Peter Tait

YOB: 1947
Experience: Forest Ranger, Commercial Fisherman, Charter Operator
Regions: Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island, Fiordland, Catlins, Otago
Interview Location: Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island, NZ
Interview Date: 20 November 2015
Post Date: 30 March 2020; Copyright © 2020 Peter Tait and Steve Crawford

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: When and where were you born, Peter?

TAIT: 1947. Just out of Invercargill. A little country district called Otahuti. My parents were farmers. 

CRAWFORD: When you were young, did you spend any significant amount of time on or around the coastal waters of New Zealand?

TAIT: Not much, other than family picnics to Riverton, and holidays to Otago Peninsula. Well, not actually the Peninsula - on the spit side, the Aramoana side of Otago Harbour. 

CRAWFORD: Would those trips have been like a week at a time or so?

TAIT: A week or a fortnight. My parents used to take myself and the other kids in our district down to Riverton for day-picnics over the summer. It was a summer thing.

CRAWFORD: When did you first start spending a significant amount of time on or around the water?

TAIT: With Forest Service, funnily enough. As Ranger here on Stewart Island. The Forest Service had a little launch, and I ran that.

CRAWFORD: When did you start working for the Forest Service here?

TAIT: 1969. 

CRAWFORD: Were you fresh out of school?

TAIT: No, I was five years at that stage, as a forest worker. 

CRAWFORD: Where did you go to school?

TAIT: James Hargest in Invercargill. 

CRAWFORD: What type of program was that? 

TAIT: It was a co-ed school. I did the basic English, Geography, Sciences, Maths. I only did four years secondary education. I did not go on to university or anything like that. 

CRAWFORD: Out of secondary school, then you applied to Forest Service?

TAIT: I got a job with Forest Service as a labourer. They dragged me out of the ranks mid-way through that year, and sent me off to Ranger School the following year. 

CRAWFORD: What kinds of things would they focus on, in Ranger School?

TAIT: Mid-level forest management. It was a professional training program that was run internally by Forest Service. So, I came out a qualified Forest Ranger. I worked in Western Southland briefly, for about a year. I worked in the Takahe area, I was track-cutting east of Te Anau. My last job on the mainland was Ranger at Port Craig. 

CRAWFORD: When did you start to spend significant time on the water?

TAIT: In '68, '69 with YMCA. I was running adventure camps in Fiordland.

CRAWFORD: This was something you were doing ahead of your placement here on Stewart Island?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. You were affiliated with YMCA, and you ran seasonal recreational camps with the kids?

TAIT: Taking them into the backcountry of Fiordland. And that involved quite a lot of work in small boats, dinghies and outboards.

CRAWFORD: Where were you sailing out of for that?

TAIT: The first one was George Sound. 

CRAWFORD: You sailed out of George Sound?

TAIT: No, no. We walked overland from Te Anau to George Sound, then down to Caswell Sound. And actually over to Bligh Sound at one stage. 

CRAWFORD: Were you on, or adjacent to, the water for those trips? 

TAIT: Mainly adjacent in there. But the last trip I did in Fiordland, we went into Dusky Sound. We pioneered a route overland from Doubtful down into Breaksea Sound. And then we had dinghies that were pre-spotted. Big dinghies and outboard motors.

CRAWFORD: That was for one year?

TAIT: Just for a summer. It was a month in there for that trip.

CRAWFROD: Then in 1969 you stationed here on the Island as Ranger for the Forest Service. If I recall correctly, you said there was a vessel you used for work?

TAIT: I had a small launch, 25-foot Forestry launch. Wooden boat - the Hakaturi.

CRAWFORD: Based here in Oban? Halfmoon Bay?

TAIT: It’s down in the village now, you can see her. She’s a little clinker-built launch. Quite close in to the beach. 

CRAWFORD: A clinker. I’ve heard people refer to 'clinker dinghies.' 

TAIT: Lapstrake. A series of planks laid against each other, but overlapping. Clinker-built. 

CRAWFORD: And it was a run-around?

TAIT: No, it was a workboat. A little launch with a diesel engine in it. Realistically, we were restricted to Paterson Inlet, but I did go a bit further afield.

CRAWFORD: Between Paterson Inlet, Halfmoon Bay ...

TAIT: Port William, yeah. We kept it moored at Thule.

CRAWFORD: How much of the year would you have been working with that vessel? Was there an on-the-water season?

TAIT: No, not at all. The boat was just another means for me to get around. I would use it wherever I needed to go. Rather than walk, I would take the boat. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Did you have any other vessels, work or personal that you sailed around Stewart Island?

TAIT: No, not at all. Just the Hakaturi. I did occasionally crew on the Wairua, but that was really just a weekend away. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. How long did that kind of experience last? Either in terms of location or vessel?

TAIT: Must have been early 1970s, I quit Forest Service. And I crewed for a guy Jimmy Richmond. 

CRAWFORD: Did you relocate?

TAIT: I stayed here, on Stewart Island. But I crewed for a fisherman named Jimmy Richmond, who worked a little steel boat called the Amethyst down Five Fingers Peninsula. 

CRAWFORD: How big was the boat? 

TAIT: I think she was 40-foot. 

CRAWFORD: What kind of fishing operation? 

TAIT: Crayfish, Lobster fishing. Pot-fishing. 

CRAWFORD: And where was that Crayfishing taking place?

TAIT: Five Fingers Peninsula. From Breaksea Sound, heading down to Dusky Sound on the outside. That area there. 

CRAWFORD: You would sail out of Halfmoon Bay?

TAIT: Well, we went up there - we did a five-week trip, and lived up there. Froze the catch, the Lobster tails.

CRAWFORD: This was prior to live capture?

TAIT: Oh, way, way before all of that. 

CRAWFORD: What time of year was your Crayfishing in southern Fiordland? Typically?

TAIT: I think that was January, February, with Jimmy Richmond. Later on I worked a full season from June/July until late March

CRAWFORD: Mid-summer?

TAIT: Yeah, mid-summer. And we came back from there ... Jimmy was a farmer, actually, along this coast here.

CRAWFORD: Down around the Nuggets?

TAIT: Yeah. A wee bit south of the Nuggets. So, he was farmer-fisherman. He wanted the winter off, and I smashed my hand on the boat. I broke three or four fingers, I couldn’t work. I looked after his boat, I moored it up here. I went up to Port Chalmers, Dunedin and did my sea tickets. My Coastal Master and RLL - Restricted Limits Launch Master certification. Came back. He didn’t want to go fishing for the winter, so I fished the Amethyst for the winter on Blue Cod. 

CRAWFORD: That was the second year? 

TAIT: No, still that first year. I fished mainly out in this area, but equally round Codfish. 

CRAWFORD: You fished Foveaux Strait, North-East Stewart Island ...

TAIT: Out to the Traps. 

CRAWFORD: Basically, all the way around. 

TAIT: All the way around Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: Codpotting?

TAIT: No. Lining for Cod. That was probably the last year that the bulk of the fleet, worked lines for Blue Cod. A guy called Lindsey Tosh realized that if he used Pāua guts ... it was very early in the Pāua fishery, he could use the offal from the Pāua in Codpots. Lindsey worked Codpots that year, and nobody else did. And the next year, everyone worked Codpots. It was just so efficient.

CRAWFORD: Nobody had tried potting before that?

TAIT: Well, we had used Codpots during the Crayfish season. 

CRAWFORD: The gear had been around since forever?

TAIT: Forever, yes. The guys would use the bodies of the Crayfish during their season as bait in the Codpots. And they worked fine. But in the winter-time, we didn’t have any bait for them. Lindsey had realised that the offal of the Pāua made perfect bait. Over one season, the fleet transferred from handlines to Codpots. So, I’ve fished briefly on lines. And you know, there's only guys my age that have ever done it. 

CRAWFORD: Then you switched over, as did much of the fleet, to Codpotting?

TAIT: To Codpotting in the winter-time, yes. 

CRAWFORD: That was the 1970s?

TAIT: Yes. 1971 I was offered a company boat out of Bluff. A boat called the Waikaremoana. Skeggs' Fishery. I took that boat and I went back up to Brakesea Sound. 

CRAWFORD: What size vessel?

TAIT: The Waikare would have had to be around 60-foot. Big wooden boat.

CRAWFORD: Two-man crew?

TAIT: Two-man crew, yes.

CRAWFORD: What type of fishery?

TAIT: Lobster fishing, pot fishing.

CRAWFORD: Craypotting?

TAIT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Where, and for how long?

TAIT: I fished down the Five Fingers. Same place that I'd crewed for Jimmy Richmond, because it was the only place that I knew. I fished there with the Waikari. I think I had three seasons with her.

CRAWFORD: 'Seasons' meaning ...

TAIT: Summers. Legally, we could Crayfish all year round. But generally worked June/July until mid late March.

CRAWFORD: Starting November, going through to May or so?

TAIT: Yeah. I’d come home for the winter-time. I never worked winters. From that time on, I was Crayfishing in the summer.

CRAWFORD: Were you a landlubber in the winter? For the most part?

TAIT: Yeah, but still around the water. We’d have a couple of months off, and then I’d be back into Fiordland again. I spent the time off getting further marine qualifications, finishing up with Foreign Going Fishing Master. And I then upgraded. Cliffy offered me a boat called the Sea Belle, which I took. I fished her for a season.

CRAWFORD: Roughly when?

TAIT: Would have been '73 or '74, I suppose. 

CRAWFORD: Sea Belle was how big a vessel?

TAIT: A wee bit smaller. She was about 48-foot, I suppose.

CRAWFORD: I need to back up for a second. When you were offered the first vessel out of Bluff, you operated out of ...

TAIT: Here.

CRAWFORD: Halfmoon Bay?

TAIT: And I took my fish to Bluff. That was where my base was.

CRAWFORD: Right. And then in this new arrangement, you worked another vessel, a smaller vessel?

TAIT: Slightly smaller, but a lot more modern. She was a trawler. So, in the winter-time I went trawling. It was one of the very few boats on Stewart Island that trawled. 

CRAWFORD: Trawling in the winter, still Crayfishing in the summer?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: So, then you were on the water pretty much all year?

TAIT: Yeah. All year round. I fished her for a season, and then I went into partnership with some Dunedin businessmen, and we bought a boat called Mistral. She was around 40 feet, a wee bit smaller. But a much bigger boat - if you get what I mean. And it was pretty much the same pattern. She was a trawler. I Crayfished during the season and then trawled.

CRAWFORD: Once again, based out of Halfmoon Bay?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Where were you doing your trawling?

TAIT: Mainly out on the southeast, but also Te Waewae Bay. 

CRAWFORD: Foveaux Strait?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: What were you trawling for?

TAIT: Just about anything I could catch. [chuckles] I guess mainly we were looking for Elephants, Rig Shark, Tarakihi, Red Cod, occasionally you get Trumpter.

CRAWFORD: You were getting a mixed catch?

TAIT: A mixed catch, yeah. Just whatever came in.

CRAWFORD: All of that fish was going into Bluff?

TAIT: Going into Bluff, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And then back to here, as your home port?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. How long did you trawl for?

TAIT: Oh gosh, that’s a good question. It would have started about '74, I suppose. How long after? I can actually tell you when I quit Fiordland. My wife Iris was pregnant when we gave up coast fishing and came back here. So, 1975 or so. That’s the timeframe. It happened quite quickly. 

CRAWFORD: Your career as a commercial fisherman ended at that point?

TAIT: Around there. But when I got off the big boats, Iris and I settled here.

CRAWFORD: That’s a breakpoint. 

TAIT: I started up as a day-fisherman out of here. Come home every night.

CRAWFORD: What kind of vessel? 

TAIT: About a 30-foot, little steel boat initially. And then later on with the Karitane. You’ll see a sister ship of the Karitane down there. She’s copper colour. A little boat I called the Ranger, that I’d bought off a friend. 

CRAWFORD: Day -fishing then - for what? 

TAIT: Blue Cod and Lobster.

CRAWFORD: Codpotting and Craypotting?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: What season for Cod?

TAIT: Normally I’d start potting in late January, and go through till September, October. 

CRAWFORD: And then you’d switch over to Crayfishing?

TAIT: Crayfishing and Codding would overlap quite seriously. If there was not much Crayfish around, I’d go Codpotting. And if there was a lot of Crayfish around, I ignored the Cod. 

CRAWFORD: What were your day regions for fishing? 

TAIT: I fished between here, and Ruapuke, and down as far as East Cape. I would be going right out to Ruapuke, and down as far as about here, so just that area there. Anywhere within about two hours steam of home.

CRAWFORD: When you were spending that time day-fishing, roughly what was the split in effort over the course of the fishing season? Over the course of the year, between Crayfishing and Codpotting? Was that 50-50 or what?

TAIT: I would normally run pots, Crayfish pots out in late June, early July. And I would generally have them home by Christmas. I would start Codding normally in late January. There would be an overlap of about two months.

CRAWFORD: So, overall - it was almost 50-50?

TAIT: Almost 50-50. 

CRAWFORD: Two different activities also, in terms of what you were doing - and the kinds of things that might predispose you to see and interact with fish?

TAIT: Yeah that’s certainly true. But in fact the potting effort is more or less the same. We were lifting traps, and running them, and putting them down again.

CRAWFORD: Yes. But the content of those traps, and the signals that other animals might respond to are potentially very different. 

TAIT: Absolutely, yes.

