Phillip Smith

YOB: 1943
Experience: Commercial Fisherman, Pāua Diver, Merchant Mariner, Salmon Farm Manager, Eco-Tour Charter Operator
Regions: Stewart Island, Foveaux Strait, Tasman Sea
Interview Location: Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island, New Zealand
Interview Date: 10/12 December 2015
Post Date: 10 August 2020; Copyright © 2020 Phillip Smith and Steve Crawford

1. EXPERIENCE IN AOTEAROA/NZ COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS

CRAWFORD: Where and when were you born, Phillip?

SMITH: I was actually born on Dee Street in Invercargill, but only because the women of the day had to go the mainland to give birth. But like all my siblings, my Mother carried us all here for nine months. So, I always say I was born on Stewart Island, but physically I was actually delivered in Invercargill. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: That’s just the way it was? 

SMITH: Yeah. You get the birth certificate, you come home, and been here ever since. But legally and officially, I was born in the Dee Street Maternity Home in Invercargill, 7th of August 1943.

CRAWFORD: That means that you are a child of the Second World War?

SMITH: Yes, I was born during it, in '43.

CRAWFORD: When you lived on the Island, did you always live here in Halfmoon Bay? Or did you live someplace else?

SMITH: We lived right in the township here. My Mother and Father never owned a house until very late in their life. And we rented. My Granddaughter recently pointed out five houses we lived in, before we eventually bought a house. So, we just rented. Of course, my Father was born in Invercargill, and lived in Ringaringa all his life. So, we've always lived in the township here. We just call it Halfmoon Bay, but now it’s called Oban.

CRAWFORD: It’s impossible to be more than about a couple hundred metres from the ocean - either on this side, or Paterson Inlet.

SMITH: Yeah, that’s right.

CRAWFORD: What is your first personal recollection of spending time next to, on or in the water?

SMITH: Well, we were taught to row a dinghy probably about the same time as we were taught to walk. Because that was one of the most important things here. And in my generation, probably today too, first of all learn to swim because you’re on the water all your life. And that was what we thought when we were kids, "We’re going to be fishermen like Dad." So, the first thing you learn, is learn to swim. Well then, my Father couldn’t swim, but all of us seven kids could. And we learned at a very early age. We were in the water in front of the school pretty regular. And that was from five years on, because we were supervised by the Teachers. My Mother and Father never had time to teach us to swim. But it was all done through the school, which was almost part of the curriculum. So, we were associated with the sea at a very early age. And because we lived at the corner house here, when we were juveniles, it was only 50 metres to the beach. So, we were on the beach probably as much as we were in the section at home. Because there was a bit of playing on the beach, you could go along the rocks and get Pāuas and Mussels and Oysters. Which you can’t get now, because there are none left. But in those days, it was very easy. The sea and the bush were a very important part of our life. In our early days, when we were allowed to leave home on our own, we did a lot of possuming.

CRAWFORD: Let's roll back just a little a bit, because I think you hit one of those natural breakpoints in your personal history. When you were a child, just coming out of infancy, two or three years old. You spent a significant amount of time around and in the water, but it was usually with adult supervision?

SMITH: My Daughter did this for my 70th, and just as a matter of interest I'll show you. [shows photo album] These are my ancestors. Here's the last full-blooded Māori to die here, [Mohi??], that's my Grandmother, that's my Father, that's my Great-Aunt Alice. My Grandmother there, and her Sister. Dad and his Brother. That's my Mom. That's Auntie Sybil, and her Mother, my Grandmother. That's Sam Smith - his Father came from Nantucket, Whaling ship. But anyway, here I am on the foreshore with Mom and Dad, with my Sister and me on the beach. Well, there’s my Brother there. And see those blokes in the background - of course these are all fisherman. But this was our life, this type of thing. And these were usually weekends, from school, as we got older. Before school, we would be on the boat ...

CRAWFORD: On the boat? Which boat?

SMITH: My Dad's fishing boat.

CRAWFORD: What kind of fisherman was he?

SMITH: At this era, Blue Cod. In 1951, him and [Ken Johnson??] were the first to actually start realizing the value of Crayfish. And they were the first Crayfishermen on the Island, back in 1951. But this sort of thing - on the boat with Dad. [shows photo] Now that’s a [waiktauk??], a Shark hook. Now that's the association with Sharks, for the Local fisherman. I'd probably be about eight or nine there. See, they used to have a big thing in the Bay, because they thought they were devils, these Sharks. "They were going to get us, one day." Because they used to dinghy-fish.

CRAWFORD: And the Sharks were bigger than the dinghies?

SMITH: Yes. What they used to do was, they had that with a bait, probably a leg of venison on it, on a 12-gallon drum anchored in the Bay, continuous. When the drum was in a different position, they knew either a Shark was on, or it’s dragged it away. And that was the mindset of them in those days.

CRAWFORD: Ok. You have completely hit the warp speed drive, and you're talking about things that are extremely important for me. Roughly when was this? When you were nine or ten years old?

SMITH: Around the mid-50s.

CRAWFORD: Ok. These Shark drums and baited hooks ... when I hear about them here, I get different perspectives from different people. Was the primary motivation for the drums and hooks, was it harvest? Or was it removal? Or was it both?

SMITH: Removal. The Shark would physically be too heavy for the type of boats they had in those days to handle. But there was a big demand for livers. When my Father caught Blue Cod with handlines, which they would haul by hand, he would catch these six- or seven-foot Sharks, Greyboys we called them. The livers were always taken out, and put in those big 10-gallon milk cans they brought they over for the livers. And they were sent to [Kim Thorne Prosser??] Processors, for the Shark liver oil - or Cod liver oil, they called it.

CRAWFORD: Where was that processor?

