He’s quite big. 

CRAWFORD: And Caro's about 4 metres?

SCOTT: Yeah. She’s quite big. Her aggression is totally different to anything else. 

CRAWFORD: Before we even get to that, let's recap. Slash has a prominent gash on his head?

SCOTT: It’s healed up now. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Arthur doesn’t have any kind of ... anything obvious? Well you said he’s darker, though.

SCOTT: He's got mental problems. 

CRAWFORD: Yeah, well no. Darker - he’s physically way darker than other animals his size?

SCOTT: Yeah. He’s really dark and white. It's really distinctive. 

CRAWFORD: Alright. Was there anything else about Slash that was different than ...

SCOTT: No, he’s just a big male.

CRAWFORD: And then Caro is an intermediate-sized female?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok, tell me about Caro. Did you know that fish before the satellite tag?

SCOTT: Probably as something other than Caro. I don’t know. Because she was named when they [Clinton/Malcolm] put the tag on her. 

CRAWFORD: But it's possible, and the visual ID would be one way of ...

SCOTT: Clinton could probably tell you that.

CRAWFORD: That’s fine. Tell me more about Caro.

SCOTT: She is aggressive, to a whole different level. She will actually have a go at you, on the platform of the cage.

CRAWFORD: Hang on. She’s aggressive on a different level? Or in a different way?

SCOTT: I think in a different way and level. Both. But I classify them as -either fish you could swim with, or fish you definitely couldn’t swim with.

CRAWFORD: You wouldn’t swim with Arthur. because he’s too rambunctious. You wouldn’t swim with Slash, because he’s too fast and he’s too interested ...

SCOTT: Possibly. But he’s not like that all the time. If I had to swim with any of those four, he would possibly be the one that I could trust.

CRAWFORD: But definitely not Caro? 

SCOTT: Definitely not. She would seriously have you. Guarantee it.

CRAWFORD: What does she do that’s distinctive? That puts her in a category of her own?

SCOTT: She’s very quick. But she’s also looking. She’s looking at you.

CRAWFORD: When you have people in the cage, you’ve mentioned before once already, that those people who are in the cage can get spooked out by this. But also, in particular with Caro, she shows that eye - she’s looking right at you?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: You have a very strong feeling that this White Pointer is looking at that Human?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: And that’s ... a curious animal would do that.

SCOTT: But this Human is not that happy about that.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But is that part of the thrill for someone when they’re in the cage? Because if a White Pointer comes into proximity, and they see that big black eye ...

SCOTT: Which is not black.

CRAWFORD: What colour is it?

SCOTT: It's kind of like a bluey, grey colour. And anyone that tells you it's black - they’ve never seen one. 

CRAWFORD: I’ve never seen a White Pointer at all. I haven't been out with you yet.

SCOTT: You will. 

CRAWFORD: The point is ... it can be quite unsettling in that regard?

SCOTT: Oh, for sure. And the unsettling thing is ... people who go in there, and they’ve all heard about this black, unstaring eye. When they get in there, they see that it isn’t a black, unstaring eye. It’s a little grey, blue eye - that’s moving, and seriously looking at them. That freaks them out.

CRAWFORD: But the point is that the White Pointers, by nature of their anatomy, they have an eye on either side of their head. As opposed to us - we have both of our eyes on the front. Imagine how different the world would be, if you had eyes on either side of your head. Are they focusing with this one eye now? Are they disregarding what’s happening with the other eye, if they’re using that one eye now, to look at this Human inside the cage? But you talked about the eye moving ...

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Does it move that way when they’re not in proximity?

SCOTT: I don’t know. 

CRAWFORD: That's right. How would you know, really?

SCOTT: You can’t see both. But they are clearly looking. They seriously seem as though they are looking at us.

CRAWFORD: We don’t really know that they are looking. We don’t know what they're doing.

SCOTT: Right.

CRAWFORD: The point is though, that when you see their eye, and that eye is moving around - it's consistent with the Idea that the White Pointer is orientating and potentially refocusing on you?

SCOTT: It's no different to watching a Dog that’s looking at you, or looking at something else. It’s the same.

CRAWFORD: Good point, good point.

CRAWFORD: Do you have any other indications that these White Pointers, that the Sharks are interacting - in either a curious or potentially even playful, or a threatening manner - to the Humans that are in the cage?

SCOTT: On the curious front, like I said, no matter what it is that’s on the surface, if they’re on the bottom and something changes on the surface, they will come up and have a look.

CRAWFORD: Right. Let's get back to Caro. You said she combines the speed of Arthur, and the proximity of Slash?

SCOTT: Yep. She’ll come right in and have a look. If I’m on the platform, she’ll come right up to the platform and look at me on the platform. And every now and then she'll have a crack at me on the platform.

CRAWFORD: What does that mean 'a crack'?

SCOTT: She'll have a go at biting me on the platform. 

CRAWFORD: That is not 'mouthing' behaviour. 

SCOTT: No, no - this is definitely not mouthing. She is aggressive. If she could get you, she would. Guarantee it. 

CRAWFORD: Does she ever clamp and shake the cage?

SCOTT: No. She'll come up on top! On the edge of the cage. She doesn’t bite it, but she’ll come up on the edge of the cage, you know? 

CRAWFORD: She’ll put her weight on the cage? Arthur doesn’t do that?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: Slash doesn’t do that?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: So, she’s all-in?

SCOTT: She’s all-in, alright. See, sometimes we’ll take the cage out if we’re doing ID stuff, or something. At the end of the day, we’ll take the cage out. And if she’s there, we'll take photos of her from ... I can show you some of the videos I’ve taken of her when she’s been bloody having a go at us on the platform!

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you firmly believe that Caro can see you on the platform, and she responds to you. What about the Humans that are in the cage? Is she interacting with them as well?

SCOTT: That’s possibly a question that you should ask Nic. Because she spends a lot more time in the water with this Shark. More than I ever have.

CRAWFORD: Nic’s in the cage? With the guests?

SCOTT: Oh, she'll jump right in ...

CRAWFORD: Ok. I'll check with her on that. Getting back to Caro ... she has a satellite tag on her? 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Anything else that you can think of that’s kind of unique to Caro?

SCOTT: Well, only that she’s got this satellite tag.

CRAWFORD: And these satellite tags, how big are they?

SCOTT: Well they’re not very big. They’re like as big as a cell phone, really.  A small cell phone, with an aerial poking out the top. 

CRAWFORD: But it has a tissue screw or something?

SCOTT: She’s got three. They’ve normally got four bolts on. I think she’s only got three bolts holding it on. I think one of them may have come off towards the end of the season, so it may not.

CRAWFORD: How does Clinton get that satellite tag down - with three or four bolts on it?

SCOTT: Well, he catches them with a baited hook. Then they tow them beside the boat very slowly, so they’ve got water flow. And then they just get the drill out, and screw them on the dorsal fin. Do it up. 

CRAWFORD: I imagine drilling through the dorsal fin might be painful. 

SCOTT: That’s right. There’s a fair amount of Human interaction going on with that. And this is where Clinton and I have had a few words at times.

CRAWFORD: What kind of words did you and Clinton have in this regard? It sounds pretty intense.

SCOTT: That’s because I don’t agree with this. 

CRAWFORD: You don’t agree with what?

SCOTT: With those screw-on satellite tags. I’m not happy with the pop off ones either, but the screw on ones ...

CRAWFORD: Back up, back up. Let's begin with the simplest thing. Would you be opposed to any type of tagging at all? Some people would put a blanket statement out and say “I don’t like any type of interference with the White Pointers, with regards to putting something like a tag on."

SCOTT: No, I wouldn’t, because we worked on this you see? First, I complained about the white tags that looked like a microphone with a float on them. You could see them for miles. That seriously had to affect the hunting ability of that Shark.

CRAWFORD: You were thinking that would be a clear detriment to a White Pointer that needs or uses stealth?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: Because now it's no longer camouflaged and stealthy. And stealth, in your mind, is a very important tool in a White Pointer's repertoire? Ok. Were those the first types of tags that Clinton was using?

SCOTT: Yep. And we argued that until the cows came home. And we threatened not to talk to each other, and not give anyone any more photos.

CRAWFORD: He didn’t have any data, and neither did you, about whether that tag actually had an effect on the Sharks?

SCOTT: No. But I don’t think you have to be clever to work that out. If you’ve got an animal that relies on ambush and stealth, and you’ve got something that’s white that’s flashing around down there ...

CRAWFORD: How many of those tags did he get on?

SCOTT: I don’t know, heaps. Maybe 30 or 40. 

CRAWFORD: And do these types of tags have a natural lifetime to them or ...

SCOTT: Nine months, he thinks.

CRAWFORD: And then do they ...

SCOTT: They come off.

CRAWFORD: They come off on their own?

SCOTT: Yeah. And they leave a little tether there, it’s a bit shitty but ...

CRAWFORD: The point that I’m trying to get to is ... if back in the day, eight years ago, Clinton was putting down these tags - and you looked at a Shark that had one of these tags - would you be able to tell now?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: So, it's not the case that you saw a reduction in the number of White Pointers with those tags? That could be an indication of whether they were being negatively affected. 