CRAWFORD: That started about 1975. Your day-fishing extended that way for how long?

TAIT: I got out of the fishing business in '97.

CRAWFORD: Pretty much consistently the same regions over those twenty years?

TAIT: All the same regions, we never moved. We were just in the same area all the time. 

CRAWFORD: We?

TAIT: We. Iris and me.

CRAWFORD: I thought maybe it was the 'Royal We'.

TAIT: Royal We. That’s the one! Boat and I. Any fisherman who doesn’t include the boat in the same conversation is dead. [both laughing]

CRAWFORD: And She is the master of that relationship.

TAIT: Absolutely! Any fisherman who names his boat after his Wife is crazy. [more laughing]

CRAWFORD: Alright. So you wrapped up your fishing career in 1997?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: I’m just curious ... why did you stop?

TAIT: I was waking up in the morning, and hoping it was going to be blowing, so I didn’t have to go out. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: That’s probably a very good indication. So, 1997 - and there's a new Pete?

TAIT: Yes. We bought a 57-foot ketch, and started doing charters.

CRAWFORD: What was the name?

TAIT: Ketch. A yacht.

CRAWFORD: No, I mean what was the name of the vessel?

TAIT: Talisker. As in the whiskey. 

CRAWFORD: If you say so. I’m not a whiskey guy.

TAIT: We started doing live-aboard charters. The reason we did that was (a) I was getting to the stage that I really had to think about quitting fishing, my hands were giving me a lot of problems. I was getting seriously tired of it, quite frankly. And (b) the issues of catch, particularly for the Lobster fishery was getting pretty fraught. The Crayfish catches were going through the floor. 

CRAWFORD: The fishery harvests had bottomed out?

TAIT: Absolutely. It’s actually recovered very well, and it’s due in large part to the quota management system. We all hoped it would work, but none of us I don't think ever thought that it would actually recover as quickly as it did. I mean my guess would have been 25, 30 years. In fact, it recovered within 10. 

CRAWFORD: If I understand correctly, your quota management system came in here at approximately the same time as ours did on the Great Lakes in Canada. The early- to mid-1980s?

TAIT: Yeah. And it has been, certainly for Lobster, it has been very, very successful. 

CRAWFORD: Just give me a sense ... how many other Crayfishermen would there have been working the northeast region of Stewart Island at that time? Are we talking about 10 or 20 boats?

TAIT: The area that I was fishing was probably 10 boats, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Full-time operations?

TAIT: Full-time. My background in Forest Service, and the places that I’d been fishing ... in the days when we worked a bigger boat, I quite often had friends who would come and spend a week with me onboard. They’d fly in and have a week onboard, because here was an opportunity for them to actually get into some pretty neat parts of the country. My background in Forest Service, plus the response we got from people that we had aboard ... and often I would take folks down to Pegasus on my fishing boat - just for a trip, you know? You had them, so why not play with them as well. The response was amazing. There were boats chartering in Fiordland, but there was nobody doing live-aboard charters down here.

CRAWFORD: 'Live a board'?

TAIT: Live-aboard the boat. Iris and I felt that there was actually a business opportunity. So, we bought in a 57-foot ketch, which would sleep three couples, plus two of the crew. And we set about doing live-aboard charters.

CRAWFORD: That was when?

TAIT: That was the '97/'98 summer.

CRAWFORD: Generally, what regions were you running the live-aboard charters?

TAIT: We occasionally went up as far as Milford in Fiordland. Regularly into Doubtful to do change-overs, but primarily in Dusky, Breaksea, Chalky and Preservation.

CRAWFORD: That whole region of southern Fiordland?

TAIT: Right along the southern corner of Fiordland. Plus Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: Was there a seasonal split between Southern Fiordland and Stewart Island?

TAIT: We initially started working wherever the guests wanted us to go. You could imagine that the logistics of supporting ourselves in Fiordland, from Stewart Island are quite difficult. But Fiordland had a big name. It had a name, and we didn’t have a presence at that stage. So, we borrowed the Fiordland presence to give ourselves a place to work. But for Iris to service me out through Doubtful - it was a two-day trip for her to get up to Doubtful. She could come back in a day, but it took her two days to get in. So that was (a) expensive, and (b) a lot of work. 

CRAWFORD: Iris was sailing or driving?

TAIT: She would drive up to Manapouri, and then come over the hill, and boat, and then bus. 

CRAWFORD: That’s a lot of work. 

TAIT: That’s a lot of work. Some charters Iris was aboard, and some charters she wasn’t. Probably more charters she wasn’t aboard.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, in the early charter days, you were focusing on Southern Fiordland heavily?

TAIT: Yes, yes. 

CRAWFORD: Less so the Stewart Island charters?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Starting roughly 1997, until roughly when?

TAIT: I think we quit ... we’d been doing this till about twelve years ago. 

CRAWFORD: 2003?

TAIT: We had three years in Fiordland with some work around Stewart Island, but we’d rapidly come to the conclusion that Fiordland was just hard work. And remember this was primarily a summer job. We would start usually around Christmas time, and work through until end of April, May. But as we built a reputation up, as we got better known, we found that we could actually just bring out people to Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: That could be the premiere destination?

TAIT: Our last year we never worked in Fiordland at all. 

CRAWFORD: So, maybe it started as 70-30, 80-20 split, Fiordland to Stewart Island. And then as the years went by, it shifted and reversed to become 100% Stewart Island?

TAIT: We were still prepared to go to Fiordland, but it was going to be winter only. But we never did it. My last year in Stewart Island, I think I had four and a half months at Port Pegasus. And we reckoned economically that we needed about five and a half months to make the business work. We were in a building stage of a tourist business. And it takes a while to get them off the ground. Particularly something as very focused as a charter vessel. 

CRAWFORD: An eco-charter. 

TAIT: An eco-charter vessel. Although we did all sorts of work. We would take dive parties away. I would take hunters away, who would use the boat just as a boy's trip for hunting.

CRAWFORD: Right. It wasn’t just eco-charter.

TAIT: No. We did a lot of research work, a lot of filming work. We did all sorts of things, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: And there was a dominant season in general for those charters?

TAIT: Very much so. A summer business, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Christmas until May, June? 

TAIT: November right through until late April. 

CRAWFORD: Why the focus on Port Pegasus?

TAIT: Come back from Port Pegasus, and ask me the same question. This is the boring part of Stewart Island. Pegasus to me is just a stunning place. It’s remote, it’s wild, it’s got magnificent wildlife, it’s got great scenery, good diving, good fishing, wonderful walks. It’s got marvelous natural history, botany, history. You know there's an old village site?

CRAWFORD: Yes, I've heard people speak very highly. And those charters ran till when?

TAIT: The last year that we chartered was 2003/04, all Pegasus, all Stewart Island. We quit because Iris popped two discs in her back.

CRAWFORD: So, the next new Pete ... you were still chartering, but closer to home? Day-trips?

TAIT: Yes. We actually did day-charters. Initially, when we were almost in a transition between the live-aboards and full-time bed and breakfasting. We were doing day-trips down to Port Adventure, down to Lords River, out amongst the Titi Islands mainly looking at the Seal colonies. We were out in the middle of the Bunkers - we did a lot of trips to Bunkers looking at Seals. We'd anchor out there, and put the people into an inflatable, and then explore around the Seal colonies. Which, thinking about what's happening more recently, that actually becomes quite important. 

CRAWFORD: Very much so. When did you start spending much of your time with the day-trips that focused heavily, but not exclusively, on the Seals?

TAIT: 2004. But that tapered off. We probably stopped doing that because we were getting so much work at Ulva Island. And one of the issues for doing the day-trips, she’s quite an expensive boat to run. We actually needed quite big parties - six or seven people aboard, to make it economical. And we would do birding charters as well. 

CRAWFORD: When did you shift to Ulva, primarily?

TAIT: 2010. Like a lot of things, it wasn’t a cut-off date. About 2010.

CRAWFORD: Day-tripping ...

TAIT: Just backwards and forwards to Ulva.

CRAWFORD: And most of the time that you spent on the water, during this most recent period up to and including now ...

TAIT: Paterson Inlet. Golden Bay to Paterson Inlet. Because I kept the boat moored over there. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Does that bring us up to the present?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Do you need a break or anything before we start with the next topic?

TAIT: No, no. I earn my living talking. [both chuckle]

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

CRAWFORD: To what extent was Science part of your forestry training?

TAIT: I did a lot of work in Forest Service assisting Scientists. I would field manage expeditions, I would act as a general gofer for them, I would act as a technician. I collected for Scientists, mainly in Botany. Dr Lucy Moore from Botany Division at Canterbury University.

CRAWFORD: You didn’t receive any formal post-secondary Science training - but you have worked in a professional context with Scientists. 

TAIT: Yes. We were very much taught how to present information for Scientists. We would do fieldwork for Researchers, mainly Pine forest, to be quite honest. But it taught us all the basics of recording information.

CRAWFORD: But even beyond that, you were also working with these Scientists, and the way that they think, and the way that they bring in their knowledge from their system. That rubs off on you. When you spend significant time with Scientists, you start to get knowledge from them and you start to share knowledge back. 

TAIT: I’m a nosey individual. I enjoyed looking over their shoulders at what they were doing. And most Scientists are more than happy to share - because for so many of them, nobody else is interested. [both chuckle heartily] So, it was really a great way to learn what they were about.

CRAWFORD: Most of those Scientists were terrestrial specialists, forest Scientists?

TAIT: Yes, absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Did you ever run charters and or assist scientific research that was more aquatic?

TAIT: Yes, very much. The last year we were running the charter business, we probably did about four and a half months, five months at sea. And a month and a half of that was with formal research expeditions. 

CRAWFORD: Chartering your vessel in order to go out and collect data for their research?

TAIT: Yeah, absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: So, once again, you were directly working with either the researchers or their students and technicians?

TAIT: Yes, yes.

CRAWFORD: And you being a nosey individual, you would have picked up a lot?

TAIT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Was that consistent throughout the entire time you were running charters?

TAIT: Always doing it. We were here, they knew my background, and that probably meant something. Because I knew where we going, and what we were doing, and I could make things happen for them. We did a lot of filming work as well. I’ve worked with the BBC Natural History Unit. David Attenborough, took one of his teams to the Auckland Islands. When you’re working with people like that, you’re looking over their shoulder, watching what they’re doing, and actually trying to absorb what they’re getting their heads around. 

CRAWFORD: Based on what you've said, I'm thinking you might score yourself at least a Medium level of overlap with the Science knowledge system. More than a passing kind of interest?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Same question regarding the effect of Māori culture and knowledge on your understanding of New Zealand coastal marine ecology. How would you characterize that?

TAIT: Medium. Maybe a bit less. A lot of the information that I got from Māori would be from fellow fisherman. And more especially in my early career as a fisherman, because it was a different fishery. My latter career I was fishing from home, so we didn’t socialize as much with fisherman as I did in the early days. We were living in Fiordland. We would sometimes spend days on anchor, because the weather was too bad to work. And we socialized. Three or four boats tied up together, and we talked. We used to call them 'concerts'. But you were pulling knowledge out of those people just in conversation all the time. Whether they were Māori and identified as such, or Māori-Caucasian and didn’t identify, or Caucasian - it didn’t actually matter. They were just the guys we worked with. 

CRAWFORD: So, some of these people were known to you to be Māori. You interacted with them, but if I’m getting this right, it was mostly focused on the practicalities and the knowledge of the fishing?

TAIT: Can I give you a more general example? My fishing base was Breaksea Sound in Fiordland. Up at a place called Chatham Head, there was an old Māori skull buried there. The Māori guys who fished with me, on days off they would occasionally go up to visit this skull, and say Hi to it, and put him back again. That to me was a very personal, tribal thing to do. With my Causacian coloured eyes, it wasn’t something that I should have been involved with. So, I would never go with them, because I felt it was quite private. I know of a lot of archaeological sites in Fiordland, Māori sites. When we were chartering, I was very careful who I took there, because I felt they were private. There were things that we would share, but they were equally private, and I would only take people there that I felt would respect them.

CRAWFORD: That’s an excellent example. What I’m going after here, is to what extend have Māori shared with you - not just their strategic  and tactical knowledge of fish and fishing, but a little bit more about the cultural history, their whakapapa, their Māori creation stories, and their values about the ecological relationship between the Sea and the Humans.

TAIT: A lot, but I don’t think you could ever say I was deeply immersed in it. Not at all. It was more in the context of what we were doing at the time, and the stories that we told. 

CRAWFORD: Since you moved to Stewart Island in 1969, within the context of living in a community that has a strong Māori presence, I presume it's thesame type of thing?

TAIT: It just washes over us. It’s just where we live, and what happens around us.

CRAWFORD: That's cool.

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

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

TAIT: It wasn’t really until I started fishing. Working with guys in Brakesea Sound. There were a lot of, I wouldn’t call them elderly, although they seemed quite ancient to me. They were guys, probably younger than I am now, fishing in there. The Edwards Brothers, Chase Edwards - I can’t remember his Brother's name. I can’t even remember the name of the boat, she went up to Gisborne. Rex Bradshaw, Chase is gone, Rex is gone. Peter Roderick. Ah, there was a whole heap of guys who had been almost born at sea. They had been fishing there since before they went to secondary school. And in bad weather, the boats would be fleeted up together ... and even in the evenings. You'd sit and yarn over coffee.