SMITH: I think it was in Dunedin, [Kim Thorne Prosser??]. It was a way of making an income, because Blue Cod was never that lucrative. So, the Old Man would sell the livers, all the fisherman would, they'd sell the livers. If there was an opportunity to gather a White, don’t worry that liver would go into several cans too. I have a photo, it’s round at my Son’s place, of a Shark, it’s taken on Halfmoon - Ben will show you, if you go there. They kept the liver out of that. When we were kids, we could make fish cases at the factory at weekends from school. We were only six or seven, we’d get tuppence a case; we'd make 10 bob in a day. And those milk cans were taken out of the shed, down the wharf, and when I opened it up - first of all to see what the Shark had been eating, which was a couple parts of Seal in it. But the liver was gathered, and put into those cans, and taken up to the freezer before it was taken away. So, it was only if you were capable of landing one like that one was, you would do it. But it wasn’t a harvest as such, compared to the smaller Sharks. 

CRAWFORD: The primary motivation was still removal of the White Pointers.

SMITH: Removal. Because in those days with the handlining, a lot of the places they fished would be close inshore, it was too shallow for the bigger-draught boats. So, they’d fish out of the clinker-dinghies, which are about 14-feet long. There would be two men in a dinghy, with a handline each. Now if a Shark came along, the first thing you did was grab an oar, and put it up. Or if you had a Shark, sometimes it would be the two oars, and the boat would come and pick you up. Because they feared for their lives when they came in, which wasn’t often. But that was the signal. The other signal with one oar was "We've got a dinghy-load of fish. We won’t get much more in it, otherwise we'll sink. It looks like you better come and get us." So, there were sort of two things. But that’s why they would have that Shark hook in the Bay for a short time, when we were young fellas. 

CRAWFORD: For a short time, meaning what?

SMITH: Well, the main focus for Blue Cod was sort of seasonal.

CRAWFORD: And roughly when was that season?

SMITH: It would be through the early spring, summer, late autumn. Through the winter months, to when the fish start spawning, which is October, November. They used to work on the roads in those times, because the fishing was hard. The Sharks, over the summer months, they’d be there. That’s probably about the time when they’re normally there - as we’ve discovered lately with the new knowledge. That’s the time they’re here. And they wouldn’t even know that.

CRAWFORD: And that’s an important thing too. Let's go back and continue the process of reconstructing your personal history on and around the water. The reason why this is so important is that as people are reading through your interview transcript, later on they’re going to be hearing about some other things, and they'll need to put it into context in place or time. We might know something now, that we didn’t know even ten or twenty years ago. And certainly, we might have known things ten years ago that we didn’t know back into the '40s or '50s. So, let’s rewind a little. As a kid, from the get-go, your Dad was a fisherman here.

SMITH: Yes. And his Father.

CRAWFORD: And his Father before him?

SMITH: Yeah, well Yankee came ... he was a Whaler. He got blackballed off the streets of Nantucket. He’d gone home from work one night, and he woke up about two days at sea. That’s how they got Crew in a lot of those Whaling ships.

CRAWFORD: ... that’s the first I’ve heard of that.

SMITH: Well there’s a diary here that Uncle Jack wrote, he was born in 1862. In his diary over there, as a 20-year old man he started compiling basically how they lived in Bravo Island in the early days. The history of him is in the diaries there, which are all hand-written by Uncle Jack. And we even communicate with our relatives in the States today, because we’ve managed to track them back. To the extent I’ve got some really, really interesting stuff out there now - through Yankee Smith’s Sister's Son, who was one of the best photographers of the Whaling and fishing era in that area, in about ... well, he died in 1965 and he was 80, so it would have been 1880. Building all those big boats out of Gloucester and all those places. [Cook Church??] was his name, and that was [Anne Edwards??] - he's Yankee Smith’s Sister’s Son.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Every time I think I’m getting back to characterizing your history on and around the water, you throw another ultra-interesting bombshell on me.

SMITH: But that’s the generation before. 

CRAWFORD: I'm trying to tell you I am keenly interested in what the generations before thought as well. One of the things that’s come up in several interviews ... and also when I was over at the Southland Museum in Invercargill. I went in there, and I’m naïve to the whole region. I walk in there, and I see the tourist kind of area. And there with its mouth open, is this White Shark and the cage diving ... so that’s the first thing I see. Then I go over and I talk to the woman at the desk, I explain what I’m doing. She says, "Oh, well I’m afraid we don’t have any exhibits or anything on the Sharks. But you might be interested in the second floor." It turned out I was keenly interested, because the second floor was focusing on the Sealers and the Whalers. So, I’m up there, and I’ve heard ... I’ve spent some time with Mrs. Willis’ book, her clippings - and I find that material enormously fascinating and insightful. But, I see in the section on the Whalers, there’s some old black and white film footage - I was just describing this this morning - of an old Whaling vessel with a Whale carcass tied up, and a guy standing on it with a flensing lance.

SMITH: Was that the Norwegian Whalers?

CRAWFORD: Might be, I don’t know. 

SMITH: Yeah, it would be.

CRAWFORD: I didn’t get a chance to really dig in. But the narration over top of the footage was saying this was a very dangerous job, because as they were standing on top of the Whale carcass, there were these large Sharks worked up for a bite. As a matter of fact, I think it said during the recording, the guy you’re seeing right here fell off and a Shark tore his leg off. So, that relationship between what the Europeans and their Colonists were doing - and the White Pointers - that troubled relationship goes back to the generations prior to yours, in several ways.

SMITH: I can imagine when those Whaling ships ... like, Glory Cove is named after the Whaling ship Glory. They used to go in there to [try out??] the Whales, do exactly what you're talking about.

CRAWFORD: But at a land-based operation?

SMITH: Land-based, because of the sheltered nature of the area. Down in the Antarctic, naturally they were in amongst the edge of the ice floes, which is pretty easy processing too. Until later years, when they would drag them completely aboard.

CRAWFORD: Right. Bigger vessels. The thing I’m trying to get to, is for the people on Stewart Island back in the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s - especially those that had been directly connected with the Whalers, either Whalers themselves or related to them ... they would have had a very different perspective on Sharks in general, and White Pointers in particular.

SMITH: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Because they were dealing with something that was a major, natural attractant to White Pointers. It was a feeding event, there was blood and there was food - and there were people on and around the water. To the extent that when you were a young man, back in the late-40s, early-50s, do you remember people talking about Whaling days, and specifically interactions with Sharks during the Whaling days?