SCOTT: Also, they had like a long tether on them. The anchor went in, and then they had a tether of probably - I don’t know ... that long [six inches??], which also grew a lot of barnacles and shit. And in the second year that we were seeing those Sharks come back ... sometimes he would put them on late in the season, and they would still have them the next season. Or be just a tether there, which would be this long string of barnacles which was clearly bloody rubbing holes in these Sharks, you know? So that’s got to be fairly aggravating.

CRAWFORD: For that type of tag. Then Clinton switched to a different type of tag?

SCOTT: Then he changed to a black tag. That you couldn't see. 

CRAWFORD: Same style, but different colour?

SCOTT: Different style. It was still put in with an anchor with a tether.

CRAWFORD: These anchors, are they harpoon anchors? As opposed to drilled screws?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: So qualitatively, these first two types of tags were both similar in the sense that they were harpoon-tether tags. They were different in the sense that the first one was white, and the second one was black. And the same size? Or the black ones were smaller?

SCOTT: Smaller. Darker black. Yeah, and it was harder to see. And then they put some little acoustic transponder tags on them, which were about that long.

CRAWFORD: Tiny in size, relatively?

SCOTT: Yeah, relatively small. With different colours on them, so they knew what they were.

CRAWFORD: Again - harpoon anchor?

SCOTT: Yeah. And that was just an acoustic transponder that went off when they went past a certain area. So, they could see where they had been, and how many times they’d been there. 

CRAWFORD: That’s when the tagged White Pointers were pinging. And they had some kind of remote ear that picked up the pings? And then, over the course of seven years ...

SCOTT: The screw-on tags were in the later part of it. 

CRAWFORD: They started with satellite tags three years ago?

SCOTT: The first one was a little Shark called Grim. 

CRAWFORD: About three years ago though?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And your interaction with Clinton, your disagreements with regards to those drilled tags, has to do with the fact that the anchor is completely different. It’s not a harpoon - stabbed, once in. It’s attempting to get four different screws in?

SCOTT: Well, you’ve got to catch this fish on a baited hook - for a start.

CRAWFORD: Then you have to bring it in, then kind of immobilize it?

SCOTT: And these things don’t have a lot of staying power. They’re a huge Shark, but you can get them pretty much subdued in about 20 minutes or so. And much longer than that, you could possibly kill it. 

CRAWFORD: By doing what? By pulling it?

SCOTT: Yeah, by pulling it in on a hook. So, I had issues with all of that stuff.

CRAWFORD: But then on top of everything, once the animal was tied up next to the boat, then they got the cordless drill out - and how deep are the screws?

SCOTT: Well they go through the dorsal fin. Right through the fin. Right through. So, there’s a plate and it's ... so what happens, if you don’t get that right, that fin will all of a sudden distort, and have big tears through it where they’ve come off. So, you’ve got to be, you’ve got to get it right. And to date, Clinton has got it right every time that I’ve seen. Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing ... he’s obviously in no hurry getting it on. 

CRAWFORD: To be fair to Clinton, the quality of his workmanship with regards to what is required for this new generation of satellite tags, he’s been getting it right. But then still, in terms of the behaviour of the animal, if there’s some type of pain, or some type of negative impression, a lasting impression ... who knows? Maybe this is constantly being felt by the Shark. It's not necessarily just something that is done once and over?

SCOTT: I would say so. And it would be interesting to see, in other places in the world, do their Sharks change their behaviour once they’ve had a tag. Once they’ve been caught, had a tag screwed on them ...

CRAWFORD: Do you know if anybody has ever tried to do that kind of research before? Trying to categorize the behaviour of tagged Sharks in a meaningful way?

SCOTT: Well, no one wants to know. They all seem ... See, these people don’t even come out of their offices ...

CRAWFORD: Ok. To wrap up your thinking about the satellite tags, especially on Caro ...

SCOTT: So, you’d have to ask the question, has the Human interaction that she’s bloody had - a bit of a hard time getting that tag on - meant that she’s a bit aggressive? Or is she getting something off this tag that’s in her fin? It's got to be sending signals?

CRAWFORD: Like electromagnetic signals?

SCOTT: That’s right. All this shit could probably affect a Shark.

CRAWFORD: Do you see any other White Pointers with satellite tags?

SCOTT: Another one, Pip. She’s the other one that will show a bit of aggression - but not as much as Caro. Both tagged about the same time, within days of each other. 

CRAWFORD: Pip's the fourth Level 4?

SCOTT: She’s the fourth. But we don’t see her very often. She’s there, but we very rarely see her. 

CRAWFORD: What, if any, similarities does Pip have with the other Level 4 White Pointers? Does she have the speed of Arthur? Is she a go, go, go animal?

SCOTT: Not so much. She’s not a go, go, go animal.

CRAWFORD: Is she a close proximity animal?

SCOTT: Pip's not quite as aggressive as Caro - in terms of up to the platform, in your face. We haven’t had too many interactions with her. She was there all this season - we knew she was there, but she never came to Edwards Island. At all.

CRAWFORD: How did you know she was there?

SCOTT: Because we were getting information of the tagging, through Clinton. 

CRAWFORD: Clinton said Pip’s in the vicinity? But she never came near your cage dive operation during that time?

SCOTT: He sends me maps of where she is. She came in from the west, and she came in there, and she was round there for a bit. Then she came round here, and we thought we were going to see her. And then she came right through to the end of Bench Island, and then went back. And then she came back here. And then she went away South to a little tiny island, that’s out about here - The Snares. She spent a bit of time there, and then back. But she never came to Edwards this season.

CRAWFORD: Would it be fair to say, based on what you just drew out there with your finger on the chart, that open water for the most part appears to be the shortest distance for Pip?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And then sometimes she'll track the coastline?

SCOTT: That’s right. Most of the time, they will hang around the coast. I don’t know, but I guess that’s got to be in case there’s something to eat coming off the shore. I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: Well, again it comes back to at least a couple of different things. What is it that they're eating? And where is it that they’re eating?

SCOTT: She B-lines straight for the Snares, which is way out here. Tiny little island in the middle of nowhere.

CRAWFORD: Did the satellite tag show Pip track to anything like the Solanders?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: That’s just over Continental Shelf. 

SCOTT: Yep, gone. Out there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But this is all a pretty good indication that when they appear to go to a place, a destination ... that there’s some type of non-visual cue that they know about, that they are following. I suppose it could also be memory. But I mean, it’s the same type of thing as the Polynesian navigators, right? You’ve got to use the stars, or you’ve got to use something, right? Geo-magnetic fields - whatever. But Pip had a mind to go there, and she didn’t meander much. When you see animals doing straight lines, it strongly suggests they’re navigating. They’re following an edge, or they’re following some type of cue.

SCOTT: That’s right. But your average reasonable navigator in a boat with no navigation equipment to this? They would struggle to go from here to there - and find that wee rock, The Snares. It’s packed with Seals ... like absolutely packed with Seals. With Seals and Penguins.

CRAWFORD: Wow. That's a lot to process. So, to recap ... in your experience, three of the four White Pointers at Level 4 Attitude have evidence of Human-induced trauma. Two of the traumas are existing satellite tags. And in your opinion, the other one was a failed attempt to put on a satellite tag?

SCOTT: That’s right. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Let's say it was 40 different White Pointers at Edwards Island during the season. Of which, there were four [10%] that had Level 4 attitudes. And of the four Level 4 Attitude White Pointers, three [75%] had sustained significant Human-induced trauma - specifically associated with the Science tagging research program?

SCOTT: That’s right.

PPP Hypothesis

CRAWFORD: Anything else, by way of observations from the cage dive operations? Do you ever get any other instances where you really got the feeling like there was some type of interaction going on with the White Pointers and the Humans in the cage?

SCOTT: Yeah. And not just the one time - a number of times when we’ve had just females in there.

CRAWFORD:  All female Human guests in the cage?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Two or three people?

SCOTT: Yeah. And we’ve had one male Shark. Big one. Who will - not aggressively - will come up, and he'll either lay across the front of the cage looking in, or ...

CRAWFORD: What?? He’ll lay across the cage?

SCOTT: Yeah. They can do some amazing things, these Sharks. They can just stop, and lay across the front of the cage.

CRAWFORD: Lay across? Like belly to the cage?

SCOTT: Generally, side to the cage. So, he can see what's happening. And he’ll just come up, and lay there, and look - you know? Or he’ll come up, and sit his head on top of the cage. Not aggressively, not with his mouth, with his head up.

CRAWFORD: So, not what Caro does?

SCOTT: No. No. Just absolutely non-aggressive, slow.

CRAWFORD: And only males do that?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Only big males?

SCOTT: Only one big male - that I've seen.

CRAWFORD: Ok, so really only one, male White Pointer?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: But he has repeatedly done that?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And that big male, sample size of one, has done this repeatedly as in what - half a dozen times?

SCOTT: Generally, we don’t get a lot of just-females in the cage, you see? It's generally always mixed.

CRAWFORD: Is it? I don’t know what your demographic is.

SCOTT: Well, generally it's couples, you see? They don’t want to get in without each other. So, you’ve got the male-female combinations. Very rarely will you get all females in the cage.