CRAWFORD: Sure. You'd have weather stories, Sealer stories, Whaler stories, fishing stories.

TAIT: Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: And I'm guessing you'd have some Shark stories. 

TAIT: Yeah, yeah. We used to see signs of Sharks. Setting longlines, you'd get a Groper's head come up, and something had obviously eaten the rest of the fish. So, that would be a "Gee, I remember" type of story. I remember one of the fishermen telling me that in Doubtful Sound they left a Shark hook drifting on a 44-gallon drum.

CRAWFORD: Baited?

TAIT: Baited.

CRAWFORD: With what?

TAIT: I have no idea.

CRAWFORD: But a steel hook on a floating drum?

TAIT: Yeah. A 44-gallon drum. The hook was maybe 10 or 20 feet below the water. I actually had one for a long time. These were a hook, that size. Spring steel. They caught up with this thing - or rather it caught up with them - as they came into the Sound. And remember the surface water in the fiords always flows out of the Sound. So, if you drop something like a float at the head of the Sound, it will ultimately end up out at the entrance. It will be carried perpetually down the fiord. So, they set this thing up in the morning, and went fishing, and they came back - they knew approximately where it would be. As they caught up, this thing was steaming down the Sound at quite a rate of knots. It was been dragged along by something underwater, and then eventually got dragged under the water. Now that 44-gallon drum ... it's a lot of muscle power to drag a float that big underwater. They had no idea what it was. But they never saw it again.

CRAWFORD: They never saw the drum again?

TAIT: Yeah. So their comment was "If that’s the size the Sharks are around here, I really don’t want to know about them. They’re far too big for me." That would not have been a Basking Shark. We used to see a lot of Basking Sharks up there. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, that was an example of the kind of story that would get told while the fishing boats were tied up, and you were socializing. Waiting for the weather to blow over, or whatever?

TAIT: Yep.  

CRAWFORD: Any stories about specific interactions with White Pointers from that region? Fiordland?

TAIT: No, no. The guys talking about them, a lot of the stuff is based around this area here. Centre Island, the Solanders, and Codfish.

CRAWFORD: When you were fishing, did you and your mates call them White Pointers or White Sharks? 

TAIT: Just big Sharks. I don’t think we actually ever identified them. Some of the guys would have known what they were. But if you see a fin, and it was just a fin ...

CRAWFORD: A Shark is a Shark?

TAIT: Yeah. We would see in Fiordland particularly ... and I presume they were Threshers. We would see them quite regularly. Smaller animals, but still big enough. We'd see them on the surface. We picked them from a very long tail, which would be out of the water - as well as the dorsal fin. 

CRAWFORD: You had mentioned seeing Basking Sharks. Did you see Basking Sharks in southern Fiordland?

TAIT: Quite regularly. Over the late summer period, normally mid- to late-January, through to February when the temperatures were highest. We would come across them quite regularly. 

CRAWFORD: In the Sounds, or offshore?

TAIT: Both. 

CRAWFORD: Basking Sharks travelling individually ...

TAIT: Normally, two or three of them together. 

CRAWFORD: Right. When you saw them, two or three at a time, what were they doing? How were they behaving?

TAIT: Just swimming along very slowly on the surface, obviously feeding. Mouths open. 

CRAWFORD: Any fin or body protruding above the surface?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Fin out of the water, mouth open in that kind of characteristic grazing?

TAIT: Yes. That’s what they were doing.

CRAWFORD: Just swimming real lazy?

TAIT: Yeah. I never ever saw one in a hurry. And if you steamed up on top of them, and frightened them ... they would drift down, and gone. They never seemed to hurry. 

CRAWFORD: And they were often hanging around near the surface, feeding? Filter feeding on plankton?

TAIT: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Big fish. 

TAIT: Huge fish. 

CRAWFORD: I guess now is as good a time as any. Peter, have you ever seen what you knew to be a White Pointer in the wild?

TAIT: Not in Fiordland. But I have out here.

CRAWFORD: For all the time that you spent in Fiordland, you only heard about them? 

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: At least that one story, shared with you by your mates about the baited drum. You knew something big had taken the drum down. Basking Sharks are not the types of animals you would typically associate with that kind of behaviour. Well, you could conceive that a baited hooked could have somehow accidentally snagged them, or something like that?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: But Basking Sharks are plankton feeders. So, they wouldn't have been after a baited hook. 

TAIT: And they’re never going to speed. They’d drag a drum down, they’re plenty big enough for that. But they’re not big enough to drag a drum - they’re not fast enough, at 5 or 6 knots.

CRAWFORD: Right. Doing the math, there are very few things that could have done what they saw that drum do. They said the drum had been moving quite quickly, and then it went down - and was never seen again?

TAIT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: You had not seen any White Pointers in southern Fiordland. Did you ever fish northern Fiordland?

TAIT: Never. We would go up to Milford Sound for fuel and bait and so on. But we never fished up there. But about the Sharks, one of the guys in particular, a guy called Peter Rodrick who is from a Riverton family, I think he lives in Australia now. He moved a lot during his career. He would follow fish, and he would try and be ahead of the fish, waiting for them to turn up. He spent a lot of time out at the Solanders. And the area between the Solanders which is way out here, and Centre Island here, and Codfish here - that was always known where the Sharks live. That’s the big triangle. 'Shark Central', if you like. 

CRAWFORD: By 'Sharks' now, are we talking Sharks in general, or are we talking White Pointers?

TAIT: White Sharks. I remember Peter Roderick, in fact he mentioned it two or three times, diving at the Solanders to retrieve an anchor that was jammed. And him getting trapped on the bottom, in the general term by 'big bitey' swimming around on top of him.

CRAWFORD: ‘Big bitey’ singular? Or ‘big biteys’ plural?

TAIT: I think it was plural, but it’s a long time ago.

CRAWFORD: Right. So, he was out doing his work, an experienced diver, and he was feeling significantly at risk?

TAIT: Yeah. Well, I don’t know how much he knew about Sharks, but sitting on the bottom with a Shark above your head would probably encourage you to stay there until he wandered off somewhere. 

CRAWFORD: That was at the Solanders?

TAIT: At the anchorage at the Solanders. It’s a rocky anchorage. It’s a very, very foul bottom. Anchors get jammed, and he was trying to retrieve his. He would have laid it as a mooring, and then couldn’t get it back. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. In southern Fiordland, no personal experiences, but you have the story with the baited drum getting towed. Anything else from the old-timers or your mates?

TAIT: Well certainly my own experience. We used to longline for bait up there. Targeting Groper, specifically. 

CRAWFORD: These were vertical longlines?

TAIT: Droplines, danlines, yeah. Probably once every month or so, we would get a line cleaned out by something that was taking the bulk of the fish. Now we had a lot of problems up there with Blind Eels, but you always knew about Blind Eels, because you got the skeleton and the skin - nothing else. 

CRAWFORD: These Blind Eels took the flesh only?

TAIT: Yeah. They’d often be dropping out the vent as they came in, if you’ve ever seen a Hagfish, Blind Eels. That was pretty common. But once every month or so, we’d get a line cleaned out by something that took the whole fish, and actually took it quite cleanly behind the head.

CRAWFORD: Right. This has come up several times in other interviews with fishermen. The nature of the culprit, whoever is cutting off the body of the fish on the line ... there's evidence pointing to different species at different times in different locations. By 'evidence,' some people have referred to the nature of the cut, how clean it was, that type of thing. Some people have actually said they saw Makos come up to the side of the boat - while they were lifting the heads. They use that observation to infer "Well, maybe that's my culprit right there." But other people have said there was definitely a White Pointer known to be in proximity where they found their heads.

TAIT: We never saw the Shark. They were clean cuts - as if something had gone [chop].

CRAWFORD: So that’s an indication of Shark presence. But it's very difficult without any other type of evidence ...

TAIT: We had no idea. We just automatically said "Big White Shark." 

CRAWFORD: Were there any other accounts of your mates from that region?

TAIT: Just that general feeling that I got from them. Whenever they started talking Sharks, they would always be saying that area around Solanders, Codfish, Centre Island is 'Shark Central'. 

CRAWFORD: Did they ever say why?

TAIT: My guess would be ... and its sort of reading back with what I’ve learned since ... 40-odd years ago, Graham Wilson - who’s stuff I showed you - he spent quite a bit of time on the Solanders, counting Seals. That was the biggest single population of Seals down here. So, my thoughts about Seals being a primary food source for Great Whites, would indicate why there were so many Sharks in that area.

CRAWFORD: But that's a very specific location within the triangle.

TAIT: Absolutely. Now we also did ... this is my early days when I was day-fishing, linefishing with the Amethyst down here at the Traps. I think it only ever happened to me once. We started bringing up lines, because we were handlining, with a mechanical haul that pulls the line, and we would be working in 40 fathoms of water. There was obviously something following us around there, taking the fish off the lines. All we were getting was heads. I knew enough from talking with the old fisherman that when that happened, you might as well go home - because somebody's down there having a high old time on your catch. I mean Blue Cod can be big animals, they can be yay-sized. But whatever was taking them, was taking them completely at the back of the head. That particular day, we moved far enough that we got away from it.

CRAWFORD: The danlines that you were using, they were targeting Groper?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: The lines were baited with what?

TAIT: Whatever we had, quite frankly.

CRAWFORD: Could have been squid, could have been whatever?

TAIT: No squid. We would have used Blue Cod, stuff like that. Sometimes venison.

CRAWFORD: But it was a baited hook that was intended to catch a Groper. And then a Shark of whatever kind comes by, takes just the Groper body off behind the head. Why didn't you get the occasional incidental catch of the Shark on the hook?

TAIT: I don't know. My guess would be that if the Shark took the whole fish, head included, we never got the line back. And we did lose lines quite regularly. So maybe that was why we lost them.

CRAWFORD: You would just never have seen them?

TAIT: They just vanished. We had no idea.

CRAWFORD: What type of line, typically, for these danlines? Quarter-inch?

TAIT: In diameter, probably a wee bit more than that. Probably half-inch.

CRAWFORD: What type of material?

TAIT: Synthetic, lead line. Not braided. And we never used chain leaders or something that would be Shark-proof. And at the bottom we probably only had 50 or 60 pounds.

CRAWFORD: So, if there was a Shark that took a full Groper, with the hook ...

TAIT: They would just walk off with it, yeah. They would break it off, and we did lose hooks as well. You would just lose a hook - the line would be frayed, and you would think "Whoever bit that, it bit through the leader as well." But we never used particularly heavy or Shark-proof gear. It would have been easy for them to cut it off - or walk off with the whole thing. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Anything else regarding big Sharks in southern Fiordland?

TAIT: I can’t think of anything else. But remember, it’s also a long time ago. A lot of the stories that we shared were like them coming off the Codlines. All of us in those days, or most of us, would spend our winters Codding. Particularly the old-timers, who even though they were making big money Crayfishing, they actually couldn’t quit for the winter. They would feel they had to do a couple of Codding trips. But in the wintertime, if they went Codding, they wouldn’t go up to Fiordland. They would come down around Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: Ok. It was a seasonal perspective for Southern Fiordland, in that regard?

TAIT: Yes. Some of the guys would go back up into Fiordland in the wintertime. In fact, I used to. But it was always a winter trip inside the Sound. Just getting set up, sort of breaking yourself in.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's talk about the triangle between Solanders, Centre Island and Codfish. There's also a trench there ...

TAIT: Out to the west, the Solander Trench.

CRAWFORD: Yes. Some of the fisherman from Riverton have referred to that as being a very productive fishing ground. 

TAIT: Yeah. We used to see the distant-water boats working up in there. In the old days, because of the way the 12-mile limit worked, they could effectively get inside the 12-mile limit, right up through the Solander Trench and drag it. I have no knowledge of that area at all.

CRAWFORD: You said yhat's an example of knowledge from the old-timers, who said it a ‘sharky’ area?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: And by 'Sharks' they mean all kinds? Or White Pointers in particular?

TAIT: I can only assume it was White Sharks. Because they were the big, obvious ones.

CRAWFORD: And the fact that the Solanders have a major Seal rookery - that was one of the possible reasons why you think the region was referred to as 'sharky'?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Any other regional factors you could think of, that could be important in that region, other than Seals?

TAIT: I couldn’t think of any other factor. I mean, it was just a good food source for them. I can’t remember what the Sealers said about it. But at that stage, we were starting to see quite good Seal numbers around the west side of Codfish as well.

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was that? 

TAIT: Oh God, when would that be? I went round there on a couple of trips with Pāua divers. It would have been the last year I had the Mistral. So, 1973 - sometime around there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to this region ... Was there some kind of common wisdom about diving around the Titi Islands?

TAIT: I’d have to say, I never really thought too much about it. Quite frankly, back then.

CRAWFORD: But it wasn’t really a kind of standing rule "Thou Shalt" or "Thou Shalt Not"?

TAIT: No. We did diving out around the Islands. When I started Pāua diving, we’d bought half-a-tonne of Pāua quota to educate our children with. We had been putting money aside from the day they were born for education. We got to the point where, I think Ann was twelve and faced with secondary school the next year for her. We realized we only had enough money saved for one year of her boarding school fees. And what to do about that? So, we decided to buy Abalone quota, which we did do. We had just enough money to buy half-a-tonne. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly, when was this?