SMITH: I guess we were quite privileged to the fact that uncle Tom West went down to the Antarctic with the Norwegian Whalers. He was part of a ... he wasn’t a Harpooner. They were just dog’s bodies, they were probably mostly trimming coal for the chasers that would be catching the Whales. They were laborers. But a lot of those photographs you’re talking about, I have some out in the garage here that were handed down to me through the family with those Norwegians. But see that’s 1926. Prior to that, Yankee Smith came here on a Whaling ship. Now we don’t know much about his activity on that ship, other than that he’d be ordered around like a dog, and made to do work just like everybody else. To the extent when he got here he decided, this is not a life for me, and jumped ship. This is how a lot of these early men got here. And of course, the best protection when they got here, from the Natives who were a little bit uncouth at the time, and it’s honest because it’s all written. The best protection was to marry a Māori woman, which he did do. And the protection was [akiaki??], for the rest of his life. And that was the same for all the Whaling and Sealing men that were here. The minute they were married to tribal woman, their protection was guaranteed. I mean, you didn’t shoot your Cousin's Wife. And that’s documented in [Harris Beady's??] books, things like that. His Son, now James Morgan, they called him the [Wish Arranger??], he was a Whaler. He went with some of the early Whalers, probably [Paddy Gilroy’s??] era. He’d be crewing on a ship - just a young, 20-, 25-year-old boy. And they said he was renowned for his ability to swim. Now my only thoughts are - who, the bloody hell would want to be swimming, putting things on Whales! But apparently, when they harpooned one, if they couldn’t get to it in the Whale boat after they'd completely killed it, he would jump in and swim to it, and tie ... I think it was the bladder of another Whale they would have already got. He'd tie it like a buoy. 

CRAWFORD: Like a float on the carcass?

SMITH: Yeah. And that’s where his prominence came in. But he died 25 years of age. I think he got, I think they called it consumption or TB, something like that. Anyway, getting back to the Whaling era prior to me, that’s the only one we know of. The other Brothers weren’t actually involved in Whaling, all of them were fisherman. But he was.

CRAWFORD: Getting back to the mindset ... do you think that it’s possible, coming into the '30s and '40s, that there were still echoes of that previous Whaler-Shark relationship? Was that mindset still prevalent here on Stewart Island?

SMITH: Probably not as much as when they were doing it. They probably stopped Whaling ... I don't know, it must have been about the 1890s, was it?

CRAWFORD: Yeah.

SMITH: It would just be anecdotal stories, people telling people. 

CRAWFORD: And please don’t mistake me, I’m not fishing for anything in particular. I’m just asking questions. You’re the first person I know who has this kind of insight into ... not just what the state of affairs was when you were a young man in the '40s and '50s. But because of your family history, there are echoes that come from the previous generations tracing back to the Whalers. I knew about the Sealers and then the Whalers here, and I just wanted to know what kind of relationship they had with the White Pointers. So, let’s go back to tracing your personal history. Young boy, family fishing, so you were going to be on that boat with your Dad from a very early age, I’m expecting.

SMITH: There’s three Brothers in our family. There was a fourth, but he passed away last year, but he wasn’t a fisherman, he was an academic he went to college. [chuckles] My Mom used to say "I’ve got four boys, one of them is at college, and the other three are at sea." In other words, we didn't have much of an education. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: I challenge that. I think you went to school. You just went to a different school - you went to sea. She'll teach you plenty.

SMITH: That’s right, yeah. My mindset was at school, I’m going to be a fisherman. My Father used to say to me "You’ll never make a fisherman." My Brother was two years older, and he would say "I’m going to make a fisherman, but you’ll never make a fisherman." I remember thinking, I’m going to say to him "Oh bloody hell, one day I will."

CRAWFORD: Did he ever explain why he said that?

SMITH: He never said why. Sam was my brother, there’s only two years between us. I mean, I could beat shit out of him. [chuckles] So, I don’t know why he thought he was going to make a fisherman, and not me. But anyways, the three Brothers ended up ... I’m still running boats. and [Seppe??], my Brother, he's fishing too. His boat's out in the harbour here. And my other Brother, Sam - he's got quota, he just leases it.

CRAWFORD: The point is, from an early age you were living in a fishing family, you were going to be out on the boats. You were spending all of your time in this bay, in Halfmoon Bay. And swimming over at the Bathing Beach?

SMITH: Yeah. Bathing Beach. We could swim any of these beaches.

CRAWFORD: But you even had, as part of the curriculum, the school would take you down there for swimming classes?

SMITH: Yes.

CRAWFORD: By the way, when you were a child and your class went down to the Bathing Beach, did they have a Shark Spotter or a Shark Warden?

SMITH: No. It was never heard of.

CRAWFORD: Not then, but later it was. 

SMITH: It wasn’t really until about the last four or five years, where there’s been nervousness about Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, it must have started someplace in there, but it was after your childhood. 

SMITH: I’ve never heard of that. Honestly, I haven’t.

CRAWFORD: Alright. So, we've got history in terms of the Whalers, that’s an important perspective. We’ve got you as a young kid, learning how to swim, that’s a priority. When you went swimming, there were a variety of sand beaches here. Were those the types of places that you would be swimming recreationally, outside of school as well?

SMITH: Yeah. Up until I went into the workforce at fifteen in 1959, I was associated with the Island - because I didn’t have a job to go off to. Until I joined the Stewart Island ferry in February 1959. Prior to that, it didn’t matter where it was that we would swim, nobody worried about Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Ok. As a young fellow, there’s a breakpoint when you’re allowed to scoot off, when your Parents trusted you enough at a certain age that you and your mates could go down to the water by yourselves, as a group?

SMITH: Oh, there’s a lot of things we did we weren’t supposed to. Like setting our dinghies off the wharf on an easterly 30 knots. We wouldn’t think twice about rowing out to the big rock, turning round and surfing right up Bathing Beach, assing it up and getting wet. [both laugh] That’s just what we did. Kids don’t do that now.

CRAWFORD: At what age were you doing that?

SMITH: Eight or nine.

CRAWFORD: Yeah, ok.