CRAWFORD: But when it has happened ... those are the only circumstances when you have seen that one male White Pointer behave that way? When it’s a mixed Human complement in the cage, that male White Pointer doesn’t do it?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Does he do anything else?

SCOTT: No, he just goes back to normal. 

CRAWFORD: Right. So, this is rare. And a very unusual behaviour for that male White Pointer?

SCOTT: Yeah, that’s right. 

CRAWFORD: And the only time that you’ve seen it, your recollection is - when it's an all-female complement in the cage?

SCOTT: That’s right. And that’s why it stood out. And I’ve discussed this with Clinton, you know? And he has no ideas. But clearly, there’s something going on there.

CRAWFORD: It’s a small sample size, but it’s a pretty dramatic observation. 

SCOTT: I’m pretty sure when you talk to Nic ... she’s been on a couple of those dives where we’ve had that interaction.

CRAWFORD: Ok. I'll follow up with her on that. Any other types of behaviours of any kind that would have been ... like an all-male Human complement?

SCOTT: No. We also had one male Shark, a big one we’ve always worked with since day one - he’s always been there, every year. I still believe he knows who I am. 

CRAWFORD: Why would you think something like that?

SCOTT: He’s absolutely non-aggressive. He’s a fish that I could definitely swim with, if I had the feeling to, which I don’t. Like every year, when he first turns up, he comes along and stops - and he just sits there, and watches us. Just on his side, just sits there.

CRAWFORD: That same type of ...

SCOTT: Yeah. Roll over, just watches. Watching.

CRAWFORD: Is that the same type of behaviour that the other male was doing next to the cage? Kind of stop, and roll, and just hold?

SCOTT: Yeah sort of. But this guy's ... he’s totally calm.

CRAWFORD: But he's also rolling up, with an eye on you?

SCOTT: That’s right. On the platform. Like he’ll come right up to the platform, non-aggressive. Doesn’t bite anything.

CRAWFORD: No mouthing, no clamping or anything?

SCOTT: No. But he always comes up to that same corner, over there - well on the other boat he used to. This year, it’d be interesting to see if he can work out "Where’s the old boat gone?"

CRAWFORD: That will be very interesting to see. So, that was a characteristic behaviour for him. Most White Pointers don’t do that kind of holding and looking?

SCOTT: No. Definitely looking, you know?

CRAWFORD: It will be very interesting. That would be an insight to whether or not he still associates with you as an individual Human.

SCOTT: Yeah, or the boat. 

CRAWFORD: Or the boat. Right. Because the boat's not going to be the same this year.

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: But you will be the same you.

SCOTT: That’s right. Hopefully.

CRAWFORD: To what extent can a fish brain process and recognize an individual Human? What do you think?

SCOTT: Well, I don’t know. 

CRAWFORD: I don’t think anybody knows.

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: But they’re a big fish. They've got big brains. 

SCOTT: No, they haven’t got a big brain. It’s small.

CRAWFORD: Small relative to the body size. But still, you carve out that brain, and its bigger than a damn Guppy.

SCOTT: Oh, for sure. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And Guppies can do some pretty amazing things. 

SCOTT: Right.

6B. effects of cage tour dive operations

CRAWFORD: Is there any research, that you know of, being done on the effects of Shark cage tour dive operations here in New Zealand?

SCOTT: No. No.

CRAWFORD: Did DOC talk about it?

SCOTT: Well, who's going to do it? They've got no money.

CRAWFORD: In terms of people that have been, in the past say ten years, using or trying some type of Shark deterrent, what are you familiar with?

SCOTT: There was some clown with these 'Shark Bands.' It looks like a watch, and it's supposed to save you from getting eaten, but I don't believe that. These 'Shark Band' people - they came out here, without a permit, and were doing scientific experiments out here. We photographed and put in a report on that - and DOC in their wisdom decided we didn't have enough evidence. And that goes right back to the whole DOC thing. Them being so slack.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's start with the idea that anybody putting fish berley, or blood and guts in the water. Something that attracts Sharks to a particular location - is that having an effect on their behaviour, because its attracting them to a place at a time, by a cue. 

SCOTT: But what happens if the Sharks are already there? For another reason?

CRAWFORD: Right. And that can happen. You said when you put berley in the water - it could be right away you see a White Pointer, or it could be on the order of an hour.

SCOTT: But without it, would they still come? We don’t know.

CRAWFORD: Well, that’s the point ...

SCOTT: Because we always put berley out. And sometimes they’re there in the morning, before we put the berley out.

CRAWFORD: And we also have to remember that currently, you’re going to a location which is identified on the DOC permit. You’re not going out in search of ...

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: And even if you, for whatever reason, didn’t have White Pointers at Edwards Island, you are not allowed to go anyplace else?

SCOTT: That’s right. 

CRAWFORD: If the White Pointers were already at Edwards, it's possible that they would come around even without berley?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: Based on what some boaties have said - and I’m specifically identifying boaties, because they wouldn’t necessarily have put berley or fish frames in the water, or wouldn’t necessarily have been cleaning fish or anything like that. But let's think about when there's no other cue that’s going in the water ... if they simply went to that location in their boat. The White Pointers might still come to them?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: If the White Pointers were there, and they were curious or whatever?

SCOTT: They would definitely come to the boat, because they’re curious.

CRAWFORD: And you have stressed that before. Your particularly interesting story about the plastic floating chair. I mean that’s a good example of how curious these White Pointers are. And yet in other cases, you talked about looking down - and seeing a large White Pointer at the bottom that never came up to the surface?

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: So, some White Pointers are curious to the point of coming to the surface, but not necessarily all, or all the time. It comes back to underscore that when people are talking about the effects of Shark cage tour dive operations, it's important to recognize that it's a response at the individual Shark level. And that individual Sharks may be very different from each other, in terms of how they respond to the operations. 

SCOTT: Oh, for sure.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's go back to the general question - what effects, if any, do you think a Shark cage tour operation could have on individual White Pointers and their behaviour? Based on your experience?

SCOTT: Well, my opinion is that its minimal, you know?

CRAWFORD: But minimal in what way?

SCOTT: Well, how are you going to change the habits of an apex predator that’s been tuned to that for years? They’re opportunistic feeders. If we were training them, they would be there every day as soon as the dinner bell gonged. They would be there every day. That’s not the case. And if we were training them, they would all be there.

CRAWFORD: How do you know you’re not training them? Tell me why it's not the case that they have become conditioned like a dinner bell.

SCOTT: Well, some days we may see only one Shark.

CRAWFORD: Throughout the entire time that you are there at Edwards Island on that day?

SCOTT: That’s right. Some days we will see no Sharks. So, if they were tuned to that boat, to be fed every day that those boats when they are there, you would see more than one fish. I believe.

CRAWFORD: That’s a good point. Alright, so in your opinion that's evidence against the idea that the animals are being conditioned. Some people have said they've gone out there to Edwards, and the White Pointers came to them. 

SCOTT: Right.

CRAWFORD: But that’s not necessarily as a result of the Haines and Scott Shark tour dive operations. That potentially could be - that’s what the White Pointers would have done anyways. Because they’re there, and they’re curious, and a boat came over?

SCOTT: And Malcolm Francis’ White Shark paper on that whole area on White Sharks - he says that the Sharks are there because of the food, not because of the Shark dive operations. It says that in his paper. 

CRAWFORD: And he is a Scientist. If he makes a statement like that as a Scientist, he’s got certain responsibilities about other possible explanations and the availability of associated evidence. 

SCOTT: Well, you’d like to hope so.

CRAWFORD: Well, that’s just the way Science works. Expert opinion, no matter what your expertise, is always associated with either lived experience or some type of evidence that comes from a study, informal or formal. 

SCOTT: That’s right. And between him and Duffy, they must have the most knowledge of that Shark population - Scientifically - than anyone else.

CRAWFORD: At the level of a White Pointer population, at the level of individual White Pointers that make up that population - from whatever perspectives their investigations or their experience have given. But you have different experiences. You see these Sharks differently from how Malcolm and Clinton would have seen them. On a more regular basis anyways?

SCOTT: For sure, that’s right.

CRAWFORD: Let's take another approach at this. Let's imagine that somebody went out to the area, and they ran a Shark cage tour dive operation. And let's imagine for a minute that the restrictions were that they’re not allowed to put any berley or any bait in the water whatsoever. They can put out a cage, they can put people in that cage - but they’re not allowed to chum in any way. Let's say they can put out some type of a floating decoy, but it's not allowed to move or whatever. Let's imagine that it was everything you do, but without berley or without bait. Do you think that White Pointers would still come to the boat?

SCOTT: Definitely. 

CRAWFROD: Do you think that the White Pointers would behave in a similar kind of way?

SCOTT: Quite possibly. As long as there was nothing else distracting them. Like you know, if there’s any fishing boats working in the area, or anything like that. See, we have days where we don’t berley or bait after the Sharks are there. But they still hang around. 

CRAWFORD: And that gets to another uncertainty. The front-end of the question is - how long would it take for that chemical berley signal to actually move out to a point where an individual White Pointer could pick it up? And on the back-end, it raises the question of how long the signal stays at that location. Once you berley, how long does that cue stay in the water there?