TAIT: Well, Ann was 12 at the time, she’s 41 now. You do the sums. We bought half-a-tonne of Pāua quota, and we knew nothing about Pāua diving. The local cop, he used to do quite a bit of diving with others for Pāua. He took us out to Jacky Lee, initially. That island you can see just out there. That was over the summer. So, a really a bad time of the year to do it. 

CRAWFORD: But that was a locally-experienced Pāua diver, taking you as a novice out to the Titi Islands in the summer? It's important to put this in context with regard to time. I think you said it was roughly thirty years ago?

TAIT: Thirty-odd years. The Shark 'problem' was just in the very early days of it then. Because the Seal numbers weren’t all that high then. Forty years ago, the Seal population on Bench Island was only 300 animals. So, it might have been at that stage 350 or 400 animals, but they weren’t that high. We perceived more trouble with Seals than we did with Sharks.

CRAWFORD: You mean 'more trouble' as Pāua divers?

TAIT: Yeah, absolutely.

CRAWFORD: You were freediving, and the Seals were coming in and harassing you?

TAIT: Hell, yes! That’s their breeding time of year. When you’re a randy male, the thought of some other big black thing in the water, poaching on your girlfriends, is not going to thrill you.

CRAWFORD: Did you personally have Seals coming up to you while you were Pāua diving?

TAIT: Yes, we did. Absolutely. We quit diving out there, because of the Seals. I had one bad experience ...

CRAWFORD: With a Seal?

TAIT: Yeah. And the cop had one. He pulled some weed apart, and there's a Seal right in his face. I had one chase me round a little bit, it was obviously interested in me. Funnily enough, they didn’t bother my Daughter. Whether they recognized her as being female, and acted very differently to me as a male ... I’m quite sure that animals can sense us. They do know what we are. I’m quite convinced they can figure it out. She also had her suit that was grey and pinkish colour, which may have had an influence. And I can tell you right now, that it’s not just the males who are cranky. It’s the females as well. If you’ve ever watched a female Fur Seal at breeding time of year, they get a hell of a hard life from the males. I understand why they’re cranky. No, I won’t go near Seal colonies diving. 

CRAWFORD: That’s very interesting. Roughly thirty years ago, at the Titi Islands, the Seal numbers were down. You said they weren’t at the all-time-low, but they certainly weren’t high. They were just starting to pick up?

TAIT: Yes. Significantly less than they are now.

CRAWFORD: Like on the order of a few hundreds of animals around an island. And just to put this in perspective, if you and I were to go over there during the height of the Seal mating season, and we did a survey around those islands, in comparison to a few hundred, how many would we see now?

TAIT: A few thousands. 

CRAWFORD: Right. So, on an order of a magnitude more. 

TAIT: Probably about eight to ten times more than it would have been. Yeah, ten might be pushing it a wee bit. Certainly eight times more.

CRAWFORD: When is Seal pupping season here?

TAIT: Christmas-time. We were there in January. Seals mate a handful of days after the female gives birth.

CRAWFORD: So, just after. Aright. This is very interesting. In terms of your Pāua diving experience, that was something we should have characterized before. You got your quota about 30 years ago?

TAIT: About that, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And you fished it for how many seasons?

TAIT: We must have fished it for about eight or nine years.

CRAWFORD: Half-a-tonne. So, it wasn’t intensive. You began diving the Titi Islands. Did you shift to other places?

TAIT: Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Where else did you go?

TAIT: We did a wee bit of work up the North Shore. From Lee Bay up as far as Bungaree. Worked along that face down there. But most of it was from the Neck south. 

CRAWFORD: I’m supposing that you were avoiding Seal colonies?

TAIT: Absolutely. We quite deliberately stayed away from them. I mean it was not only me gonna get bitten, it was my children. We used the Pāua diving, the little amount we had, that half-a-tonne ... it was a family thing that we did. So, Iris would be dinghy girl, and the two kids and I would be diving. 

CRAWFORD: In that time you were Pāua diving ... it wasn’t recreational, but it was still at a relatively low level?

TAIT: Very, very low level. 

CRAWFORD: Did you see Sharks of any kind while you were Pāua diving? 

TAIT: Never did. 

CRAWFORD: Not even Sevengills? Nothing?

TAIT: Never did. Can’t remember one. Certainly the kids never talked about it, and I’m sure it would have got their attention. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Ok. To sum up, in all of the time you have been commercial fishing, running charters, been on the water around Stewart Island for a significant amount of your life ... you had that one direct observation, and one indirect observation via Iris and your dive mates in Paterson Inlet. Does that sum it up?

TAIT: Yeah. The only other things that we’ve had, and I used to see it all the time ... I did a lot of my final cleaning of Cod over in that bay across there. It’s called Bragg's Bay.

CRAWFORD: Alright, let's talk about that. Within the context of Halfmoon Bay - it’s a bathymetrically complex bay, it has several smaller embayments. Describe in general where had you been fishing. I'm guessing this was during the phase when you were day-fishing?

TAIT: Yes. When I was day-fishing, my wife and I used to do all our own processing and marketing. As well as catching fish, we processed it, packed it into boxes, and sold it. We had our own marketing business. Let's say I was fishing out to the east of the Island. I would come home in the afternoon on the auto-pilot, filleting fish all the way. Preparing the fish on the way home. I would normally try and arrive at Halfmoon Bay with about three-quarters of them done.

CRAWFORD: But you were chugging along. Roughly how long to get back to Halfmoon Bay?

TAIT: Oh, near two and a half hours.

CRAWFORD: Two and half hours on auto-pilot, relatively slowly. But you were cleaning as you were going. Was this a two-man operation?

TAIT: No, this was just me. Throwing the offal over the side of the boat as I’m going. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly what kind of speed are we talking?

TAIT: Well, it depended on how much I caught. But probably about four knots. So quite slow. I would actually do it quite deliberately, so that I could do three quarters of my catch on the way home, hand that fish to Iris, and then I would go back to Bragg's Bay to finish filleting. 

CRAWFORD: Which one is Bragg's Bay?

TAIT: That one over there. The north corner of Halfmoon Bay.

CRAWFORD: Is it a rocky bay?

TAIT: No, it's a sandy bay. You can see it from here - there’s a launch on anchor over there. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. I don’t mean to interrupt, but as a day-fisherman, you were working Codpots?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: I realize there's seasonal variation, daily variation. But roughly what kind of catch were you getting?

TAIT: I would be looking at getting five to six hundred fish a day. 

CRAWFORD: So, on the order of three to four hundred fish would have been processed, and the offal gone overboard, while you were running on auto-pilot back to port?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Then you stopped at the wharf. 

TAIT: Offloaded to Iris. And then I’d go back over to Bragg's Bay, and finish my filleting.

CRAWFORD: Stationary when you were there?

TAIT: I was on an anchor there, yes.

CRAWFORD: In what depth of water roughly?

TAIT: At low tide, probably two metres of water. So, very shallow. And at the end of that, there would obviously be a great deal of offal on the bottom - frames, the heads. Just on the bottom below the boat. Quite obvious. When I got back the next day, there would be nothing there. 

CRAWFORD: You’re thinking ...

TAIT: Something was eating it. Because there is no tidal movement through that bay.

CRAWFORD: And not a day like today, when there were high winds?

TAIT: No, no. Unless it was easterly, it wouldn’t affect that anyway. If you got a big easterly roll, maybe.

CRAWFORD: Ok. This was you. But were you the only Codpotter using Bragg Bay to clean your fish?

TAIT: Guys used all sorts of bays. We all had our own favourite corner to do it.

CRAWFORD: But what I’m trying to get at is, back in the day - it was a common thing, right?  

TAIT: Absolutely. A lot of them would finish off in the bay.

CRAWFORD: I'm guessing it was typical to be cleaning while they were on auto-pilot on their way back as well. You probably learned that from other fishermen, right?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was this?

TAIT: Up until '97. 

CRAWFORD: And roughly how many Codpotters were running at that time? Day-fishing?

TAIT: Probably seven or eight boats working here. But then, to go back to the days when I was lining, there was anything up to 40 or 50 boats might be working at any one time. But not all of them day-fishing. Probably only a quarter of them day-fishing. 

CRAWFORD: Right. But the point is, there was an active Codpotting fleet. And yours was on the small end of operations? Among the other day-fishermen?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: There were others that were bringing in several times the amount?

TAIT: Yeah. The big boats would be bringing in a lot of fish. I can tell you that the Hicks Brothers way before I started fishing, their record out of here was 100 tonnes of Blue Cod a year. And that’s not as whole fish. That’s as H and G, headed and gutted. So, you can multiply that, so maybe 140 tonnes of live weight fish. 

CRAWFORD: What was your quota when you were day-fishing? 

TAIT: My quota when I was fishing was 33 tonnes. I used to catch about 22, 23 tonnes a year. 

CRAWFORD: And their record was 140 tonnes.

TAIT: Yeah. They were the top boat. But that was a long time before I started. 

CRAWFORD: And that was on the big end of operations. You were on the smallish end of things?

TAIT: Well, I was actually one of the bigger of the day boats. There was probably only one other day boat caught more than I did.

CRAWFORD: Alright. Very good. You were cleaning fish at Bragg Bay?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And this was a daily thing for you. It was a very typical, a very casual thing. People were doing the same kinds of things. 

TAIT: Everybody else was doing it. The really interesting thing to me with that was, we never thought of it as "Stuff's gone" or "Something's been there to eat it."

CRAWFORD: Ok. Was there anything else that you remember, especially as a young man, you would have heard from the old-timers about White Pointers in this region? In terms of where they were, how they behaved, why they were here? Anything like that?

TAIT: There were significant numbers seen in relation to the rest of the fisheries area in that Solander, Codfish, Centre Island triangle. They interacted with fisherman wherever they were line-fishing, and they presumed they were Sharks. And I heard one story of guys who got so sick of them that they filled a Cod bait with chlorine, powdered chlorine, and actually caught a Shark on it.

CRAWFORD: They poisoned it?

TAIT: They poisoned the Shark, yeah. With chlorine powder.

CRAWFORD: Where was that roughly?

TAIT: That was, I understand, at the Traps. Apparently wherever they went, this bloody Shark kept taking their fish. And you know it’s the guy's livelihood, and they got sick of it. They gutted a big Cod, which is quite a big animal. I think they used oil japara, which would rot in the Shark's gut. They wrapped up chlorine in that, and sent it up and down on the line until it got taken. Twenty minutes or half an hour later, this animal's breaching out of the water, obviously in great distress. I mean it’s an awful story, but ...

CRAWFORD: When was that roughly?

TAIT: Oh God, that would have been long before I started fishing.

CRAWFORD: That was a story that was handed down?

TAIT: Yeah, yeah absolutely. Whether it’s true, whether it’s false, whether it’s bullshit, I have no idea. It was a bloody good story, because we didn’t like Sharks.

CRAWFORD: And what you told me before, about that shooting ethos - that that was common, prior to your fishing days, as well?

TAIT: Absolutely. They saw a Shark, they would shoot it. 

CRAWFORD: Was there any split in the fishing community, between the pro-shooters and the anti-shooters? 

TAIT: Nope.

CRAWFORD: It was kind of a common thing?

TAIT: I never knew of anybody who "Oh, you musn’t do that." There may have been people here like that. But because it was a very strong majority of opinion, they would just keep their heads down, and not mention their views on it.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Back in the day, did the old-timers say anything about White Pointers out at the Titi Islands? About people going there, or not going there, at particular points in time? Anything like that?

TAIT: No. I mean the only real comment was about Abalone diving out there during that summer breeding season. 

CRAWFORD: Summer breeding season of the Seals?

TAIT: Of the Seals. 

CRAWFORD: And you’ve already indicated that the Seals themselves are a hazard?

TAIT: The Seals are the hazard, not the Sharks. It was never Sharks. Although one guy, as I said, was nipped at Bench Island. 

CRAWFORD: In general, when you think about New Zealand coastal waters, does Stewart Island stand up as a place where they’re abundant relative to other places around New Zealand?

TAIT: Certainly. One of the unfortunate things for me is that I’ve lived on this Island for so long, I’ve really forgotten what the rest of the country is like.

CRAWFORD: I understand. But to the extent that you may have heard about White Pointers at other places around New Zealand coastal waters?

TAIT: I was aware of one Shark attack ... in fact I think there might have been a couple in the Otago Peninsula area. A guy Bruce Skinner got a medal for rescuing a guy there. And of course, the surf beaches for Dunedin, St. Kilda, St. Clair - they had Shark nets set off them. Fishermen in those days that I knew, guys I knew to socialize with, from Port Chalmers. A couple of them had at various times the contract to service those nets. So, there was always Sharks around the place. Well, it was in the newspapers, of course. 

CRAWFORD: Any place else that you can think of?

TAIT: That’s the only one that I can think of. And then that nonsense on the Campbells. Not a single fisherman from down here, in my experience, would have thought Sharks went that far south. 

CRAWFORD: You were all surprised?

TAIT: Absolutely blown away. And yet when I was working on the Auckland Islands with Department of Conservation, on our last trip down there with David Attenborough’s team ...

CRAWFORD: Which was when, roughly?

TAIT: It was about '03, '04. The DOC [Department of Conservation] staff said that it’s just a fact of life for the Hooker's Sea Lions down there. One in ten will get hit by a Shark. Will end its life with a Shark. 

CRAWFORD: And by a 'Shark,' they meant a White Pointer?