SMITH: The people that lived here knew who we were, you know 'the Smith boys', and 'the [Fike??] boys', and 'the [Hoodman??] boys.' "Look at them. They've [poached??] my bloody dinghy!" [both laugh] They never hit us. What they said to us was enough, but we had to put it back. Anyway, the next day we were looking around and "[Old Shiver??], he’s in town. This bloke's in town." Because you knew his dinghies were [soused??]. But in the same token, we used to go down after being allowed to run, and bail them out before they would go fishing the next morning. They wouldn’t know who did it, but we did. Anyway, that’s part of our growing up. Swimming - we never feared the sea, or were worried about Sharks. There was no need to, that we knew of.

CRAWFORD: Right. Even if you were doing things that you weren't supposed to do, you were still out there on your own, and largely without supervision. The types of things you were doing, and the types of places that you went to - they expanded because you were no longer restricted by where Mom and Dad were going to be?

SMITH: Oh, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Prior to that kind of independence, when you were with your parents or other adults, it would have been largely been the beaches or generally around the inner Harbour, right?

SMITH: Yeah. It would never be out round the Islands. We just didn’t have the capacity to go out there. The Old Man had an outboard motor, but he wouldn't lend it to us. 

CRAWFORD: However, on occasion you would have gone out there fishing with him?

SMITH: We used to go out weekends, not necessarily with the Old Man because he used to stay away quite often. And over the weekend you could only day-fish. So, I used to go with [Robby Hicks??], who was one of the local day-fisherman. I’d go out with him. I’d go out with [Henry Whipp?], he was a fisherman, on a day-trip. [Les Goodman??]. And whatever fish we caught, they would put aside. And when we come in, it would go into the basket, into the factory, and we’d get paid for it. It was just a generous thing that they did. They didn’t have to, but they probably thought "Oh, this boy - his Old Man isn’t around. Yes, you can come with us for the day," you know?

CRAWFORD: Right. When you went out as a young lad with day-fisherman, what general region were they fishing?

SMITH: Mostly around the Muttonbird [Titi] Islands here. Pretty well all the linefishing in my era with the *[Thompsons Patch??]. Out of the southeast here a wee bit - but that was on the real fine days. Those boats were pretty old and slow. A couple of them had sails on, but we didn’t have to use it because they had a diesel motor. But it was there as an emergency.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, how big were the boats?

SMITH: Forty feet, most of them. Thirty to forty feet. 

CRAWFORD: So, you might go halfway over to ...

SMITH: What we called the *Southeast Bank is out along here. If you open up, the *Green Patch and Ringaringa, around the top end of Bench Island - you go on that line and that’s where we fished. It’s probably this contour line here on the chart. They called it the Southeast Bank, and that was always good fishing for Groper and Blue Cod. 

CRAWFORD: That was by hand, linefishing? Or using Codpots?

SMITH: By hand, yeah. I never Codpotted. Codpotting to me was a bloody bore. Linefishing, you got two or three different types of fish on your line, nearly every time you pulled it up. So, you get a variation, it's more exciting, I reckon it is, anyway. So, I never made a living out of Codpotting. All of my Blue Cod fishing was with lines.

CRAWFORD: Would you say that your experience fishing, specifically in the Titi Islands, was it throughout the '50s,' 60s, '70s, '80s? Or mostly when?

SMITH: It was every year. And it was weather-related, where we fished. So, if the weather was bad sou'west here, we’d fish out round the Islands. Port Adventure was the next step, or here sou'west. If the weather was really fine - straight to the Traps. If the shit hit the fan, and it’s going to go east - you go around the East Cape.

CRAWFORD: And that general pattern was true across all the years that you were fishing?

SMITH: Probably for most of us Crayfishermen that fished the Cape, when we’d go Codding - my Brothers and all that - that’s what we would do. But there’s also what we called the Mosquito Fleet. They never fished anywhere else - day-fish, day-fish. That’s why we called them the Mosquito Fleet. They were small boats, they didn’t have freezers - they didn’t need them, because they were coming in every night. They might stay the night ... they might go down this way to Port Adventure, scrape the fish at the end of the day, fish next day, and go home. And we used to do that occasionally.

CRAWFORD: Ok. But that was occasional, weather-dependent?

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: The Mosquito Fleet - roughly how big were their boats?

SMITH: Oh, they’d be up to 40-feet.

CRAWFORD: Day-fishing. Nearby, in among the Islands, if the weather permitted.

SMITH: Some of the fishermen, their Wives didn’t like them being away.

CRAWFORD: Was the Mosquito Fleet predominately using handlines?

SMITH: Yes, for a start. And then once that Codpot was developed, [Lestor Marshall??] started that. Although people will probably say I’m not right, but I know for a bloody fact he did. Anyway, back then it was linefishing, and now nobody linefishes. I think Gary Neave's got a set of haulers on his boat, but I don’t think he even uses them. And of all those years that I fished doing that, I never ever saw a White. Or even know of a fisherman I was with, referring to a White round the boat.

CRAWFORD: Ok. We'll get back to that shortly. You spent a lot of time linefishing out here, in front of the Bays. What about elsewhere along the coast of Stewart Island?

SMITH: Some days with [Bobby Hicks??], we might go to the Saddle. Chew Tobacco, occasionally out here. Port Adventure, not so much, because of the distance and the smelliness of the boats. They would always fish with more economical ... with a short steam to the Patch.

CRAWFORD: These were day-fisherman who needed to bring their catch back in as soon as possible? They didn’t have freezers or anything?

SMITH: No. They landed in the fish factory when they came in at night. 

CRAWFORD: That was one thing I wanted to put a placeholder on. The fish factory. Do you remember when it was constructed?

SMITH: Well, that’s a long time. See, the original fish factories were Pegasus and Broad Bay.

CRAWFORD: Where?

SMITH: Broad Bay is here. It was run by kerosene in the dry weather. It doesn’t actually show it here but, that’s it’s right in there. And the other one was up here, just here. Now they moved from there, they got a big ammonia explosion in the one there. Might have been about 1936.

CRAWFORD: A what explosion?

SMITH: Ammonia. You know, they used ammonia for the refrigeration?

CRAWFORD: Yes. I understand.