SCOTT: And that’s the million-dollar question, you know? As to how far the berley goes to drag them in, it would depend on how far away the Shark is.

CRAWFORD: Right. But there’s something else that you said that was really important in our last discussion. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the different levels of interaction, the different kinds of behaviour. Because if there are some White Pointers under normal circumstances where you’re putting berley in the water, you’ve got a bait - there are some circumstances where the animal just comes in and then moves off. And then there's the next level up - they come in and they kind of do the perimeter, they circle around, right? They’re not doing anything in particular. Then there's the next level where they’re engaging. They’re curious about the cage. They might follow the bait. They’re a little bit more interactive in that sense. 

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: And then there’s Level 4 Attitude. You’ve got those four specific animals out of 40 that have an edge to them. Keeping that in mind, if I had a boat that was similar to the kinds of boats that you and Mike have been running over the last couple of years, and I had a cage, and I had people that I put in the cage, and I did everything else the same, but I didn’t put berley or bait in the water - you're saying that you think that the animals that were already at the location, would show enough curiosity for a Swim-By at the very least?

SCOTT: I would say so.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that the White Pointers perhaps would move into Level 2, where they would circle around with a little bit more persistence.

SCOTT: I think they would. Because if a Shark turns up, it will generally show a bit of interest in what's going on. 

CRAWFORD: Well that’s consistent with your observation, you know, the story of the floating plastic chair. 

SCOTT: Yeah. No matter what’s floating on the surface, they will check it out - whether it’s a cage, a chair, whatever. But I still think to maybe maintain them around the boat in the earlier part of the day, you do need some sort of attractant. 

CRAWFORD: In the earlier part of the day? Why do you think time of day is that important?

SCOTT: Well, to maybe get them to the boat. It's all variables you know, like no one knows. We’ll use berley first thing in the mornings because there's nothing there. But when they come in, we will generally back off from that.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That’s a subtle thing - but it's important. Do you think that once one or a few Sharks are in proximity, that congregation in turn serves as a cue for other Sharks to come in?

SCOTT: Quite possibly. I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: It's possible, but is that consistent with your experience?

SCOTT: Generally, they won't go away once they’re there you know? And then the numbers ... well on some days they do increase, but this goes right back to the start, where I said some days you see one fish, some days you see no fish, some days we might see ten fish. It's not consistent. 

CRAWORD: If there was some type of an account of when the boat got there ... having some kind of metric of when the Sharks did come in, and what kind of thing?

SCOTT: You could get all that kind of information from last year's returns. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. But you don’t keep that type of timestamp, when a particular animal shows up?

SCOTT: Yeah, we do. Yep. It's all on there. 

CRAWFORD: You do this because DOC says they wanted it?

SCOTT: No, we do it because we do it. 

CRAWFORD: Well, that’s very interesting.

SCOTT: And that’s all on our returns that we give to DOC. We give them way more information than they ask for. 

CRAWFORD: Is that because you and Clinton had a discussion, and you agreed that it would be very helpful. 

SCOTT: Oh, if he gets a hold of it or something. It doesn’t matter if it's Clinton, Malcolm, some new scientist.

CRAWFORD: No, I meant what was the motivation for you?

SCOTT: Because that's just the way we do it. And it's also for our own records - because we keep that piece of paper as well. We don't just send off all those pieces of paper. They’re scanned, plus all those pieces of paper we got from last year are still at home in our filing cabinet. So, I could go back tomorrow and have a look on a particular day - I know when I started berleying, I know when the first Sharks turned up, and I generally know who all's been there. 

CRAWFORD: Did you make a note when you knew individuals?

SCOTT: Yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: That's extremely helpful.

SCOTT: And Nic will have her own records of what was going on too.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, there's actually quite a bit more information there, more than I knew about. And some of that information actually can shed light on ideas about attraction. If you have a couple of White Pointers that happen to be there at the time, who come to the boat, about whether or not that potentially could serve as an attractant, a social attractant or otherwise. Or draw the attention of other fish to come into the region as well, because you could map that out over time, depending on the nature of the information. Helpful to know that that information is there - we can talk about that later. I just want people to get used to the idea that we don't have to be so crippled by our questions. We can actually reduce our uncertainties. We can do things to learn about these key things, and that the operators are vital to this - because there’s no way that researchers can run around and emulate what you do. And why would they want to anyways? Why not just consider the possibility of learning together? And it's when you get people with markedly different opinions, they can be 180 degrees opposite when they're thinking about what the effects are - and they could still agree on some way that we could learn together, right? 

SCOTT: That's right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: As long as both of them were prepared to be right or be wrong, depending on how the evidence comes in, right?

SCOTT: That's right. And I’ve said this to DOC a number of times, you know? I'm bloody over being shafted by them. Having our mystery shoppers, and all the rest of it - when we’re bloody feeding DOC some of the most valuable bloody information that they cannot get otherwise. They would have to have a Scientist out there every day of the season to get it.

CRAWFORD: The data that you provide?

SCOTT: The stuff that they’re getting off of us for free, you know? And that, all of that information, is worth a shitload to somebody. And not in monetary terms, but in the Science of the Sharks.

CRAWFORD: In terms of learning. 

SCOTT: That's right. But they do not see it.

CRAWFORD: That's a good point.

SCOTT: And that could possibly dry up at some stage you know? Sooner or later we’ll just go "We’re sick of this."

CRAWFORD: Well, you’ve been there - in and out of that phase. Ok. Let's get back to the effects on the Sharks. You've made an important point in saying the White Pointers could have been there as soon as you got there.

SCOTT: They are, some days.

CRAWFORD: In which case, if they were already there, would you berley anyways?

SCOTT: Generally. 

CRAWFORD: Because there's no down-side to berleying, and there might be a down-side of not berleying? In terms of attracting the Sharks to the cage?

SCOTT: If we've got one or two, it's like everything - you want more. So, you do what you can to bring as many to the operation.

CRAWFORD: But the point is - do you have any knowledge of a situation where there were one or two animals perhaps, and you didn't berley at all - and other animals still came? 

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: That would be an important observation. Under some circumstances ... and I’m not suggesting that you do it as a part of your business, but that's an important insight into whether or not a couple of White Pointers potentially are a social attractant, rather than a chemo-sensory attractant. 

SCOTT: It may be only if there are, I don't know ... maybe if they’re in some sort of a feeding mode. How are they going to send out those signals if they're not onto something?

CRAWFORD: We don't know how these Sharks sense their environment. And it's possible that what for us appears to be out of reach, they’re still actually picking up information. They could perhaps sense each other much further than what we thought. 

SCOTT: I'm sure they can, yeah.

CRAWFORD: It gets back to this idea about some people saying that these White Pointers form packs, and the packs are in communication. They have some type of social cohesion. It's not that every Shark is instantaneously communicating with all other Sharks in the pack, but they’re at least communicating in order to maintain a school with the ones that are next to them, right? But then maybe there's a collective property, where if something's happening on the edge of the pack that one animal knows about, and one here in proximity sees or otherwise knows that it's happening over there, then it can kind of attract the attention of the whole pack right?

SCOTT: That's right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: What I’m trying to get at is, when people talk about effects on the fish, part of it has to do with - to what extent is there chemo-sensory attractant? The berleying. To what extent were the Sharks already there? And part of what I have to do is clarify our thinking - from the simplest to the most complex possible answers. And the simplest is, the Sharks were there, you got there, they didn't move away - they were there. Next is, without any chemo-sensory attraction, you got there, the Sharks were there in general, you came there, the presence of the boat and the cage was the equivalent of a floating chair, and the animals came in, right?

SCOTT: That's right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Next is the possibility of both those things being true, but then also putting a chemo-sensory signal out.

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: In that case, then we have to divide berley and bait. Because berley is just the old ‘snifferoo’ right? And the bait is a smell plus a visual cue.

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alright, getting back to the major focus for today, which is the possible effects of cage tour dive operations, we were going to talk about your experiences, first - and then what other people say, second. Let's talk about the effect on the White Pointer's behaviour. Let's say there are 40 Sharks out there, and they’re responding to these cues, and that 10 percent of them show some Level 4 Attitude. The question is, what long-term effect would that cage tour dive operation have on those specific individual Sharks? 

SCOTT: I don’t think it would have any effect, because I think that they’ve got that attitude anyway. They’ve got that attitude from somewhere other than Shark cage diving. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you say that?

SCOTT: Well, the ones with attitude we’re dealing with, other than Arthur of course, because he’s got a totally different attitude than those other fish - they’ve all had major Human interactions in their life that have probably affected their attitude. 

CRAWFORD: I remember Slash's wound, and I remember Caro's satellite tag. And Pip has a satellite tag as well? 

SCOTT: Yep. So, they’ve been hooked in the jaw, dragged alongside a boat, tied to a boat, roped to a boat, had holes drilled in them. You can’t tell me that hasn’t had some effect on their attitude towards people. And the whole time they’re watching these bloody people doing this to them - these are very clever fish we’re dealing with. 

CRAWFORD: Let's get back to them being clever. For now, let's not focus so much on the minority of animals that have attitude. Let's focus on the majority of the individual animals that are attracted to the cage dive operation. Do you think that because of the cage tour dive operations, that those White Pointers would be any more or less likely to investigate another boat? Even if it was simply at the level of enhanced curiosity?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that?