TAIT: Great White Sharks, yeah. I saw the damage they did to the animals. I’d been thinking of diving out at Dundas Island out at the Aucklands, and decided against at that point. That was the nail in the coffin.

CRAWFORD: When you compare that knowledge, to what you've experienced here - you haven’t seen anything like that in terms of direct evidence of White Pointers on Seals in this region? 

TAIT: No. But certainly down there. I handled a carcass of a Hooker's Sea Lion that had been hit by a Shark. There was no argument that it had been hit by a very large animal with very big teeth. 

CRAWFORD: Based on the gash?

TAIT: Oh yeah, it was huge, huge wounds. I mean, the animal was dead. A lot of them actually survive the attack, but not the after-effects.

CRAWFORD: Was the DOC team there on the Aucklands ...

TAIT: They were working on Hooker's Sea Lions primarily. So, doing autopsy on any dead animal they came across was part of what they did. They said that the approximate number of mortality due to Shark attacks was probably 10%. You see the poor old Sea Lion is pretty vulnerable. If he loses a flipper, he’s going to die. Even if he doesn’t die of the wound, he will die of starvation. They really are pretty vulnerable. 

CRAWFORD: Are there Hooker Sea Lion colonies in this region? Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island?

TAIT: Yes, absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Where about?

TAIT: There’s one at Port Pegasus, mainly bachelor males, old males and younger males. In that bay there, we used to go and see them. 

CRAWFORD: These are not rookeries, it’s not a pupping ground?

TAIT: It’s not pupping down there. There’s the odd pup around the place, but the biggest colonies are along the South Otago coast. They are scattered animals all around. They’re breeding, which is pretty good. 

CRAWFORD: But Campbell Island is different because it’s a concentrated rookery?

TAIT: No. The main rookeries for Hooker's Sea Lions are Enderby Island. There’s probably about 2000 animals all out on Enderby. Probably another 4000, 5000 animals all out on Dundas Island, which is about two miles, three miles south of that on the east side. And there’s a very small colony down in, I can’t remember the name of the island, down in Carnley Harbor, right at the bottom of the Island. So, there’s those three main rookeries in the Auckland Islands group. But there are also Hooker's Sea Lions living, and I presume breeding, on the Campbells.

CRAWFORD: But the important thing in that regard is, we’re not even talking about Sea Lion pups getting hit. These are very large, mature Sea Lions, that large White Pointers are going after. It’s not as if it’s the pups that are capturing their attention?

TAIT: It’s the mature animals. Well, you think about it - most sea creatures, they need fat in their diet, their high energy needs. And fat produces huge amounts of energy for the person who gets lucky enough to get to eat it. We generally think of Seals as being very fatty, oily meat. I’ve eaten them, and I know how oily it is.

CRAWFORD: In this context then, the Foveaux Strait - Stewart Island broader region, do you think that the White Pointers are here for the Seals?

TAIT: I think that’s the main draw card. And I’m only guessing, because none of us knows. We have no idea what the Seal population here was before Māori came to this place. For Māori, Seals were one of the great protein sources for this country. The Seals woke up very quickly to the idea that Humans are extremely bad news, and they retreated into pretty difficult coastline, like the Titi Islands out there. But the Antipodes - which is what, 5000 acres - the Sealers first came there in 1790, took 85000 skins in six months. The slaughter was so big, by approximately 1830 a gang of four men in six months took less than 50 Seals.

CRAWFORD: You mean the early European Sealers?

TAIT: Yes. And the total take of the Antipodes - which is probably a wee bit bigger than the total sum of the area of the Titi Islands out here - the total take off the Antipodes, they estimated to be 200,000 animals plus, in less than twenty years. There wouldn’t have been as many out here I guess, because Māori would have had access to them, but not great access. Let's say that these islands out here, let's guess that there were 100,000 animals. Half the population of the Antipodes. In twenty years, the European Sealers almost exterminated them. 100,000 animals - that’s a lot more than there is here now. So, imagine what sort of a Shark population that would have attracted and sustained over that pupping season. Sharks will take anything, if they can get them. But the older you get, hopefully the craftier you get. And I doubt Seals are too much different to that. The young ones would be the ones who hadn’t learned the skills of staying out of the way of Great White Sharks. So that summer period, the lead-up to breeding, when the females are perhaps a bit more sluggish. The gravid females are relatively sluggish. And the bulls are very much focused on the coming breeding season. They’re probably quite vulnerable then. And certainly the pups, once they start to gain water skills - they will be very vulnerable. So that period from November through to April, May I suppose, maybe a wee bit later - that’s the easy hunting time for the White Sharks.

CRAWFORD: I think I understand.

TAIT: This is I know just my thoughts on looking at what’s happened, if you take the Seals out of the equation by killing almost all of them, the Sharks are probably going to either abandon the area - or start to re-focus on the fishing industry, because fishermen are a source of food. And they’re not stupid. As a population builds up, you’re going to go where your food is. 

CRAWFORD: Right. And they may switch from one prey type to another. But I want to get back to the idea of the role of Seals in helping us understand the distribution and abundance of White Pointers. 

TAIT: It’s significant to me that the concentration of White Sharks down here is around the concentrations of Seals. 

CRAWFORD: And when you say the 'concentration of Seals' specifically where do you mean?

TAIT: That Solander, Codfish, Centre Island triangle I was talking about. And now, these islands out here have had a huge increase in Seal population. 

CRAWFORD: The northern Titis?

TAIT: Yeah. Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Elsewhere around Stewart Island?

TAIT: We’re just not looking at them. We’re not seeing them. I’ll guarantee those Shark cage diving guys, if they started working down here, where there is a very good colony ...

CRAWFORD: Right where?

TAIT: Shelter Point, Joss’s Passage area. This area here around Port Adventure.

CRAWFORD: Because there is a very large Seal colony there?

TAIT: Absolutely. Huge colony.

CRAWFORD: It gets to the issue about observation - that the absence of evidence doesn’t mean evidence of absence. It doesn't mean they're not there.

TAIT: Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: I think I get what you’re talking about. When did the Seals receive their protected status? Do you recall?

TAIT: 1850’s, 1860’s. 

CRAWFORD: Protected status?

TAIT: Yes absolutely. Licensed. 

CRAWFORD: I see. You're taking a broader historical perspective. There's licensing, and then ...

TAIT: The licensing was relaxed in the 1940s, immediately post the Second World War. It was relaxed for about five years, and then they realized that it wasn’t doing them any good, so they closed it off again. The Seals have effectively been under total protection since, let's say 1950. I don’t know the exact date.

CRAWFORD: The numbers were bouncing around at low levels?

TAIT: Very low levels.

CRAWFORD: And even the protection didn’t have an immediate effect. When did the Seal population really start to take off? 

TAIT: Well, the only figures that I have are those reports of Graham Wilson, Sammy the Seal. We hosted Sammy for about five weeks in Fiordland, counting Seals. Now Sammy’s comments for out here, and I think DOC felt they had done rough counts ... Do you understand how they do Seal counts?

CRAWFORD: Tell me.

TAIT: Ok. The system that I’ve been involved with is at pupping time, immediately post-pupping. You count all the pups that you can find. For every pup, there’s obviously a mother. So, that’s the number of females. If you’ve got 100 pups, there are 100 females. Seals give birth, more or less, 50-50 males and females. So, if there’s 100 females, there’s 100 males in the same age class. They don’t breed until they’re about four years old, so you have to make a guess at what there is in those lower age groups. That’s how you get your population. Now Dr Sir Robert Fala did some counting work out here, and I can’t remember what it was. There are other biologists that have done work as well, but the figures that I’m aware of are from Sammy the Seal, and he counted Bench Island. I think he said there was about 380-odd animals. 

CRAWFORD: This was roughly when? 

TAIT: About 45 years ago. My educated guess, but only a guess, is based not on Bench Island but on work I did on Edwards Island. I counted a stretch of coast there, and if I extrapolated that out to the areas of rookeries on Bench Island. My guess is somewhere slightly in excess of 2000 animals. 

CRAWFORD: That was when?

TAIT: I attended that count back when we were diving, so that would have been twelve years ago. One would assume the population has carried exponential growth. 

CRAWFORD: Well, we don’t know. We know that there’s been growth. But we don’t actually know the curvature of that growth. 

TAIT: But it’s significant. 

CRAWFORD: There are a hell of a lot more Seals now?

TAIT: Oh, absolutely. What’s interesting though is, when I first came here, and up until about probably twelve years ago, there was always a small population of animals on that island out there called Tamihau, off the West end of Ulva Island. I have not seen a Seal there in probably eight years. Amazing. They've just abandoned the place, and I have no idea why. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, we have Seal protection that comes in. Moratorium in the 1950s, not just licensing. Because there were protections that you indicated long before. 

TAIT: Actually, total protection. Legal protection. 

CRAWFORD: After a lag, then what seems like a population explosion in around the 1980s. The numbers really started to take off then?

TAIT: When you look at Seal biology, they only ever have one birth. It’s a single birth. They don’t breed until they’re about four years old. So, if you have one female and one male of breeding age, you’re going to wait four years ... and if she has a male pup, she is really the heart of that population for a very, very long time. But once you get the exponential growth that comes in, if she has a female on her first year of breeding, it’s going to be four years before her child, her female pup breeds itself. And she may have three more male pups.

CRAWFORD: The point is that, starting the late 1970s, early 1980s, you as a local observer started to really notice the increase in Seal abundance in this region?

TAIT: Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Would it be fair to say that you continued to see increase?

TAIT: Very much so. But more on the offshore islands. 

CRAWFORD: 'Offshore' meaning what?

TAIT: Titi Islands, yeah. And also in this area down around Port Pegasus. I haven't been down to Pegasus for quite a while, but I would assume that the populations are bolting away there. Seal Point here has always had a good colony on it. 

CRAWFORD: Do you expect the Seal numbers will continue to increase?

TAIT: Actually, it won't increase as quickly. I can draw a parallel between Ulva Island, which is completely protected for bird life. And the rest of Stewart Island, which is still protected, but we have predatory animals on mainland Stewart Island. Let's look at Kaka - they're probably a good example. Kaka are very vulnerable to Rat predation. There’s no Rats on Ulva, so the Kaka population there has exploded. But it will never reach its peak carrying capacity there, because the food supply is dropping a bit, because there’s a lot of them. But just a mile away on Stewart Island, there’s all the food in the world. So, the Seal population, in my opinion, will do the same thing. And that’s why we’re seeing populations starting to spring up in places that living memory has never seen Seals. They’re starting to recolonize. 

CRAWFORD: Right. This is all about distribution and abundance. 

TAIT: Yes. Being fed from here, and places like that. Because of course, when there’s lots of food, they’ll stay here. But if the food starts to get a bit hard to find, still capable of handling a bigger population. They move. 

CRAWFORD: But overall, in terms of a regional perspective - you think the number of Seals here will continue to increase?

TAIT: Absolutely.

CRAWFORD: If we come back in say 25 years, there will be even more Seals then, than there are now?

TAIT: There will be. There might not be the same rate of increase on the Islands out there, but you will find rookeries building up in places that we never saw Seals.

CRAWFORD: Right. Do you think that that would then lead to a significant increase in the White Pointer population?

TAIT: I would be absolutely astonished if it didn’t. Because any predator that gets faced with more food, is more successful. It is to me such a basic thing that I would expect. I would be utterly astonished if it didn’t happen. Rats are a good example. If we give Rats more food, we have more Rats. It’s as easy as that. And Sharks, they just take a bit longer. 

4. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - DIRECT EXPERIENCES

CRAWFORD: Alright. Let's focus our attention now on your experience around Stewart Island, the whole island. Although I think you said you spent less time on the western shore?

TAIT: Very little time on the West side. 

CRAWFORD: But a lot of time around Port Pegasus?

TAIT: In my early days, Port Pegasus with the Amethyst. 

CRAWFORD: And you spent a lot of time along the northeast shore?

TAIT: The vast majority of time was in this area. Occasionally up to the Saddle. 

CRAWFORD: So, early on Port Pegasus, later on northeast shoreline?

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: What have you personally seen of the White Pointers around Stewart Island?

TAIT: Going back to the days when I was lining, I definitely had one experience of some sort of animal taking fish off my hooks at Port Pegasus, out at the north Traps. Really probably that’s about the only experience, because I only ever lined one year.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever see any White Pointers in those waters?

TAIT: Not at that stage, no. 

CRAWFORD: What about around Stewart Island at any stage in time?

TAIT: I’ve seen them once or twice out here, when we’ve been chartering. Just a fin on the surface and gone. 

CRAWFORD: Whereabouts for those observations?

TAIT: I was out round one of the islands.

CRAWFORD: The Titi Islands?

TAIT: Yeah. I can’t remember which one.

CRAWFORD: Maybe Edwards, Bench, whatever. One of them?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was this? 

TAIT: It was when we were chartering. Probably at the latter end of it, because I didn’t spend much time out there in the early days. So, probably around 2004, 2005. 

CRAWFORD: You said you were taking people out to the Islands on charter? 

TAIT: Yes, divers. 

CRAWFORD: Recreational divers?

TAIT: Recreational divers.

CRAWFORD: Where were they going to dive?

TAIT: Around the islands there. 

CRAWFORD: Did you see the White Pointer fin on the way, between here and the Islands?

TAIT: No, no. Around the Islands themselves. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Roughly how close to the shore? Within 500 metres or so? 