SMITH: Well, it was all part of the refridging process. That was '36. This factory was still running here, but because the big Cod grounds were out here, they had the two factories in the early days. About the same time probably as ice. I don’t know whether it would be written in [August Hanson's??] books.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Well, I'll put a flag on that one, because some people weren’t aware that there even was a fish factory here on the Island. Other people said there was one, though they weren’t sure when it started or how it operated. For as long as you have been here, was there also some form of fish processing facility at the wharf in Halfmoon Bay?

SMITH: There wouldn’t be a fish factory there, until they built the wharf.

CRAWFORD: When was that?

SMITH: [Harry Leask??] built the wharf. I was just reading it the other day, because some of his whanau are coming down, and they want to go where Harry used to do his thing. He built the first wharf. Now that probably would have been ... he was here in 1860, so it would have been 1870, 1880 there would be a fish factory on some wharf. Prior to this one, this bay was the Leask family, Fluff's family. They were the first. They smoked fish, they canned it, they got awards for the quality of it over on the mainland. They exported some of it.

CRAWFORD: And they had a facility, or a shed, or something over there?

SMITH: Probably would’ve been 1880s, 1890s. Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Certainly, a good fifty years before your time?

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And throughout that entire time, it’s not as if that was a late addition to the harbour. There was always fish processing going on here?

SMITH: There was fish processing of some sort there, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And associated with that, there’s going to be fish cleaning, and there’s going to be blood. I would imagine that there was not any form of treatment of that discharge, it just went straight into the Bay?

SMITH: Yeah. In 1873, when Yankee and them were living on Bravo, is when they built the post office. Now to supply the mail, Yankee built the first cutter, 40-footer, to run it. And it opened up the opportunity for the Smith family and the [Goones’??] and any other family settling around the shores of Paterson Inlet, to start catching fish. They couldn’t sell it anywhere else, there was nobody here. And they were freighting it back to the mainland to [William Todd??], and he would sell it round Invercargill. Uncle Jack’s diary, he'll tell you about "Fishing today, nothing to be caught. Weather bad." All that sort of thing. That would be the first commercialization of fish, until the factories opened up on the wharf here, with the freezers that could hold them.

CRAWFORD: First commercialization on this side of the Island. These other fish processing plants were working already?

SMITH: They were. The one near ... I can’t think of their names, I should know them straight off too. But they were fishing here, and the Grandfather used to crew the boats that would run the fish from here back to Bluff, from their freezers. The [Tiwaiponamou??] and the ... what was the other one… the Britiannia, the Brit - they used to run up to the Bluff from the freezers here.

CRAWFORD: Ok. At the point when you hit a bit of independency, and you were off on your own, potentially doing some stuff that you shouldn’t be doing. Age eleven or twelve. The world kind of expanded for you a bit?

SMITH: A little bit, yeah. That’s when we started rowing across the Inlet on the dinghies, and camping under them.

CRAWFORD: Rowing across Paterson Inlet?

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: So, you had a boat over on the other side, and away you went. How much time did you actually spend in Paterson Inlet, compared to Halfmoon Bay or Horseshoe Bay?

SMITH: Well, any family picnics with Dad ... and this all happened before they got the license at the pub, when it actually stopped. [chuckles] We would go for family picnics on the weekend, because none of us would have to be at school. Dad would organize that when he was home from fishing. Mom and Dad, you'll see photos in there with everyone one on the boats. And Paterson Inlet, because of the sheltered nature and the prolific fish that you could catch when you wanted to over there - without having to worry about tides or anything. And Bravo was another place we went to frequently, because of our ancestral land.

CRAWFORD: Where?

SMITH: Bravo. That’s where Yankee settled, 1860. Bravo Island's this one here. We got eight acres of land here.

CRAWFORD: Just at the mouth of Big Glory?

SMITH: Yeah. We got a couple of cabins on it. But anywhere on the Inlet in relation to wherever the direction the wind came from. If it was that way, you go there. But that was always a regular thing. If it was school holidays, we could do it any day. If it was during school, Dad could only take us either a Saturday or Sunday. Which we used to do frequently, until they got the license at the pub, and then all that stopped because he had other things to do. [chuckles] I'm not going to be unkind to him, but that was the pattern and nature of the fisherman when that happened to the whole village. The whole dynamics of this place changed when they got their license here.

CRAWFORD: Roughly when was that?

SMITH: '51, probably. '50 or '51.

CRAWFORD: A few years after the war?

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. When you were doing your exploring around Paterson Inlet, roughly how much time were you spending in Halfmoon and Horseshoe, versus how much time you were spending in the Inlet? 50/50?

SMITH: Well, we lived in Halfmoon Bay, so we were here all the time. And any excursion or picnic that we would go was usually always into Paterson Inlet. We wouldn’t go to ... some of the families would go and camp down at Port Adventure for school holidays for a fortnight. We never did that, because there was six of us. It was too much trouble for Mom, and Dad didn’t want to do it.

CRAWFORD: Ok. The thing I’m trying to get to is, when you were free and able to explore on your own, just out with your mates. When you were exploring, were you spending more time in Paterson Inlet, or more time around Halfmoon Bay?

SMITH: Oh, no. It would be most of the time here. It would only be on a rare occasion ... we would probably say to the Old Man "What’s the weather look like for a few days?" It was not very good forecast in those days. He would say "Well, it looks ok for a few days." But we’d never tell him what we’re doing. We’d just go and grab the dinghy, because Mom had said "Well, where're you going to camp?" "Oh, [Roy Trail's??] got a camp." He was Internal Affairs Ranger. We was just bullshitting my Ma - if Roy had a camp over there, we could camp there. Until she found out that Roy didn’t have a camp. [chuckles] But we’d just drag the clinker up the beach, right above the high water mark, you know - three of us, and turn it on its side with just a couple of sticks under it, put a heap of ferns down, and just camp the night. We’d do a bit of fishing, and of course there were a few Deer around in those days. Unbeknown to the Old Man, we’d flog his .22 and try and shoot the Deer. 