SCOTT: Because they’re curious anyway. It doesn’t matter if it was a boat, a chair, a piece of bloody newspaper - they will go and check it out. And Shark cage diving, I don’t think, has any effect on their curiosity to other things floating round.

CRAWFORD: And yet people are out there on the water all the time and they don’t often see these Sharks.

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: It’s a rare event. It's possible that it's a rare event because the Sharks are not there. But it's also possible that it's a rare event because the Sharks are there, but they don’t come up to the boat. 

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that the White Pointers having been attracted to Humans on a boat ...

SCOTT: I don’t think they’re attracted to Humans on a boat. They may be attracted to a boat.

CRAWFORD: Ok. I get that. The animals are definitely responding to the berley. Everybody agrees on that. But the next question is - for the animals that respond to the berley, they’re getting the berley plus the boat, plus potentially the presence of Humans that they might sense either below or above the surface.

SCOTT: How are they going to sense those Humans?

CRAWFORD: Well if they’re below the surface ... I mean they can, at the very least see them, right?

SCOTT: How are they going to see them? I’ve had this put to me before, you know? "Oh, they’re seeing people in your cage. Oh, they’re going to eat people." They can’t necessarily see who’s in there. The silhouettes of the Humans are all blocked out with an alloy mesh that’s all around them. They’re not seeing a person hanging in the water. They’re seeing something in a cage that's surrounded by aluminum mesh, that is disturbing that whole silhouette of a person. 

CRAWFORD: That is the first time that anybody has brought that up. That's a valid possibility.

SCOTT: That's because I got a whole lot of time to sit around thinking about these things. 

CRAWFORD: And yet, if I remember what you said about Caro, that there are times when she’ll surface, she’ll roll her head, and that her eyes are not the black, 'merciless death of hell' eyes - but rather this kind of greyish-blue thing looking at you as a person. Looking at Peter Scott. 

SCOTT: That's right. Because she has had an interaction with Humans, which was probably traumatic in her life. 

CRAWFORD: And that same eye on that same fish may have seen another Human ...

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: That caused her distress or trauma or something?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: It may not have been by Peter Scott, but it might have been by that other Human?

SCOTT: More likely Clinton Duffy.

CRAWFORD: You made an important point when you said something like "A Shark swimming around a cage, doesn’t necessarily see a Human being inside of a Shark cage." Are you of the opinion that they would just see a shadow in a metal context?

SCOTT: That's right. And what sort of electrical shit is coming out of that alloy, you know? I don't know. There’s a whole lot of factors in this whole cage thing, and I don’t believe that they can see a person in that cage. 

CRAWFORD: But that's why I brought it back to Caro and you. That’s not to say that they can’t see an individual person.

SCOTT: Oh, they can see a person alright.

CRAWFORD: They can see a person, under different circumstances?

SCOTT: That's right. Also, a person in a cage who is standing there, is not sending of their electrical pulses the same that someone who is flat out swimming is putting out either. 

CRAWFORD: They’re passive in the cage, as opposed to active? 

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That's another valid point. 

SCOTT: Because supposedly, when the Whites pick up - like even on a Seal or anything like that - they’re picking up all of those electro-signals that are coming out of a body that’s working hard to swim. 

CRAWFORD: There’s no doubt they have many different senses, that they can and probably do use simultaneously.

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That's a good point. What about the boat? Do you think the White Pointers would respond differently to other boats, regardless of Humans - based on the idea that there was a boat in this location, that was emitting signals of its presence, plus its chemo-sensory cues, plus its smell, plus its visual cues and all the rest of it? It gets back to stories about boaties going over to the Titi Islands, and just showing up in a pleasure boats, and the Sharks coming up to them. 

SCOTT: Right.

CRAWFORD: That would be a rare incident under normal circumstances. But it might be less rare in waters where a cage tour dive operation had been operating?

SCOTT: I think it would be less rare in an area where there’s a large group of White Pointers.

CRAWFORD: Fair enough.

SCOTT: I don’t think that cage diving has anything to do with them coming to boats.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That is a hypothesis that generates predictions that can be tested. If we went someplace else that had a roughly equivalent number of White Pointers, and we didn’t berley and the Sharks would still come to us ...

SCOTT: Are those Sharks that are coming to the boat, are they looking for cage diving? Or are they looking for a commercial fishing boat that’s dumping a tonne of offal?

CRAWFORD: Let's build the ideas. Are they coming because there’s something floating on the top of the water? Are they coming because there is some type of memory that a boat might have some food? Whether it was Codpotting, cleaning, or whether it was the smell of mince coming of the cage tour dive boats. But would they just associate boats generally with food?

SCOTT: But they’re also clever enough, I believe, to know that they’re going to get a lot more out of a commercial boat that’s cleaning fish, than what they’re going to get off us. Surely. As apex predators, surely they can work out what's a good bet and what's not. "Here’s a cage boat with a cage, and he’s putting out this pissy bloody Albacore soup that we can’t eat. Against this Cod boat that's dumping all these nice juicy Blue Cod frames."

CRAWFORD: That’s why I was asking about how long they stuck around. Because of the idea of being smart, or being able to figure that out.

SCOTT: When are you going to Bluff next?

CRAWFORD: Next Monday.

SCOTT: I’ll give you another name of a guy actually. Chris Black. 

CRAWFORD: And who’s Chris?

SCOTT: He has a boat called Desiree. He’s a Cod fisherman who fishes quite close to us, off and on. Ask him what happens. He’s had Sharks have a go at his Codpots when they’re coming up. If you’ve got a square cage full of Blue Cod that are fighting, they’re going to be sending off a signal that a Shark will pick up on.

CRAWFORD: There’s an entire sub-theme of our discussion here about what is the effect of other types of activities on the White Pointers as well. And we’ll get there, at least… but I’m very respectful of your time ...

SCOTT: Keep going. 

CRAWFORD: I can feel another conversation coming up, because we focused just here on the effects of Shark cage tour dive operations. But you can’t have this discussion unless it's in context with other Shark-Human interactions, with Codpotters or setnetters or longliners or anglers ... because those interactions matter as well. And if you’re going to consider one of several types of Shark-Human interactions, it would be unreasonable to consider one in isolation of the others. I just want to wrap it up though ... when it comes to any lasting effects on individual White Pointers - based on what you’ve seen, you don’t think that there’s anything you’re doing that is changing the behaviour of those fish. Other than for the period of time that they happen to be around your boat, responding to your cues?

SCOTT: That's right. 

CRAWFROD: No lasting effect. They didn’t behave differently the next day, or the next week, or the next year, because of their interaction with you?

SCOTT: No. 

CRAWFORD: To be clear, you did say that it is possible for Shark-Human interactions to have a significant effect on their behaviour, specifically focusing on for example, of the tagged White Pointers that come to the cage dive operation in that kind of Level 4 Attitude category of interaction. Three of which have either a Scientist-induced physical wounds or research tags. 

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: And that form of Shark-Human interaction, you believe, has had a lasting effect on those Shark's behaviour?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: And the segue here then is, that there are other Shark-Human interactions like fishing activities, and if the Shark experienced trauma and survived - it’s quite possible that animal might actually have some aversion to boats?

SCOTT: Maybe. We had one large female, Kate, she’s had a longline hook in the corner of her jaw for about five or six years.

CRAWFORD: The hook is still there?

SCOTT: Yeah, she’s still got it. Still had it this season. 

CRAWFORD: What gauge of hook do you think?

SCOTT: It's probably about ... shit, I don't know, maybe a 14 to 16 hook. Stainless steel. Really good quality. 

CRAWFORD: With a line? Or just a hook?

SCOTT: No. When she first arrived, she had the clip. The first year she had the clip and the sinker, because they got a sinker half-way down the lines. And the hook. And then the next year she came back, she had just a hook. She’d lost the trace. But she’s collected no more hooks that I know of, in the meantime. Not visually. But years ago, there was one - and I’ve never seen this otherwise - this Shark called Emma, who had multiple hooks. 

CRAWFORD: These are the types of hooks that would be characteristic of the commercial or recreational fishing?

SCOTT: Commercial longlining.

CRAWFORD: Right. While we're talking about hooks and White Pointers, what about recreational fishing? 

SCOTT: Yeah. Well, through the season we see a number of recreational hooks in the Sharks.

CRAWFORD: And what do they look like? Quite different from the long-lining gear ...

SCOTT: They’re quite small, light. Light line.

CRAWFORD: And you've seen several?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Sorry. You've seen several White Pointers with what you perceive to be a recreational hook. Or you've seen several hooks on an individual White Pointer?

SCOTT: Oh, we had one this season that clearly had two hooks. One of them was in its pectoral fin. And then the second hook back, behind that and the sinker, the second hook back still had a Blue Cod on it. 

CRAWFORD: Right. As I said before, we're focusing on cage tour dive operations - but also being mindful that you can’t consider one without being in the context of the other. Especially when you consider that individual White Pointers could be exposed to multiple Shark-Human interactions of which the cage tour dive operations could be one. But there's a guy over there trying to tag them, and they've got a guy over there trying to longline, and a guy down there that's angling you know, another just cleaning his fish.