TAIT: Yeah. Quite close to the shore.

CRAWFORD: You saw the White Pointer below the surface, or you saw just the fin?

TAIT: Just the fin. At a distance. Oh, I’ve also seen one up Paterson Inlet.

CRAWFORD: Let's finish with the Titi Island observation first. [Discussion about project classification levels for human encounters with White Pointers: Level 1-Observation, Level 2-Swim-By, Level 3-Interest, Level 4-Intense] Your observation in this instance, you saw an animal, relatively close to one of the Titi Islands?

TAIT: Yeah. A couple of us saw it at a distance. So, very much Level 1 or maybe you could argue Level 2. But certainly no more than that.

CRAWFORD: You didn’t describe the White Pointer as coming over or past your boat?

TAIT: No, no. 

CRAWFORD: It was just over there. That’s a Level 1 Observation. Did the boys decide to still go diving?

TAIT: Yeah, but not there. [chuckles] We carried on. 

CRAWFORD: How far away did you go?

TAIT: Oh, probably three or four miles. We weren’t actually going to where we saw the animal. It just happened to be that we were going past the island.

CRAWFORD: Do you recall roughly where the destination was?

TAIT: Actually, we were going out to Long Island - the far end of Long Island, it must have been down. It must have been around the Maria Higgins area, the Maria Higgins Reef. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Now, tell me about that other incident, please.

TAIT: Yeah, it was a funny one. We used to do half-day and day charters up the Inlet. People would want to catch fish. There's a passage ...

CRAWFORD: This was up Paterson Inlet?

TAIT: Up Paterson Inlet, out off these islands here. I actually didn’t know what was on the bottom. It was an interesting looking bottom. We used to catch Cod on it occasionally.

CRAWFORD: Codpotting?

TAIT: No, lining, handlining. You weren’t allowed to Codpot in the Inlet at that stage. We were using rods.

CRAWFORD: Recreational fishing?

TAIT: Rec fishing. Some idiot dropped a rod over the side, and I got a pretty good mark on where it was. I had a couple of guys aboard who were actually professional divers out of OHS. Both these guys had done the report on the bad drowning at French Pass with divers. You wouldn’t be aware of it. I knew one of these professional divers very well, he was a Dive Instructor from Invercargill who used to do trips with me. 

CRAWFORD: What is 'OHS'?

TAIT: Occupational Health & Safety. So, we went up there, we were actually going over to the Salmon Farm. I said I would take them out for nothing, because I wanted to talk to them about some of the technicalities about running a dive boat. Some of the issues that I had with carrying oxygen and stuff like that. I said "Well look, I’ve got a job to do anyway. I’ll anchor out on this patch, I’ll roll over the side, and see if I can find this bloody fishing rod."

CRAWFORD: So, that was en route to the Fish Farm?

TAIT: Yeah. The Fish Farms are up here. And we were diving down here. 

CRAWFORD: On the other side of the point. What's the name of that embayment?

TAIT: That’s Big Glory Bay. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So you were on the other side of the point?

TAIT: Yeah. We were about a mile and a half away in direct line. Anyway, I went down and pottered around down there. Interestingly, what I found down there, what I thought was foul ground - it was actually huge Tube Worm castles. They’re incredibly fragile, they are so fragile. Fascinating things. But I couldn’t find my line. I came up ...

CRAWFORD: Were you freediving?

TAIT: No tank. 

CRAWFORD: You were scubadiving?

TAIT: Yeah. I was probably 40 minutes on the bottom. 

CRAWFORD: With who else?

TAIT: On my own. I always dived on my own. I never dived with a buddy, I didn't like it. Iris was on the boat, I think. I came up to the stern of the boat, crawled out of the water, and I never saw it, but then they told me "A Shark followed you up!" They wanted to kill it.

CRAWFORD: They wanted to kill the Shark that followed you up to the boat?

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: They wanted to get a gun and shoot it? 

TAIT: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Why?

TAIT: They’re divers. They don’t like Sharks. Look, you have to understand that a lot of fisherman, and I’m one of them, in those days if we got the opportunity of killing a Shark, I would have done so without a thought. 

CRAWFORD: Grab the gun and shoot? No questions?

TAIT: And shoot. Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Was that common over in southern Fiordland as well? 

TAIT: Hell, yeah. We were so far out of our environment. I don’t think that way know, but I certainly did then. These things were quite capable of killing me. Taking quite large lumps out of me, even if they didn’t kill me.

CRAWFORD: That thinking applied to White Pointers, maybe a Bronze Whaler. But something ;ike a Blue Shark was no threat to you.

TAIT: No, no, no. The little ones we don’t bother too much about. I don’t know what this thing was. I suspect if it was a White, it was a very small one. 

CRAWFORD: Based on their description?

TAIT: Yeah. It was a small one. 

CRAWFORD: They said that it had followed you back up to the boat. At the surface or below? 

TAIT: I don’t know. They just said that it followed me up. I would have come up fairly steeply, because I knew where the anchor was, picked up the anchor chain, navigating on the bottom, and then came up to come underneath the boat. Because it would have been laying with the tide, I would have come up from behind the boat. 

CRAWFORD: You didn’t see it - it was Iris and your mates that saw it. And they said the animal followed you up. Was there a sense that the animal was moving with great haste?

TAIT: I don’t think so, no. It was just interested. From what I can remember. It was quite a while ago.

CRAWFORD: Did it hang around?

TAIT: Apparently not, because I never saw it.

CRAWFORD: Right. So, it would have been on the order of a Level 2? A Swim-By?

TAIT: Yeah. A very high pucker factor, from my point of view. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: A very high what?

TAIT: Pucker factor. Your asshole puckers up. [both laugh]

CRAWFORD: Alright. We’re going to include that as another observation. Any other personal encounters, observations?

TAIT: No. But that specific case of those two Sharks that were caught at Butterfield's Beach ...

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's presume I know nothing about it. Tell me that story.

TAIT: Ok. Over the summer, I was over at Golden Bay as it happens. And the word went round very quickly, the cop actually went round and warned everybody to get out of the water. A big Shark had been seen within, I think, Halfmoon Bay. It was obviously in the area. Effectively, everybody got out of the water. Literally. And it was a major kerfuffle. This was a big animal being seen within Halfmoon Bay.

CRAWFORD: What time of year?

TAIT: Christmas-time. Just after Christmas. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly what year?

TAIT: Can’t tell you.

CRAWFORD: We’ll figure it out. 

TAIT: This is a story that a lot of people will tell you.

CRAWFORD: Sure. 

TAIT: Anyway, they decided to borrow Joe Cave’s Shark nets. Joe Cave had built some big Shark nets. I can remember stringing them down along the waterfront by the war memorial. 

CRAWFORD: Why had he built these big Shark nets?

TAIT: Because he wanted to catch big Sharks, for the teeth. 

CRAWFORD: So, this was prior to the White Pointers receiving legal protection? 

TAIT: Oh yes, yes, yes. A long time ago. And he’s a guy that you really ought to talk to. Because Joe will know more about those Shark days than probably any of us. He built nets specifically to catch White Pointers, Great Whites. Anyway, they set them up. A guy named Merv Moodie was running the Aaron, for Joe. The Aaron, or was it the McLaughlin? It had a crane on it, must have been the McLaughlin. He set the nets out off between Bathing Beach and Butterfield's, off that little point there. Somebody obviously could look down on the nets from above and say "Yep, there’s something in it." I went out with him on the boat. A whole bunch of us did. God, there must have been twenty people on the boat. Had to see this happening. 

CRAWFORD: You went out on Joe’s boat to retrieve the net?

TAIT: Yes, yeah. Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: You and two dozen of your mates?

TAIT: Yeah. Merv Moodie was running the boat - he’s now living in Christchurch. There were two animals in that net. And one of them, from memory was about 17 feet, and the other was about 13 feet. Obviously very dead. They had drowned in the nets. So, there was great glee in the place.

CRAWFORD: That was a 24-hour set? 

TAIT: I think it was about two days later, from memory. But it wasn’t a long set, no. 

CRAWFORD: Had it been checked every day?

TAIT: Can’t tell you. I presume it had, because as soon as they saw the thing, out they went to get it. But the interesting thing was, when it was hanging ...

CRAWFORD: Up come the nets to the boat ...

TAIT: With the animals in it. They were lifted by the crane. And they gutted one. 

CRAWFORD: While it was hanging on the boat's crane?

TAIT: While it was hanging. And it was full of Cod frames. Now they weren’t my Cod frames, because I hadn’t been fishing. But they were full of Cod frames. So, those animals were coming into the Bay, and feeding on the offal that was going over the side of the fishing boats.

CRAWFORD: Well, we don’t know exactly where those Cod frames came from.

TAIT: No, we don’t. 

CRAWFORD: But it is possible that those animals had actually come into the Bay, for the purpose of feeding on Cod frames at those fish cleaning sites in the smaller embayments?

TAIT: There wouldn’t have been that much Codding over that time of the year. But there would have been a lot of amateurs fishing recreationally, and they would clean in the bay.

CRAWFORD: When you say the White Pointer was full of Cod frames ...

TAIT: Oh, you know - probably half a tub full. That’s a lot of Cod frames.

CRAWFORD: If we do the math on that ... roughly how many individual fish would that have been?

TAIT: Probably 20, 30 fish. To me, a boat that’s cleaning in one place will have quite a number there. So, an animal going in to feed would have access not just for one or two, if you were travelling. But a whole bunch in one place. 

CRAWFORD: Fair enough. Was there anything else that you recall when they cut the animal open? No Seal bits or anything?

TAIT: No. I can’t remember anything other. I mean the Cod frames got my attention. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Did anybody take pictures of that?

TAIT: I have no idea. Can’t recall. 

CRAWFORD: Who would know?

TAIT: Ask Merv Moodie, if anybody’s got photos. Or Joe Cave. 

CRAWFORD: I’m going to be talking to Stu Cave. I'll ask him as well.

TAIT: Ask Stu. Stu might have even been on board. But Merv Moodie was the Skipper of the boat. He drove it. I think he’s in Christchurch. I think he manages Joe and Helen’s shed up in Christchurch. But Stu will know.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That was one of the Sharks. Was the other one cut as well?

TAIT: I can’t remember. I tell you who’s got one of the teeth out of it actually is Sissy Bailey. 

CRAWFORD: Ok.

TAIT: Now there’s a wee bit more. Remember I said we wouldn’t dive out around the Islands, because of the Seals? My son used to Pāua dive with one of the Cave boys, who was drowned in a kayaking accident in Zimbabwe - Grant. Grant was were diving at Bench Island, and a Seal grabbed Grant's fin, and spun him underwater. So, we had a very good respect for Seals. We were scared of Seals. There was certainly one amateur diver got quite badly bitten by a Seal at Bench Island. And I understand there was actually a guy got bitten by a Shark out there too, but it wouldn’t have been a Great White. I think it may have been - oh, who knows what it was. It could have been a Sevengiller.

CRAWFORD: When was that?

TAIT: A long time ago. Probably twenty years ago, I think it was. I would put it under the heading of nip, rather than major lacerations. I don’t think he was hospitalized. I think he was probably stitched up.

CRAWFORD: But even at the nip level, that's still a Level 4 encounter. It’s way more than interest, it's direct interaction.

TAIT: Absolutely.

CRAWFORD: Ok. The circumstances under which the Shark nets went out ... do you know anything more about the sightings? About what had been seen prior to deployment? You were talking about two Sharks. Some people have indicated that there were three Sharks that were coming through the Bay together. 

TAIT: There well could have been. From memory, one was about 17 foot, and the other was about 13 foot. 

CRAWFORD: Right. But you don’t know anything about the sightings. 

TAIT: Not at all.

CRAWFORD: There was also some discussion about people showing up at the wharf at a particular time. Because the Sharks would come through, almost like clockwork. 

TAIT: You know, I spent my life looking at the way wild animals behave. And most animals become creatures of habit. If you see an animal doing something at a set time of day, quite often they’ll keep on doing it.

CRAWFORD: Right. But you didn't see them swimming in the Bay? 

TAIT: I never saw it.

CRAWFORD: You were there on the opposite end, the nets.

TAIT: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: And cutting open ... at least the first animal. Do you remember anything else about the consequences? Whether Sharks were seen in the Bay, after those two got caught?

TAIT: Well nobody panicked then about swimming again. It was sort of "Oh, well we’ve caught them. We’re safe again." After about four days, it was quite a while after the "stay out of the water," but before they were caught. I went up to this side of The Mucks, and dived up a mess of Pāua. I anchored the range of my fish boat right in the kelp, I was probably only 20 feet out from the shore. And I thought "That shallow, in amongst all the weed - I’m probably safe enough." But I had need of an amateur catch of Pāua, so I went and got them.

6. EFFECTS OF CAGE TOUR DIVE OPERATIONS

 CRAWFORD: What is the first time that you knew or heard about Shark cage dive operations in the region?

TAIT: Three or four years ago, I can’t remember how long. Really when they first started working. Which followed on from the work that the Department of Conservation had done. 

CRAWFORD: There was White Pointer work done by DOC, in the region first?

TAIT: Yeah. A wee while ago. 

CRAWFORD: What was the nature of that DOC work? Do you recall? 

TAIT: As far as I know, they were tagging creatures to see where they went. Just looking at them, putting sat nav tags in them to see where these things went. Just really probably "They’re out there. Let's know a bit more about them."