CRAWFORD: You were bad boys. [both laugh]

SMITH: Yeah. It was a bit like Huck Finn. And of course, Zane’s done it. But because we’ve been a little more proactive in safety with the kids around seas, which our parents ... First of all they didn’t do it, but they never got the opportunity anyway. Zane used to do those things. Once we knew what he was up to, we [blowered??] like bloody hell at him. But he didn't come to any harm, just the same as us.

CRAWFORD: Right. When did you first get a motorboat, or access to a motorboat?

SMITH: Well the first time, I probably would’ve been twelve. The Old Man thought we were big enough to borrow his [Seagull??] outboard motor, four and a half horsepower. The rivers were the limits, we could go right up the head of the Sou'west Arm, right up Freshwater River into the North Arm. Get Scallops and Flounders, and come back home on the same day. Or we could stay the night, walk through to Mason's, shoot a Deer, come back out in the high water the next day, and come home again. 

CRAWFORD: That expanded your geographic range a lot. 

SMITH: That was before I was a teenager.

CRAWFORD: Basically, the activity stayed the same, but you expanded range - you reached further.

SMITH: Yeah, we were more mobile. Well you see, the Sou'west Arm goes quite a long way up here - you go right up to the hut. And the Freshwater River you can go right up to the hut. And in real fine weather we could go ... we actually built a camp up here, unbeknown to the Lands & Survey - Forest Service in those days. And they still don’t know where the bloody hell it is. But we used to shoot a lot of Red Deer up here. I was probably a year older then, I’d be thirteen or fourteen.

CRAWFORD: I’m getting the feeling that you were shifting, you were spending a little bit more time on land, and less on water. For a period, at least.

SMITH: Certainly, because I guess the desire was greater when you got a bit older. And we were probably better at taking guns to get the Deer. I think I said, before the Old Man decided "Well, shit this is flogging a dead horse. You better take the .303 this time."

CRAWFORD: And you better learn how to shoot it.

SMITH: Yeah. He never showed me how, because we knew before anyway. But the emphasis was on safety. He was actually a Gun Instructor. He never went to war, but he was in the [Burnham??] Military Camp, training people to shoot .303s. I’ve got his old diaries out in the garage there, with all his tables and that from when he was training. So, he was very conscious of that. But that's about the age that I would have been. The activity was all of a sudden, it was endless. And of course, we set traps for Possums too at the same time. We could sell the skins. 

CRAWFORD: Right. These were your teen years. And then there’s going to be something important in your life that changed, either in terms of where you were, or what you were doing. Is there something coming up in your late teens or early 20’s, when you got a job or you relocated?

SMITH: Well, when I’m saying my teens, I’m talking about thirteen to fifteen.

CRAWFORD: Early teens, then.

SMITH: Yeah. Because fifteen, I went into the merchant navy.

CRAWFORD: How did that happen?

SMITH: Well, what happened was ... the Stewart Island Ferry, one crew member wanted to leave to go Muttonbirding. And when the boat was at the wharf one day, and [Henry Baird??], one of the crew, part-Māori fella, he said "Go and see [Ian Williams??]. They’re looking for someone to fill in for [Wally Hutana??] for six weeks, while he’s Muttonbirding. You might get a job." I was actually working in the fish factory here, processing fish. I was only fifteen - I'd left school at fourteen. Anyway, they sent me to town, to College. I come back home two days later on the first fishing boat. "You can do what you’d like, you’re not sending me back there." "Well, you better get a job." So, I got a job in the fishery. My Mom enrolled me in the correspondence school, of which I never did anything. I just wasn’t academic. But anyway, I got the job for six weeks, and at the end of Muttonbird season, Wally never came back, so I got the permanent job. I was there for three years, just on the Bluff-Stewart Island ferry.

CRAWFORD: That was a fulltime job?

SMITH:  Fulltime job, yeah. I did two, two and a half years, and then I got a job on the Intercolonial Ship running across to Aussie. I was only sixteen. When I got into that employment, you get itchy feet when the Crayfishing season is about the start. So, when we were back in New Zealand, I'd pay off, come home, spend six months Crayfishing - which flowed to the Muttonbirding time. At the end of the Muttonbird season, at end of May, back to sea. I did that for about eight years, until I actually went through the Navigation School in Wellington in 1965, and got my Qualified Master’s Certificate. In that eight-year period, I was away for six months at sea, I still came back home for the Crayfishing because it was lucrative. And the Muttonbirding.

CRAWFORD: That’s important. That’s a natural period in your history and experience. It has a beginning, it has a certain characteristic to it, and it has an end. But even in that eight-year period, when you were spending a significant amount of time abroad, you were still also spending significant time around the Island. When you were Crayfishing during that period, what kind of grounds were you fishing?

SMITH: We’d fish mostly Broad Bay and the Cape.

CRAWFORD: Did you have a hut or something down here?

SMITH: We just lived on the boat. Like all your pots would be set out here. And you’d go into the anchorage at night, where you had an anchor out on a line out shore. We’d process our fish, we had freezers on the boat. After Christmas, we’d come and fish round here, because there was good fishing.

CRAWFORD: Ok. These were weeklong trips?

SMITH: Week or ten days, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Was it capacity that sent you back home? Once you were filled up, you brought it back?

SMITH: Yes. Well, two ways. More often weather, but occasionally ... one of the boats, we actually had a five-tonne freezer. It took quite a bit to fill it, but it’d happened now and again.

CRAWFORD: Ok. And that eight-year period, when did it start?

SMITH: '59 till '68, the year I got married. The year I got married, the seagoing Intercolonial across the Tasman was out. I’d seen too many marriages break up, being away. The cat's away type of thing. So, when we got married in ’68, I had a fishing boat that I was leasing out a Bluff guy, and taught at one of the schools in town, because he was a trained teacher. We only did that for twelve months, had to live in Invercargill. But I still fished here. And when I got home, I’d have to go to Bluff, instead of Halfmoon Bay. As soon as you’d been here for years, you were expecting to live here. I'd already bought a house on the Island, so we’ve kind of been here ever since. And doing what I do, ever since.

CRAWFORD: But during that eight-year period, the cycle was pretty similar. And throughout that period, most of the time you were Crayfishing - that was down at the southern end of the Island?