SCOTT: That's right, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: I already asked you, did you think that the cage tour dive operations would have an effect on an individual fish? Your answer, I'm paraphrasing now, was "No - they’re naturally curious. We’re exploiting the curiosity with what we’re doing to attracting them into proximity. But I don't believe we are changing them in a way that is going to have a lasting effect."

SCOTT: I don’t believe so. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's go through a list of things that you have heard other people say is having an effect on the White Pointers from the Shark cage tour dive operations. What’s the most common one that you’ve heard?

SCOTT: The most common one is that they follow our boat back into port, you know?

CRAWFORD: At the end of the day, the cage comes up, anchor comes up, you motor back to port, and people have said that the White Pointers will follow your boat back to port?

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: And what is your response to that?

SCOTT: It's bullshit. 

CRAWFORD: Why do you say that it’s bullshit?

SCOTT: Because Science will tell you that a White Shark cannot keep up with that boat, over that distance.

CRAWFORD: What kind of speeds are you talking about?

SCOTT: Oh, we’re talking about 15 kilometres an hour. For an hour. Doesn’t equate for a White Shark. A Mako probably could. 

CRAWFORD: An hour from where to where?

SCOTT: Say, from Edwards to Halfmoon Bay.

CRAWFORD: That's an hour at 15 kilometres per hour?

SCOTT:
Yeah, maybe 18 kilometres.

CRAWFORD: In this case, specifically the concern was Halfmoon Bay.

SCOTT: Yeah. But not only Halfmoon Bay. Everywhere I go, there appear to be Sharks turning up. No one appears to have any photographic evidence of Sharks swimming around my boat in the Bay, or at any of the beaches there.

CRAWFORD: When you’re at port?

SCOTT: That's right. So how do they know that those Sharks are following me in there? Because they’re all full of shit.

CRAWFORD: Have the people that believe this, have they said they have some type of evidence about the number of White Pointer sightings, after your boat goes past?

SCOTT: No.  

CRAWFORD: So, it's not based on ...

SCOTT: This is just some bullshit that they dreamt up. That has festered amongst the community, and now they all believe that the Sharks follow me in there. They’ve got no evidence to back that. They don’t even have a photograph to back that, you know? I say "Show me a bloody photo of Sharks swimming around my boat when I'm in the bay."

CRAWFORD: Was there ever an occasion at Stewart Island when you radioed in to the wharf, over a relatively short distance, about a Shark that was following your vessel?

SCOTT: No. Well, given that I don't even talk to them, there's no way that I would be radioing them.

CRAWFORD: Was there ever an occasion when you came into Halfmoon Bay or Golden Bay - and there was a White Pointer already there?

SCOTT: No. And if someone said there was, they should show us the photo they took, because you can't tell me that someone saw a White Pointer following my boat, or around the boat in any of those Bays. Someone would have a photo because everyone's got a phone. That's a load of shit. 

CRAWFORD: You've obviously heard the same story from other sources.

SCOTT: That's right. I hear it all the time.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's talk about White Pointers following boats, in general. Not yours in particular, but in general. You have spent a lifetime on the water, and over the last eight years you’ve been doing Shark cage tour dive operations. Have you ever seen, or have you ever heard of, instances when White Pointers follow boats?

SCOTT: The only way that a Shark will follow a boat into Halfmoon Bay, it's got to be a Cod boat that is idling along slowly, very slowly. While its cleaning it's fish, laying a berley trail. 

CRAWFORD: You’ve got several different things in there. Implicitly, number one was location - that it wasn’t coming from a great distance away, necessarily. It's implied in there because they boat is idling along. You can’t idle along and put great distance down at the same time.

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: So there’s proximity. Then there’s speed, and then there’s some type of sensory cue again.

SCOTT: That's right. 

CRAWFORD: Ok, I’m just going to re-phrase the question. Have you seen, or have you heard of anybody who has seen, White Pointers following fishing boats in general?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen, or have you heard of, White Pointers interacting with fishing boats?

SCOTT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of boats, what kind of interactions?

SCOTT: They’re Cod boats. 

CRAWFORD: Codpotting?

SCOTT: Codpotting boats that ... and then again, they’re going around their pots slowly.

CRAWFORD: Well hang on. You’ve already made one reference that in some instances, the White Pointers will interact with a Codpot as it's being raised. 

SCOTT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: With Blue Cod inside of it.

SCOTT: Yep. And the likes of Chris could probably elaborate on that more. Because we had a Shark that had quite a lot of damage to his nose, which some people believed was damage by our cage. Chris dispelled that by saying that particular Shark was having a go at his Codpots, his steel meshed pots. Trying to get at his fish in there. And he believes that damage to that Shark’s nose was done on his pots. 

CRAWFORD: Do Codpotters work in the same kinds of waters around the Titi Islands?

SCOTT: Yep. Well, they’ll shift all around Stewart Island. But they will fish there, depending on the weather.

CRAWFORD: They don’t have any constraints on where they can fish?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: Weather is a constraint, but it's basically wherever they wish? They don’t have any constraints on where?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: In that sense, not like your operation.

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: In terms of White Pointer-Codpotting interactions, one is directly with the pot - either when the pot is down on the bottom, or when it’s being lifted. That’s one kind of interaction that you’ve heard about. What other types of White Pointer-Codpotter interactions do you know about?

SCOTT: The White Sharks will come to the boat when they’re laying there.

CRAWFORD: When they're laying their what?

SCOTT: Well, they go round their Codpots. And then they’ll stop and clean the catch. So, they’ll interact then.

CRAWFORD: When they're underway, or are they sometimes ...

SCOTT: Oh, generally they’re just sitting there. When they’re cleaning their fish.

CRAWFORD: Drifting or doing whatever.

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: White Pointers will interact with their boats?

SCOTT: Yeah. They’ll interact with their floats. And that's just another something that is floating on the surface that they’re coming up, checking out.

CRAWFORD: How would they interact while they’re cleaning? What have you heard about?

SCOTT: Well, they’ll swim around the boat. But they’re getting fed then. So, they’re clearly eating.

CRAWFORD: How do we know that they’re getting fed though? It's one thing for us to see them swimming around a Codpotter while its cleaning its fish ...

SCOTT: You go back to the whole autopsy thing of White Sharks that have been caught in the past. They’ve got Cod frames in them.

CRAWFORD: Yes, there's at least one example. Do you know of any instances where White Pointers were actually seen to be feeding on frames, or whatever was going over the side?

SCOTT: There you’d have to ask the likes of Chris, because I’ve never been a Codpotter.

CRAWFORD: You’ve never heard of anything in that specific regard?

SCOTT: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: Other than Codpotters, what other types of fisherman are there out there, that there would be White Shark-Human interactions with?

SCOTT: The setnetters, the gillnetters, they’re the same thing. 

CRAWFORD: And have you heard of, or have you seen, interactions between White Pointers and setnetters?

SCOTT: I’ve never seen a White Shark in a gillnet, but this whole knowledge thingy that you’ve talked about has been handed on, from people who have.

CRAWFORD: And what have you heard?

SCOTT: Well, one interaction I’ve heard of from [Anonymous], a setnetter down that way. He will tell me off the record sometimes if he’s caught a White Shark. He also told me of one he caught in the earlier days when his boat was brand new, of one that he untangled. It was still alive, he spent quite a considerable amount of time untangling it. 

CRAWFORD: That was before protection then?

SCOTT: Yeah. And then it bloody swum away in a big circle and come back and attacked his boat. It was brand new, but these big scratches down the back of his aluminum boat. Yeah. And he just said "Well that's bloody gratitude for you."

CRAWFORD: Do you think that the White Pointers are getting caught up in the setnets because its entanglement gear and they ...

SCOTT: No. They’re feeding. 

CRAWFORD: You reckon it's the contents of what’s already in the setnet that’s attracting them?

SCOTT: Yeah. Definitely.

CRAWFORD: Perhaps struggling, and the White Pointers are responding to that fish cue. They’re just not paying attention to the setnet?

SCOTT: No. And they’re clever enough, they very rarely get caught in the net. But [Anonymous] told me this. "They’ll swim down, and they’ll clean everything out of that bloody net as they’re going down. And it’s only when they turn at the other end, when they come back, that they’ll get they’re tail stuck in the bridle of the net."

CRAWFORD: They’re getting caught in the rigging, not in the setnet itself?

SCOTT: That's right. Yeah. One of those guys will be able to fill you on that. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. We've got Codpotters, setnetters - what other type of fisherman would be an important part of these White Pointer-Human interactions? What other type of fishing?

SCOTT: Possibly the longlining. Yeah, the longlining. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Especially with the hooks. And once again the White Pointers are being attracted to a fish, maybe in distress? It's food?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: It’s not that you've got a bare hook out there, and it's snagging a passing White Pointer. The Sharks are doing what they do. They’re going after food. 

SCOTT: That's dead right, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And the story that you already told about, I forget what the Shark's name was, Emma or whatever, who had multiple longline hooks ...

SCOTT: Yeah, that's right.

CRAWFORD: Which means either that the animal got multiple hooks in one incident, or that animal went back again and again?

SCOTT: I would say. And it may have been off the same longline on the same day.