CRAWFORD: Distribution and abundance. Did you go to any DOC presentations, or did you hear anything about their results?

TAIT: No, not at all. Just what you heard about, just talking to folk around the pub.

CRAWFORD: And what did they say?

TAIT: I was aware of it. Nobody took a great deal of notice of it. I suspect we were all a bit startled with the number of animals they were finding. You had to be aware of it - they were using a mincer down at the garage to mince the bait up, for chumming.

CRAWFORD: That was DOC doing the mincing?

TAIT: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: When they were mincing, what kind of volumes?

TAIT: I have no idea. Never saw. 

CRAWFORD: Do you know where DOC was tagging the White Pointers?

TAIT: Round the Titi Islands, over to Ruapuke.

CRAWFORD: And then it was a little time after that, the Shark cage dive operations started up?

TAIT: I don’t know Peter Scott well, but he comes in and has a coffee with us from time to time, when he was working out of here. And I think he might have been involved with some of it.

CRAWFORD: Involved with some of what?

TAIT: Of that DOC research. He certainly looked at what they were doing, and he thought "There is a possible living to be made there." And that’s what triggered him to start doing it.

CRAWFORD: So, you know Pete personally?

TAIT: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

CRAWFORD: Shortly thereafter, they started doing cage diving as a business. 

TAIT: He actually worked out of here. He’d brought his boat down here, and he stayed here for the season.

CRAWFORD: 'Here' as in Halfmoon Bay?

TAIT: Yeah. Anchored in the Bay. 

CRAWFORD: And they would do charters during the season. Roughly how long was their season?

TAIT: About now through to May, June.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember hearing where they went?

TAIT: Well, he told me. Mainly around Edwards, Long Island and Jacky Lee. Normally in that area.

CRAWFORD: The Northern Titi Islands. Not along on the Stewart Island coastline?

TAIT: No.

CRAWFORD: People either flew over to Stewart Island, or took the ferry. Perhaps part of a package, they were doing other things on the Island while they were here?

TAIT: We had guests who went out with him. We were involved on that side of it, supplying accommodation.

CRAWFORD: Ok. In terms of the actual operations, they would anchor and then berley. There was a permit that came in last year, but prior to that ...

TAIT: It was open.

CRAWFORD: They did what they did. Do you know what the terms of the permit were?

TAIT: Not really, no. I was aware of them, I read through them. I couldn’t see any issues. But my knowledge of it was very, very much second-hand. What Peter told me himself, and also what our guests told us about the trip that they had out there with him.

CRAWFORD: What had you heard in that regard?

TAIT: They had very fine bait. I do remember that the berleying had to be non-edible size pieces of fish mince. It had to be effectively just scent in the water. Blood, and so on. And that they weren’t allowed to drag baits across the top of the cage. A whole bunch of conditions like that. 

CRAWFORD: Specifically with regards to feeding the Sharks, when the DOC permit came in, there was a specific preclusion, they were not allowed to feed the White Pointers. And also the constraint of the location, it was only Edwards Island where they would be allowed to operate. But when I talked to both Mike and Pete, they said that’s where they were most of the time anyways - because of typical wind and sea conditions. 

TAIT: Yeah. It’s a good location, because effectively no matter where the wind is coming from you’ve got shelter somewhere. One side of the Island, or the other. Have you been out there?

CRAWFORD: Not yet. Soon.

TAIT: It’s actually quite a nice location. 

CRAWFORD: Alright. Now, in terms of the effects of Shark cage dive operations ... they go out, they anchor, they berley, White Pointers come in proximity to the cages, people are in the cages seeing them underwater or from the deck, they wrap up the operation, return to port and that’s the end of their day. Did you ever think that there was a lasting effect on the White Pointers, either behaviourally or ecologically, in any way?

TAIT: I would have to say that whenever you interact with an animal like that, you modify its behaviour. Certainly, in my experience. But I actually don’t see a great deal of difference, other than the fact that the boat was anchored there for a period of time, and then moved away, but was putting offal and smell into the water.

CRAWFORD: Putting offal and smell into the water at the anchored location, Edwards Island?

TAIT: Yeah. But I don’t actually see a great deal of difference between that as a behavioural change for the animal, than me fishing out there and doing exactly the same thing. I might be moving around a little bit ...

CRAWFORD: Well, you were not berleying. 

TAIT: Rubbish!

CRAWFORD: Sorry. You mean when you were Codpotting?

TAIT: When I was Codpotting, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And ou mean specifically when you were cleaning your catch?

TAIT: Yes. But I was also putting smell over the side of the boat with stinky bait, and with fish that got mangled ....

CRAWFORD: When you were putting your pots down?

TAIT: Absolutely. I’m there all the time. And fish boats put smell into the water. They’re also doing something that the Shark diving boats don’t do, which I understand is particularly attractive to Sharks - I’ve got agitated fish in the water. 

CRAWFORD: Well, you were creating an environment where the fish get trapped, and then they become agitated. 

TAIT: And also, when I’ve put them over the side of the boat, the small Cod which are stunned from coming up to the surface. They're sitting on the surface, they’re drifting back down before they come awake again, if you like. So you know, it’s not cage diving attraction, but I’m equally putting something into the water that is attractive. And one other thing for me when I was line-fishing, I really had agitated fish because when they went onto the hook. They fought. And people line-fish out there ...

CRAWFORD: When you say line-fish, do you mean danlining? 

TAIT: Handline fishing. In the old days when we were all working handlines, we fished out there. But now the handliners are all the charter boat operators, because their punters aren’t interested in seeing fish come up in a pot. They want to catch them by hand. And so, when they catch them ...

CRAWFROD: You’re talking about the charter recreational operations now?

TAIT: Yes, absolutely. Charter and private recreational boats. So it’s different, but I don’t think it's that different. 

CRAWFORD: I want to get back to you drawing the perfectly valid analogy that you, as a commercial Cod fisherman were contributing scent and blood and offal into the water. But in the previous part of the interview, you didn’t describe any observations of White Pointers in response to you putting those signals in the water?

TAIT: No, I did not. Equally, I was always moving within an area. And it was probably semi-random, because I would pick up a pot here, and unless it was a really good pot, I wouldn’t put it back there. I would put it somewhere else. 

CRAWFORD: Fair enough, but you were moving. Even when you were cleaning your fish, you were on autopilot - not typically observing behind you to see if any Sharks were following you.

TAIT: Not at all. 

CRAWFORD: That was a little bit different when you were in Bragg Bay, where you finished cleaning the remainder of your catch?

TAIT: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Because you were stationary there. But you didn’t happen to see any White Pointers then either. You did however notice that your pile of frames was gone when you came back the next day, and that there wasn’t any major tidal movement or anything else that you could think of that would account for them being flushed out. That doesn’t mean that it was necessarily White Pointers that consumed them, right?

TAIT: It could have been Dogfish.

CRAWFORD: Right. But also you described them cutting open one of the two White Pointers that got caught in the Shark nets that were set in the harbour. And that White Pointer's guts was full of frames. So there are different pieces of the puzzle. And I do understand that you believed that you as a Codpotter, you as a fisherman generally, had done similar types of introduction of that smell and offal. Things that would be equivalent in one way to what the Shark cage tour dive operations were doing. 

TAIT: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that, regardless of whether there is a Shark cage dive operation vessel or a Codpotting boat or any other type of fishing boat - do you think that the White Pointers would associate the smell of food with the presence of a boat?

TAIT: Yes, I think they would have to. And there’s certainly cases of boats being attacked by Sharks. John Leask, who’s sadly dead now, I actually saw ... I can’t remember which boat it was, it might have been the Marino ... Shark teeth in the bow. 

CRAWFORD: This was a fishing boat?

TAIT: Yeah. She was on the slip down there.

CRAWFORD: A Cod boat?

TAIT: A Cod boat. She might have been chartering at that stage, but certainly a charter fish boat. 

CRAWFORD: Did John tell you the story about how the incident happened?

TAIT: No. I saw the boat, and I saw the teeth. But I didn't really question him closely about it. I think the thing had just come up to them while they were fishing, taken a swipe at the boat, and left teeth behind. I can’t imagine a Shark saying "Jesus, that looks tasty! I wonder what the hell it is?" I can imagine them saying "I wonder what the hell it is?" But I can’t imagine them mistaking it for a Seal.

CRAWFORD: Right. What other White Pointer-boat interactions are you aware of?

TAIT: I’ve heard of them snapping around dinghies and so on. 

CRAWFORD: 'Snapping around' meaning circling?

TAIT: Yeah, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Mouthing the dinghies in any way?

TAIT: Not that, no. All of these are post the Shark cage diving. 

CRAWFORD: You never heard of White Pointer-boat interactions prior to ...

TAIT: Well, John Leask’s boat was quite a long time ago. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly when?

TAIT: Probably twenty years ago.

CRAWFORD: You said prior to Shark cage dive operations ... but that’s also prior to the increase in Seals and a bunch of other things that have happened as well.

TAIT: Well, the Seal increase must have started forty years ago. It was really the bottom part of that curve. The count that I did was way before Shark diving. Way before DOC were involved in the Shark research ... well, not way before, but a year or two before. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Do you think that cage dive operations have had an effect on White Pointer-boat interactions?

TAIT: I don’t think they have. No, that’s probably a wee bit strong. I think that there is a possibility they have. I would also think that ... God, it’s so interrelated. I think there's a whole bunch of things going on here. Part of it is just a sheer increase in the number of food species out there for Sharks, Seals. Secondly, it’s an increase in the amount of line-fishing going on. We had a long period where there was very little line-fishing here. From about 1970, 1971 through until say ten or twelve years ago, there was relatively little line-fishing. But now we’ve got one, two, three boats involved.

CRAWFORD: Charter line-fishing operations? 

TAIT: Charter line-fishing out there. And they’re all going out around the Titi Islands. That’s their favourite patch, because it’s sheltered and there’s a bunch of fish out there. it’s a good place to go. 

CRAWFORD: The potential for observation of White Pointers then increases?

TAIT: Goes up, yeah. And thrown into the middle of that, we have the Shark cage diving. So, we didn’t just have any one of those. I think we could make a better decision on what was happening. 

CRAWFORD: What I’m trying to get to is, do you think that the White Pointers are associating? If the Sharks are associating the smell of food with something Human? Would it be the place that they would associate? Would it be the presence of boats generally, or boats in the place, or would it be specific boats live the cage dive boats? Because all of those are valid possibilities. Do any of those sound like they make sense to you?

TAIT: I think sections of all of them make sense. There’s no argument that animals do learn about a specific boat. 

CRAWFORD: There’s no argument in terms of they do, or they do not?

TAIT: They do, they do. They very definitely do.

CRAWFORD: 'Animals' meaning White Pointers?

TAIT: Animals meaning animals in general. If they’d had a good experience with your boat, and they see it, "Wow, there he is! He’s back again. He’s a nice guy."

CRAWFORD: But does a White Pointer have that kind of intelligence? Does it have that capacity?

TAIT: I have got no reason to think they haven’t got that capacity. And dare I say it, I’m a bit inclined to give them a vast amount of the benefit of doubt. I would far rather say that they are highly intelligent creatures who can work these things out.

CRAWFORD: Is that based on your experience with White Pointers, or based on your experience on animals generally?

TAIT: Based on animals generally. 

CRAWFORD: Including fish?

TAIT: Including fish. They do learn, you know? They do learn. People who feed Eels. The Eels learn there is food there, and they learn that certain people are associated with that food. 

CRAWFORD: That’s a very good observation. Let's talk about association and learning then. Regardless of whether it was a cage dive operation, or some type of Codpotting operation, or recreational fisherman cleaning their catch, or whatever. If there are chemo-sensory stimulants, blood and guts going into the water, and a fish like a White Pointer in particular is attracted, do you think that the White Pointers are more likely to hang around that place - if it was a consistent place? 

TAIT: If it’s happening there all the time - of course they would. Well, to start with, first of all there’s the natural food there, the Seals. That’s going to pull animals into this particular area. 

CRAWFORD: But now we're talking the berley, above and beyond that baseline of Seals. 

TAIT: Yes, and that’s exactly right. Because then we have joe fisherman turning up there, who’s been fishing there for forty 40 years.

CRAWFORD: So, we’re talking above and beyond that baseline too?

TAIT: Now we’ve got a guy sitting there for the five or six months of the year that Sharks are there chasing Seals. He’s got a little bit more interesting stuff in the water, and it’s from a fixed point. Nothing to eat, but certainly stuff there.

CRAWFORD: Fish smells, not mammal smells. 

TAIT: Fish smells, absolutely. But I was relatively unusual in the way of Cod fisherman, that I never cleaned fish during the day. I only ever cleaned fish on my way home. A lot of the fishing boats now, and it’s just something to remember, they'll clean as they go. They’ll set their pots up, wait for a wee while, then pick them up, take fish out, little ones over the side. They might do that for an hour, and then they start to have a period of filleting - drifting around in amongst their pots while they fish. So, there’s offal going over the side of the boat - significant amounts of offal. Now, a lot of that will get picked up by the Mollys, and Albatross. But not all of it. So, there is solid offal dropping through this. 

CRAWFORD: That raises an important question. Do you think that there is any type of diurnal or day-night difference in White Pointer behaviour?

TAIT: I don’t know, because I’m never out there at night. 