SMITH: When we got married in ’68, that’s when we managed to scratch up enough money to buy my own boat. That’s that one there - the Sea Star.

CRAWFORD: We'll get to that vessel in just a minute. I would like to come back to Muttonbirding. You’ve mentioned it, I think two or three times now. With regard to family relations, and access to islands, and harvesting practices, was there a particular ancestry that brings you to focus specifically on one of the Titi Islands? Or were there different islands that you went to, at different times? 

SMITH: We were a bit nomadic when we first started, and that was inherited from our Father. My Father never had a Muttonbird house on a beneficial island, of which I think there are five of them. He didn’t like the arguments, because it was all commercial.

CRAWFORD: Commercial Muttonbirding?

SMITH: Yeah. Everyone’s selling them. And of course, there’s greed and all this. He couldn’t be bothered with all that crap, as he saw it. Perhaps, to a small extent, today too. What we used to do, with him at the Muttonbird season, we’d go on his boat the [Arirea??]. I haven’t got a photo here, but she’s a wee bit bigger than that one. We would go away for about ten days. We would get permits on the Crown Titi Islands. He had five beneficial rights, the Old Man. You could go ashore and get a feed, but you’d probably get the ones that are already there with their own houses. They can’t stop you getting a feed, but they probably wouldn’t be very receptive. The Old Man couldn’t be bothered with that sort of crap, so we’d get permits for [Takawiwini??], [Potuatua??], [Rakuawahakua??], [Kahnini??],and [Rat or Kiori Island??], down here. The reason we got a wide spread is, regardless of the weather conditions, if you had a legitimate right to be here, or here, or here, or wherever - you were covered with the permits. But most of the time we used to do these islands. We would do go down ... [Anzac Bay??] was the bay that one of our relatives would come across after the war. You'd play the first post at the [Anzac Bay??] service on the 25th of April every year. Next morning, we were Muttonbirding. We’d go down, regardless of the weather, hell or high water - we’d be down there Johnny on the spot. If it was fine weather, we’d start Muttonbirding straight away. And we’d be there probably for ten days to a fortnight, and we would have enough birds by then. We did that annually until about 1975, when I built a house on [Herekopare??], which is our rights - of which we still go to today.

CRAWFORD: Let’s spin this back just a little bit. At what age do you first recall going out Muttonbirding?

SMITH: Probably six.

CRAWFORD: Was it the type of thing that, if you were here on the Island, you were Muttonbirding during the season?

SMITH: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: The location might have varied from year to year, and the weather. Through the early years at least, your Dad was organizing things on the basis of permits. But it was always something that you did?

SMITH: Yes. At that age, our relatives had houses on [Herekopare??]. Uncle [Buddy??] and the [Dawson??] family, occasionally when they'd caught enough birds, because most of the ones out here are only catching for their own consumption. It wasn’t a commercial life. They never treated it as a commercial island. They do today.

CRAWFORD: Out here, meaning where?

SMITH: Well [Herekopare??], which is the one we go to, straight out here. In the back of that book there’s a photo of it. Anyway, we would go out onto those huts. So, we were introduced to the Muttonbirding as soon as I knew we were capable of doing it, really. Other than being capable of doing it, you were just a bloody liability. You just had to change nappies, or whatever. But when you got big enough, you were out there with everybody else catching birds the same.

CRAWFORD: Right. And the shift to Muttonbirding on these Islands, when did that take place?

SMITH: That would be about ’73, ’74 I think it was, that we built that hut. My Cousin, she’s still living across the Bay, she’s in her 80’s now. She didn’t have to do it, she invited us out “I'll tell you, put a hut out here. Your Father never did, but you should do it.” So, we did. We built the place, and we’ve had it ever since. We go out every year since then. There’s some photos in there, it’s actually Muttonbirding at the Island. It'll give you an idea of sort of the lifestyle, which is a hell of a lot more civilized than when we were there as kids, because most of the huts just had dirt floors, open fireplaces. [shows photographs] That’s our Island here. And that’s our hut and workhouse here. These are the [wetters??] we get in the trees, and the [whicker??] out there. That’s the Seals on the landing, just at the landing. Oh, there’s Muttonbirds here. This is plucking birds in the bush. That’s the island there. See, these are the birds. And this is Zane, he’s showing off - he’s just got the heads. But there’s the whole bird, that's cleaning them, that’s plucking them, and that’s after they’ve been waxed. That’s for hearts, we make heart stew out of the birds. We use molten wax to get the feathers off them. And this is the mode of transport, with Zane being a helicopter pilot nowadays. It’s just progress from primitive to pretty hot stuff now.

CRAWFORD: I don’t think I’d use the word 'primitive'. But let’s go back just a little bit. Realizing there was a change in location, I think you said ’73?

SMITH: Yes, ’73 something like that.

CRAWFORD: So, 1973 your efforts converge on one of the Northern Titi Islands, and that becomes the primary place. I was talking to Tiny Metzger about this as well. He told me to ask you about the [Johnson??] family. It might become important later in the discussion. He was talking about the old days for him, taking a fishing boat from Bluff over to Halfmoon Bay. And then the boat, depending on the seas and the winds, would take them out to one of the Islands and drop them off in a 12-foot dinghy. Then they would offload on the Island with their provisions, and stay ... I think he said on the order of approximately six weeks. He said the beginning and the end is very strictly dictated by the biology of the Muttonbirds, the environmental conditions, by the nature of their feeding patterns and the conditions of the environment that they’re harvesting on. A whole bunch of different things. Access to the Islands outside of that period of time, by people who either have customary or hereditary privilege, or previously in these other places would have been under permit. Access to the islands is actually tightly restricted. That general people are not openly allowed on the islands. 

SMITH: No. Unless you have a benefit right.

CRAWFORD: Or there’s some very specific reason, and you’ve gone through protocol to receive approval for you being there. Before the time that you were there ... obviously if you were Muttonbirding at night, and processing the harvested birds - there was still some interaction with the water. What I’m focusing on now is, regardless of where you were Muttonbirding, to what extent would you have been either discarding remains from the Muttonbird harvest in the water, or doing another type of on-water activity like linefishing, or anything like that? What kind of experience and exposure do you have during harvesting to the waters around the Muttonbird Islands anywhere around Stewart Island?