CRAWFORD: It could have been any of those possibilities. Let's just wrap up with this idea about White Pointers following boats. If a Shark follows a boat, it could be following because it is curious, or whatever, right?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Speed obviously is an important factor in there. But some people have said they have seen White Pointers follow boats. 

SCOTT: Yeah. At what speed?

CRAWFORD: Slow. Coming into port. They have said that they have seen White Pointers following fishing boats coming into port. If that was the case, I mean it could be the curiosity following the boat, it could be following a cue. And this is what one person said "Fishing boats have a smell associated with them."

SCOTT: If they’re cleaning.

CRAWFORD: Yes. 

SCOTT: They don’t smell for the sake of smelling.

CRAWFORD: Well no, but they might accumulate smell. I think the point was that once it's been tainted with that smell, you’re not going to completely eliminate it. I guess that was what they were trying to say. 

SCOTT: Unless you keep it clean, then you won’t smell. Those Cod boats have generally got bait sitting on the deck the whole time, you know? Festering away.

CRAWFORD: So, there's an ongoing source of smell?

SCOTT: That's right. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And some other fishing boats, you wouldn't even know they had fish on them? I guess that has to do with the technique of fishing, as well as the hygiene of the Skipper?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: The point that I was trying to get to ... you don’t have any direct experience with White Pointers following fishing boats?

SCOTT: No.

CRAWFORD: And you haven’t heard from other fisherman about their experiences with Sharks following boats?

SCOTT: No. Well, with Chris Black who you can hopefully catch up with. He’s told me that they will follow him around when he’s Codding, you know? They’re lifting up pots full of struggling fish, they’re bloody cleaning. Every time they throw a pot back over, it's like throwing another lump of berley over, because of all the bait that's smelling away in there. 

CRAWFORD: Right. And the simple point that I was trying to get back to was, when people talk about the effects that Shark tour dive operations are having, and they talk about the White Pointers following your vessel specifically back into port, the first thing you said was ...

SCOTT: The first thing I said was - bullshit.

CRAWFORD: Well you said bullshit, and I asked why. And you said well, first of all in terms of speed. An hour at that speed for them to follow you is not logically feasible.

SCOTT: It’s not sustainable. 

CRAWFORD: Secondly, you said that there weren’t any observations in Halfmoon Bay that there were animals following you.

SCOTT: That's right. Some of these people that are saying these things have got a very high observation point looking down on the bay, on the boats. If they've seen a bloody Shark swimming around my boat, I’m sure they would take a photo of it. You know? And it would be in the Southland Times tomorrow. And I’d be going "Shit, that wasn’t so good." But that has never happened. 

CRAWFORD: When people talk about the negative effects of Shark cage tour dive operations on the Sharks or Shark-Human interactions, what’s another thing that they say?

SCOTT: Another one they say, is that because the Shark cage boats are there, they’re interacting with Shark boats, they’re seeing the people. So, they’re going to swim into the bay and eat all the little children. 

CRAWFORD: What's the cause and effect mechanism that they ...

SCOTT: The hell if I know. 

CRAWFORD: Well, there’s got to be something.

SCOTT: Maybe the kids shouldn’t be swimming in the water anyway. Because whether I’m there or not, there could quite likely be a White Shark swimming around there. So, what are they doing swimming there?

CRAWFORD: At the beaches in Halfmoon Bay? 

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: People have swum there for years.

SCOTT: That's right. How many have been eaten?

CRAWFORD: Whoa - back up, back up. 

SCOTT: Gordon Leask, when he went to school, he was the Shark Spotter at school. When everyone went swimming, he used to sit on a rock up above the bay, in case a Shark came. 

CRAWFORD: That was his job?

SCOTT: That was his job. You should actually talk to Gordon, if you’re over there. Fluff his name is. Fluff Leask. 

CRAWFORD: Ok, I will. Let's get back to the cause and effect. People are thinking that White Pointers are associating mince and the presence of Humans somehow. And that it's a lasting association, so that when they see Humans someplace else without the mince smell, they still associate Humans with food. Is that what you've heard being said?

SCOTT: Yeah, but they are saying that the whole 'feeding the Sharks, seeing the people in the water' thing ...

CRAWFORD: Not feeding the Sharks - berleying.

SCOTT: Same thing.

CRAWFORD: No, it's not the same thing. With mince, the Sharks are not actually eating. There's nothing to chew or swallow.

SCOTT: Those people believe we’re feeding the Sharks. We’re now down to one bait per day, because they believed we were feeding the Sharks. And they believe that with the people in the water in the cage, and feeding the Sharks, they were going to relate that food with Humans out of the cage. And that's where they bloody come unstuck, because I don’t think the Sharks can see those people in the cage.

CRAWFORD: That's a different issue. Even if it was just berley, the smell of food without the physical manipulation of food in their mouths, but just the smell of food. That the Sharks could associate, "Oh, there’s a Human, and I remember it from the smell of food." And that therefore, in some other circumstance - a Shark that otherwise might be just a Swim-By past a Human just for curiosity, associates with the smell of food, and then gets a higher level of interest in the Human. And that an attack, either as an exploratory bite or a full-on hit, would be more likely to happen, because of an association that was made in the Shark’s brain between the Human and the smell of food. 

SCOTT: That could quite well be correct. With food and Humans. But not food and Shark cage diving Humans. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to the idea that you think the White Pointers are not seeing Humans in the cages, they’re just seeing shadows in a metal context?

SCOTT: If they’re going to relate to food and Humans and boats, it's more likely they’re going to relate to the Humans and the food on the Cod boats that they’re getting a reward from hanging around, through the amount of offal that those boats are tipping over the side. And I’m not getting at those guys, there’s no way in the world that I’m ...

CRAWFORD: I know, I know. You’re not talking a cheap shot at the Codpotters. I get that.

SCOTT: They’re just doing their job. The Sharks are hanging around them. That's fine. I don't give a damn. I just don’t think you can point the finger at the Shark cage operation.

CRAWFORD: It’s not about finger pointing, one or another. It’s about figuring out if there is any actual effect - regardless of who or how the cue is being provided.

SCOTT: No more than anything else that’s happening. You can’t single out the cage operators up here, and say "They’re the bloody causes of someone getting eaten over there."

CRAWFORD: Ok. This is a challenging question coming up, and I’m pretty sure it's impossible for Humans to understand the answer to this, but do you think that there are individual White Pointers that would target Humans as food? In contrast to a confused target that they thought they were going after something else, and they got this Human instead?

SCOTT: Well, clearly. Clearly that happens. Because of the amount of attacks in different places. And people aren’t getting attacked there, there, there, there and over there. They’re getting attacked there, in that one spot. And maybe a couple of hundred miles away up there. Or on the Otago Peninsula, for a certain amount of time, then no attacks since. There's probably been an increase in water activity with surfers and all the rest of it, and there have been no attacks. But clearly there were a number of attacks, very close over a short period of time.

CRAWFORD: I’m very aware of how important the distribution and abundance is, which is why I’m trying to track down, not just the attack records, but the incident records as well. Because like you know, population ecology - and individual behaviour in population terms - it's all about distribution and abundance. Including distribution and abundance of Shark-Human interactions. So, I’m very keenly aware of what you just said about distribution in space and in time of those kinds of attacks, but also the incidences. And this is why I’m trying to reach out to the Surf Life Saving Clubs and their National Board. Their documentation of incidences, and their experiences with Shark sightings - including those that did not lead to attacks. There’s only so far that you and I can go down that path right now. But it gets back to this question "To what extent is a White Pointer's hunting or feeding behaviour affected by it responding to a Shark cage tour dive operation? Or responding to a Codpotter, or any other Human operation that involves fish or berley?"

SCOTT: Well, I don’t believe there’s anything. Because, shit - if we’ve been operating there for eight years, there were attacks on the Peninsula prior to that. There’s been very few, if any. No lives have been lost in the eight years that we’ve been operating. So clearly, we’re not changing those habits to a stage, where the Sharks are going "Bloody hell, this is alright. This is easy to catch. We’ll start eating Humans." And I’m sure they’ve had every opportunity to take out a few people in the meantime. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. That leads to another very important question, then. In the time that you have been running your Shark tour dive operations, do you know of any attacks, and by the word 'attack' I’m using it in the broadest sense, where regardless of whether it was a case of mistaken identity or consumption or anything like that?

SCOTT: None. We’re talking White Sharks?

CRAWFORD: Sorry for not being clear enough. No. We have to start with Sharks in general, because we have to remember that a good chunk of the number of attacks in this sense, nobody ever sees the Shark. Like Bill Black at St Kilda back in 1967. My understanding is that no one actually saw the Shark - we don't even know for sure if it was a White Pointer, even though most would agree it's highly likely. And in other cases, it was a hit, and the person that got hit did not necessarily have enough information to be able to say one species versus another.

SCOTT: Generally, when someone's been bitten you will ...

CRAWFORD: Yes, they’ll get some evidence from the teeth marks.

SCOTT: There’s been two that I know of. 

CRAWFORD: Since the time that you’ve been operating?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: In Southland, or in Coastal New Zealand generally?