CRAWFORD: Have you ever heard of anything like that? 

TAIT: Never heard of anything like that, no

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let's get back to the idea about association. Given the fact that there is already, without any Human intervention, abundant Seal food supply at the Edwards Island.

TAIT: Increasing food supply.

CRAWFORD: Increasing, yes. And then on top of that, there are already Codpotters and charter or private recreational boats around those islands, with their types of interactions with the White Pointers.

TAIT: And have been doing for over a hundred years.

CRAWFORD: Does the added effect of Shark cage dive berley and tow bait - do you think it would have a significant effect, in terms of modifying the behaviour of the White Pointers in that region?

TAIT: I think it would be just another card in the deck, to put it that way. I think it obviously does have an effect. If you could work it out as a percentage of the total effect, I wonder how much of it would be. 

CRAWFORD: Let me put it back to you in that context. Do you think that the cage dive effect is a trump card in that deck?

TAIT: No. 

CRAWFORD: You think it’s an effect, but you don’t think it’s a major effect?

TAIT: No. I don’t think so.

CRAWFORD: It took us a little while to get here, but you did a very good job of laying out the context. Why do you think it’s an effect, but not a terribly important effect? 

TAIT: Because I don’t think it’s quite frankly much more significant than the effect of me going out there with a bunch of tourists on board, catching Blue Cod happily. And I’ll do it one spot, because it’s a non-drift area, so I don’t drift all that far there. I’m sitting, if not anchored, not much better than anchored. Catching fish that are struggling and fighting all the way up. I don’t think there is much difference in it, quite frankly. In fact in some ways, the smell of berley ... do you know where the smell of berley goes from my boat? When I’m on anchor? Directly down tide. Do you know where the vibrations and noise of a struggling fish go? Everywhere. So in fact, I’m actually targeting a much bigger area with a struggling fish, than I am with a stream of berley going down tide - which is only picked up by a fish that bisects that trail. 

CRAWFORD: That's a very good point. Do you think that White Pointer-boat interactions have increased as a result of the cage dive operations? That the Sharks would be more likely coming to boats in that place or anyplace?

TAIT: I think in that place, quite possibly.

CRAWFORD: In the absence of berleying, would they be more likely to come to a boat and check it out?

TAIT: I would accept that, yes. To move on a step from that, the way that I behaved as a fisherman in his boat and cleaning fish in there, I don’t think that that would be acceptable now. Because I think the rules have changed with the increased number of animals out there with my day-fishing fifteen years ago. The increased number of Great Whites out there, and the fact that there is a wee bit more through the cage diving, there is a wee bit more interaction with boats. And the fact that we found that animal full of Cod frames. I suspect now as a fisherman I would do less - in fact, no cleaning inside Halfmoon Bay. I’d probably do it round the corner in Deadman's Bay. I’m still going to have to come in here to clean, because quite frankly weather is going to force me to do that. I would hate to even think I brought an animal in here that tore the leg off somebody. So yes, we’re going to have to modify. And I’m going to go a wee bit further on that too. From the Abalone divers, and I abandoned those islands out there during the Seal breeding season, we wouldn’t dive there. But we did dive there in the winter-time. My Son dived out there in the winter, and I took him out there diving in the Winter. I would probably continue to do that in the off-season. Equally, we all have to modify our behaviour with changing circumstances. I think a sensible Pāua diver would be saying "Maybe not during the Shark season anymore. Maybe in that July through to November period might be a good time to spend my time round the Islands.’ The world changes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t ever stay the same, and we have to adapt to it. So that’s a bit of the politics of this.

CRAWFORD: Everything exists in a political context. Especially in this regard, when you’re talking about the effects. I want to get back to the sequence of possible effects. The association of food smell with place, you think is possible and is likely.

TAIT: I think it’s possible. 

CRAWFORD: Medium likely?

TAIT: Low to Medium likely.

CRAWFORD: In terms of association with a particular boat, would you think that’s possible? Where do you think that exists on the probability scale?

TAIT: It’s certainly possible. I think Sharks are bright enough to figure out that "There is a good source of food, and I’m used to him, and I’ll go back to him."

CRAWFORD: How do you think that they discriminate a boat though?

TAIT: Oh, absolutely so easy. Every boat sounds different. They do. Have you ever heard Tuna fisherman saying "Some boats are magic on Tuna, and others you might as well take them out and sink'em." Some boats make noise. You know the old Whalers ... you’re going to get a history lesson now ... If you go up to the Whaling base up there ...

CRAWFORD: Up where?

TAIT: Up Miller's Beach. Whalers Base, bad term. The shipyard that they serviced the chasers down in the Ross Sea. Guess what you see? A whole bunch of old propellers. What do they make propellers out of? Propeller boats these days.

CRAWFORD: These days?

TAIT: Yeah. All days. What were propellers made out of for boats? 

CRAWFORD: I don’t know. 

TAIT: Oh, come on. Of course you do. Bronze. Bronze propellers. But all their props are iron. Cast iron propellers. Nobody makes props out of cast iron. Except the Whalers. You know why? Because the Whales would run away from bronze props, but they ignored the iron ones. They sounded different in the water. And Sharks as creatures live on noise, on scent, and on electrical impulses. Visually they probably can’t see more than 50 or 60 feet under there. 

CRAWFORD: How do you know that?

TAIT: It’s a guess. They possibly can see a lot further. But I mean, relatively that’s not actually a very good chunk of ocean. But there's very good reason to think that they can detect electrical stimulation over huge distances.

CRAWFORD: And chemo-sensory ...

TAIT: And chemo-stimulation. And sound. I mean noise travels a huge distance. A Blue Whale, a hundred miles! 

CRAWFORD: But directionality of noise, as you know, travelling at such speeds becomes an issue. Well at least it is for Humans. Alright. Let me rephrase the question. Do you think that White Pointers would be able to discriminate individual vessels?

TAIT: I think they can. 

CRAWFORD: In this case, do you think that the White Pointers would be associating individual cage dive vessels with the operation, the berley and bait in particular? 

TAIT: I would be more surprised to think if they couldn't. I think I mentioned to you a story that’s very persistent of Whalers in South Australia having Southern Right Whales herded by Orca. And those Orca had learned that if they herded the Whales into a bay, the Whalers would kill them, and the Orcas would get the tongues. Animals learn. And I don’t care what sort of animals, they are. Maybe insects don't, I don't know. But certainly all other animals learn. 

CRAWFORD: Do you have any reason to believe that that higher social organization is also a property of White Pointers?

TAIT: No. But I’ve got no reason to think not, because I’ve seen it in other species. And until proven otherwise, I would accept that they actually do it. 

CRAWFORD: Do you have any knowledge of experience with social pack hunting with fishes generally?

TAIT: Yes, they certainly do. I mean school fishing. I’ve seen it with Blue Cod. You’ll get into a feeding frenzy of Cod. And boy, do they feed.

CRAWFORD: But that’s a frenzy of individuals. I’m talking about co-ordinated social structure. Pack hunting with complex inter-individual co-ordination. Do you think that White Pointers in particular would be capable of something like that?

TAIT: I actually think they do. I actually think they’re probably a fairly organised animal. And certainly the sound of one of them feeding will bring others to it. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. We're going to wrap this up, by adding Humans more directly into the mix. There are Humans on board the cage dive boats, and there are Humans at least some of the time in a submerged aluminum cage. Do you think that the White Pointers would associate those chemo-sensory food cues with Humans? 

TAIT: Again, I would be surprised if they didn’t. Because I understand that Sharks are very, definitely aware of electrical impulses within the water.

CRAWFORD: And that Humans would be generating such electrical impulses?

TAIT: We would be generating signals that we perhaps individually aren’t aware of, but maybe the Sharks are.

CRAWFORD: Electrical, hormones, whatever?

TAIT: I know it’s sonar in Dolphins, but I understand that Dolphins are very well aware of, for example a women in the water who’s pregnant because they can sonar ...

CRAWFORD: They can sense it?

TAIT: And even in a wetsuit, I'd say we’re probably fairly smelly creatures. And certainly females at that time of the month will be putting in a lot of scent into the water, even with a wetsuit.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that if a White Pointer encountered a submerged or surface Human in another context, that the association of the berleying event would change the probability of interaction with that Human?

TAIT: If they associate. I do think it’s occasionally because of all the other things that can be putting that smell in the water. But if they say "Well, we sometimes do get people around that berley smell." They probably would be thinking "I wonder if there is anything else going on around there?" Because they’ve had food signals at times when there has been people in the water. Well, it’s an association of ideas isn’t it? But I can’t possibly say how strong it would be. And also I think with creatures like Sharks, we have a nasty habit down here of swimming in wetsuits and guess what colour wetsuits are? 

CRAWFORD: Well, old school wetsuits are almost always black. 

TAIT: And who knows how Sharks perceive colour. One of the things that is interesting, of all the Shark attacks that I’ve heard, there’s seldom more than one or two bites. Whether they don’t like the taste of wetsuits, or whether they actually don’t like the taste of us.

CRAWFORD: Or whether it was a case of mistaken identity, or whatever. 

TAIT: I don’t know. But equally, one bite is probably enough for something with teeth like that.

CRAWFORD: We’ve focused mostly on the possibility of consequence in White Pointer-Human interactions. Now, do you think that the Shark cage dive operations would have a significant effect on the ecology of the animals? That it might be preventing them from feeding or reproducing or doing something else that’s important for them? 

TAIT: I’m probably not the person to ask over that, because I’m only taking a guess. But I’m prepared to say with total confidence that if we banned Shark diving or fishing out there tomorrow - the Sharks would probably be pissed off for about a week, and then get on with life. 

CRAWFORD: 'Pissed off' in what sense? 

TAIT: "Where’s the stuff we’ve been used to seeing around here. Oh, well it ain't here. We’ll just have to get on with it." They’d go back to what they always did.

CRAWFORD: Which was what? 

TAIT: Chasing Seals around the ocean. We see it with Kaka here. Department of Conservation say "Don’t feed the Kaka." And we do feed Kaka, but we feed our Kaka based on the season, on the weather on the day, and on the food supply. So, in the winter-time ... particularly if we have a bad spell, we’ll put more food out for them. In the summertime we put just enough food out to bring them in for our guests. We’ll get Kaka come in and demand food from us. But if we don’t feed them, they just bugger off, you know? And most animals are like that. You can modify the behaviour, but if you stop it, stop that modification, they revert pretty quickly. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. What other concerns have you heard other people express, with regards to the affects that the Shark cage dive operations. What have you heard? 

TAIT: I suppose the impression that you would get talking to some folks is that if you go out there, you’re going to have Sharks all round you, all the time, and they’re big, and they’re aggressive, and they’re going to have you on. The great fear is that some poor Pāua diver who’s minding his own business is going to have a queue of Sharks waiting to nibble on him as he chases the Pāuas round. But it’s like a lot of stories, they gain in the telling. And you’ll hear the same story, if you think back on it coming back on you from two or three different directions, but actually from the same source. So, a story gets repeated and it’s the old Chinese Whispers, they change slightly, but in actual fact it’s the same story. I mean, lets face it - when a Human being is in the water, we’re in a totally alien environment. One we don’t survive particularly well in. We have to go to the surface quite regularly. And so we’re very much at risk from anything that is naturally in the water. And having something naturally in the water that has teeth like a Great White’s ... and he is known to take mammalian flesh, we feel a bit vulnerable. And dare I say it, it’s a perfectly understandable response. And do you remember what I said to you? That forty years ago I would have happily shot every Shark if I saw one? Every one. I wouldn’t have hesitated killing it, for no other reason that they were a large, potentially dangerous, animal that could make my life an extreme misery when I am in the water. 

CRAWFORD: That was not in protection of your catch so much, it was protection of your person?

TAIT: Absolutely it was just my perception of them.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What other concerns have you heard?

TAIT: That and the animals coming into the Bay.

CRAWFORD: Does that mean following behaviour?

TAIT: No. Coming in and chasing the offal that is coming into the Bay anyway.

CRAWFORD: To clarify - White Pointers coming in on their own? Or White Pointers coming in because they’re following Human cues about food?

TAIT: I can’t say whether they would follow a boat in or not. But the animals have always come in to here. The fact that we caught one out here that was full of Cod frames ... and remember this, with the offal going into the Bay, what happens to the Cod offal that comes out of the fish shed. Where does that go?

CRAWFORD: That comes out of where?

TAIT: The fish sheds. The fish processing factory. It’s not carted away. All the offal that comes out of there is not taken out to sea and dumped somewhere. It drops right into the middle of Halfmoon Bay. Right at the wharf. And ditto Horseshoe Bay. So it’s not just the Cod fisherman who are bringing that, it’s the fish sheds themselves, the onshore processing.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Do you think that White Pointerd that come into Halfmoon Bay are coming in because they’re just cruising around as they alway would? Or do you think that they are coming into Halfmoon Bay because they are following chemo-sensory traits or searching for fish frames and offal that are being put into the water from the fishery?

TAIT: I mean it may be getting 10 bob each way. But I would be a bit inclined to say that all of those are a potential function. Until one is utterly excluded, I don’t think we can exclude any of them. We just don’t know enough about the animals. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Are there any other concerns that you can think of, that you have heard from the community - other than the ones we've just discussed?

TAIT: Not really. No, that’s probably about it. 

Copyright © 2020 Peter Tait and Steve Crawford