SCOTT: No, this is close, well - on the mainland which is just to the west of Bluff. There’s been two that I know of at Oreti Beach that have been Sevengilled Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So we’ll rule those out. They were known to be Sevengillers.

SCOTT: One last season ... not last season, the season before, was a White Shark at Curio Bay. Very small one. Grabbed him and let him go. It was a surfer, I think.

CRAWFORD: A boarder?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And it was a clamp, then release?

SCOTT: Yeah. And that was an area where there’s a shitload of Hector's Dolphins. So, maybe it thought he was a Hector's Dolphin or something, I don’t know. But it was just a clamp, and he let him go. Clearly the sight of the board, and I think the person on it was in a rubber suit, the Shark was tasting, and spat him out 

CRAWFORD: That’s one incident you know about. Any others?

SCOTT: Then there was a guy that got attacked - yeah, well he got bitten severely, died at Muriwai, which is in Auckland. Which is bloody thousands of miles away from here.

CRAWFORD: Was that during the time of your operations? 

SCOTT: Yeah. 

SCOTT: And the next one was a guy that got mouthed at Bench Island, which was probably four or five years before we started.

CRAWFORD: He got mouthed?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: What was he doing?

SCOTT: Scubadiving.

CRAWFORD: Recreational? 

SCOTT: Yeah, he was on the surface, waiting for the boat to pick him up. He was obviously a wee way away from the boat, and they saw a White come along and give him a chew, just to see what he was. Curiosity on the surface, alloy tank, all that sort of shit. Came along, give him a chew, thought "Oh, yeah. Screw off." So, the Shark went away, and then he had second thoughts about it, and he came back and had another go, I believe. And thought "Yeah, nah." 

CRAWFORD: And that was five years before you started?

SCOTT: Around then anyway. It's easy to find because you just google it. A guy named Kerr, it was. And he lives on the other side of Dunedin, actually. 

CRAWFORD: Yes. I'm pretty sure it was another example of a juvenile White Pointer. Ok. Remember the focus - we structured it into our discussion about cause and effect, and then we switched over to what other people were saying, and the first one was about following. The second one was about, although it was implicit, we made it explicit about associating the presence of Humans with the smell of food, and that would increase the probability of a hit, an attack on a Human. Even if there was no smell of food. We’ve just gone through that, and we might have some other things to talk about, but basically those are two things that people say. What’s another thing that people say is the mechanism that your Shark tour dive operations, what you and Mike are doing, is having an effect on the Sharks?

SCOTT: That they follow our boat because of the noise of the motor. And then they follow other boats now that have the same motors. But that’s again bullshit, because there’s none of those motors in the South Island.

CRAWFORD: None with the same motor as your boat?

SCOTT: Yep. 

CRAWFORD: But already, from your knowledge, you have said that the White Pointers are not following boats that aren't fishing anyways?

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: So, you don't have to advance necessarily to the explanation of following motor sounds, if it were the case that following behaviour is not happening.

SCOTT: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: The other one thing that I have heard is more about time management of the White Pointers. That they have, a job ecologically to do, whether it's feeding or courtship and mating, or other things that they need to do that are important for the population. The Sharks are in a place at a time for one or more ecological reasons. This came up before, when I asked you questions about your knowledge of why the Sharks were there in the first place. They have to feed up and be in prime shape. And it is possible that the Shark tour dive operations are distracting them away from either feeding and mating or whatever else. 

SCOTT: No, I don’t imagine that that has an effect on them though. Most of their hunting is done at night, I believe. Not when we are there.

CRAWFORD: Why do you say that?

SCOTT: Because if it was done in the daytime, then we would see more of it, you know? I’ve only seen two predations, the whole time I’ve been there.

CRAWFORD: And most of that has been at Edwards Island and Bench Island? 

SCOTT: Well, both of the predations we saw were at Edwards, you see? 

CRAWFORD: And out of all that time you've seen ...

SCOTT: And I’m talking predations on Seals. Not birds. We've seen a lot of predations on birds. 

CRAWFORD: Or fish predation, but you wouldn’t see it with fish. 

SCOTT: No. I don’t believe they eat fish there, because I’ve watched them and watched them and watched them around schools and schools of fish. And they don’t appear to be interested. 

CRAWFORD: Well, we know that White Pointers do eat fish sometimes. And they eat fish frames.

SCOTT: Fish frames are easy to catch.

CRAWFORD: Well, dead easy. 

SCOTT: That's right. [both chuckle]

CRAWFORD: But some people have said that even though predators could prey on a bunch of different things, that sometimes they focus in on one kind of food at a particular time. Sal Jorgensen has said that in the Science literature. It’s not a simple thing - just because a White Pointer has shown it can eat a variety of things, there can still be a food search image. And even though other things are there, they might be all about feeding on Groper here. They could be in a Groper state of mind, right? Or they’re in a Blue Cod fish frame state of mind. That's a key uncertainty. We don’t know about this. It's called ‘prey-switching’ in ecology.

SCOTT: Oh, for sure.

CRAWFORD: We’re not really sure what’s going on inside of those White Pointers' minds. But getting back to that third category of effect, about the ecological distraction effect ... you believe that that is not an important effect on the individual level or at the population level for these White Pointers?

SCOTT: No, no. And I believe that, because if they were feeding in the daytime when we're supposedly distracting them - we would see more evidence of them feeding. And if we were distracting them from mating, I would dispute that too. Because that’s not in any bloody animals' nature. If you decide you're going to have sex, you’re going to have it - whether there’s a cage boat there or not, you know?

CRAWFORD: When I asked you about courtship, you haven’t seen a whole lot of what you would interpret as evidence. You haven’t seen a whole lot of indication of basic reproduction out there anyways. And you’ve seen more of these White Pointers than just about anybody. 

SCOTT: That's right.

CRAWFORD: The thing that amazes me the most ... I thought that we’d be talking about other people's concerns #20, #21, etc. But there are really only a few concerns, that you’ve heard of anyways. 

SCOTT: But they’ve got to back up their bloody theories you know? And I’ve said to them time and time again, "You come up with concrete evidence on anything, and then I’ll bloody talk some more." But I’ve got to the stage where I’m over bloody talking with these people when they’re talking rubbish. What's the point? They’re wasting everybody's time here. 

CRAWFORD: In your discussions with DOC, did you ever have any specific discussions with them or their experts that they brought in, about the effects of cage tour dive operations on Humans, or on the White Pointers?

SCOTT: No, because no one knows. No one can give you an answer. 

CRAWFORD: I didn’t say answers. I said did you ever have a discussion? About the possibilities?

SCOTT: Well, no. They didn’t talk to me about the possibilities. Not like this.  

CRAWFORD: Do you think that some kind of independent facilitation could be one option that would help resolve this conflict in the future?

SCOTT: I don't think it would. How are you going to get a bunch of people around the table ... I've been having these discussions around the table. I bent over backwards to listen to these people since 2010. All that's happened, is that I've been shafted. I'll never go to another meeting with the Pāua people ever again. Because after the last one that we had in Wellington, where we sat around the table 'blah, blah, blah' - they came out with a media statement with a whole load of shit, straight after that meeting. So, we walked out of there. You know you can only be shafted so many times.

CRAWFORD: And you don't think a new process with independent facilitation could work?

SCOTT: Who's going to pay for it?

CRAWFORD: Let's imagine the people of New Zealand pay for it.

SCOTT: This is not something we're just inventing. It's been going on since 2010. Sitting around the table with all these people. We sat with government officials, DOC, Pāua people, tourism industry people. It's gone nowhere.

CRAWFORD: Ok. If I was interested in following up on the Science of Shark tour dive operations and their effects on White Pointers, at the individual or population level, who would I talk to?

SCOTT: It would have to be Malcolm [Francis - NIWA] and Clinton [Duffy - DOC]. But more than likely you’re going to get more information out of Mark Enarson. Because he is not tied to anybody, and he clearly knows. He probably knows as much as anybody about this population of Sharks here. Malcom and Clinton come down, and they stand on a deck of a boat - they do their shit on the surface. Mark spends hours and hours and hours on the bottom with these fish. Watching, taking photos. 

CRAWFORD: I've seen. Some of his shots, you’d swear were outside of cages. 

SCOTT: No, they’re not. He’s in a little bloody cage the size of a telephone box. It’s up on top of that container over there. Very small. 

CRAWFORD: Mark has already agreed to talk to me, it’s just a matter of working out the schedules and stuff. What’s your history with Mark?

SCOTT: He’s been diving with us for five years. Just as an individual photographer.

CRAWFORD: He’s a Canadian. And a Scientist - well, a medical Scientist.

SCOTT: Yeah. But he’s also written papers on White Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: Yes. So, somebody who’s an active part of the Science knowledge system as well.

SCOTT: And he’s dived every possible place in the world where there’s a White Shark. 

CRAWFORD: Right. But I was also thinking that nobody has dived every place here. There are whole sections of coastal New Zealand where we just don’t know. But he’s done more here than anybody else you know?

SCOTT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: He's spent time underwater with these animals, observing and recording photographically or in terms of video?

SCOTT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That's all I've got for you, Pete. Thank you, very, very much.

SCOTT: You're welcome.

Copyright © 2020 Peter Scott and Steve Crawford