SMITH: Probably daily. You’d be taking the offal, the guts of the Muttonbird I showed you there, that was all distributed at the landing because the [Nellies??], Giant Petrel ... anything floating in the water, that type of thing, which is mostly fat from the [Poku??], regardless of what the wind was, the sea would suck it off. It wouldn’t wash it up onto the beach - otherwise we wouldn’t be chucking it there. As it goes out, the Mollymawks, Giant Albatross, Sea Hens, Gulls, they would eat just about everything. The only thing they wouldn’t eat would be the feathers, and that would just get blown across the top of the water, or it would mix up with the surf coming in. You could go there a week later - you wouldn’t know anything had been thrown in.

CRAWFORD: Right. Did you ever see any fish coming up and feeding on the dumped offal?

SMITH: Yeah well, we used to just catch fish off the landing. You could go out to the outermost rock at low water, when we were kids ... like now we use a dinghy, but in those days we could say to [Mr. Willer??] "We got a little handline with hooks, take the fish head to bait the hook, chuck it out." This is getting back to when we were six or seven, but when we were teenagers, you'd just grab the dinghy and go out. It’s what we don’t do now, because of what’s happening with the Sharks.

CRAWFORD: Ok. I know that it’s getting ahead of ourselves, but sometimes these discussions ... they all take a life of their own. What is it that - in that context of Muttonbirding - that you used to do, that you don’t do now?

SMITH: Well, Pāuas aren’t quite so critical, because most of the Pāuas we can get, we’ve never had to put a wetsuit on. And the generosity of the local Pāua fisherman - they don’t normally take Pāuas where they know that the people on that island get them. Although there's one or two who don’t quite think like that. But there’s always been an area, maybe not quite as many as what we had thought, so you don’t have to get in the water. But we had our linefishing, and we set the odd net. Very short linked nets, because if you've got a long one - what are you going to do with fifty Greenbone? And you will catch that, if you leave it too long. Sometimes we’ll drag the net out, and only have ten metres of it in the water, and the rest is up on the rocks, because you don’t want to catch a lot of fish. Even though we've got freezers, it’s better to be able to do it when it's convenient. But we don’t do that anymore, because of the fear of getting a White in the net. And what the hell are we going to do with it, if it’s in the net? So, that activity has actually stopped. Although [Cal West??] did have a net set this year - he took a chance, and set one.

CRAWFORD: Where?

SMITH: At our Island. Right in front of where we are. Exactly where I’m talking about, where we normally fish. He never went out to catch Cod, but his Son did. His Son and his Grandson. I was out there one day, and they were out at ... just a little bit further than the landing. I seemed to cross him, because I said to Greg “You’re taking a bit of a chance.” "Oh" he said, "They never had a motor. They're only rowing. It's only a few strokes and we'll be ashore, anyway." But they knew not to go any further. Their own mindset was "Well, we're not going to go any further. Because if anything happens, we haven’t got far to go back." I wouldn’t have done it. Honestly, I wouldn’t have. From what I’ve seen off my boat in recent years. 

CRAWFORD: From what you’ve seen of what?

SMITH: From what I’ve seen of the White Pointers I’ve had around my boat in recent years. Every day I’ve been out there - I’ve never been by myself - there’s always been somebody with me. So, I could probably say, “Well, what’d you see that time?” I'll tell you. It’s frequent too.

CRAWFORD: We’ll definitely come back to that. Reconstructing your history, that eight-year period with the merchant marine service to Australia ...

SMITH: Yes. You could join a ship, and it would either be Intercolonial or Coastal. Sometimes you get sick of the Crew, or sick of the Mate, or something. In those days it was very easy, you could just pay off, and join another ship. This one's on a coastal run, or whatever.

CRAWFORD: And your domestic coastal run would have gone up to Wellington?

SMITH: Yeah, Wellington quite often. But Wellington, Whanganui, New Plymouth, Raglan, [Onihanga??]. On the East Coast, the most ports we did was Dunedin, Oamaru, Timaru, Lyttelton, Wellington, and then Auckland. I never did Napier or Hastings, those ports; other boats did. I never did Tauranga.

CRAWFORD: Would it be fair to say that when you were doing that marine service, that it was mostly you working on the boat in a professional capacity. Your mind was on your job, and you weren't really paying too much attention to things like marine life? You might hear things ...

SMITH: No, that’s right. During the day, you're just getting along there. Like, I was Mate on the [Highman Company??] there for a few years, and I was on the bridge all the time. I didn’t have to steer the ship when I was an Able Seaman. Your focus is just keeping the ship on course.

CRAWFORD: What I’m trying to do in that context is, when you’re away from Stewart Island - you might be over in Australia, you might be in other New Zealand coastal waters, but it’s not the type of thing where you’ve get that kind of local experience with those waters to really know what was happening with the marine life in that region. But in your case, you would have gone from port to port - so you would be talking to people from different regions. Hearing things, and getting to know things about the rest of New Zealand coastal waters?

SMITH: One of the associations I had in Lyttelton was with the fisherman, because whenever we were in a port where there were a lot of fisherman ...

CRAWFORD: Lyttleton is on Banks Peninsula?

SMITH: Yes. You go along the waterfront, the first thing you do ... like Timaru, Oamaru, they were [gun??] fisherman out there, big trollers and that. We never had trolling here. “Oh, I fish at Stewart Island.” “Oh, shit. How are things going down there?” But if you wanted to know anything about the Chatham Islands fisherman, the Lyttelton boys were the men to talk to, because most of them had fished out that way. When the Crayfish boom in 1965 started, an armada of boats went out there from every port in New Zealand to get this bonanza of Crayfish. I had an opportunity to go, but I could see too many pitfalls from my way of thinking, to go there. You could go out, and fish - and a lot of them hadn’t been paid. Even today, they still haven’t been paid. So, the consequences if you go, I didn’t want to be part of it. But that’s sort of a bit later. Prior to that, when I was on the [Union Company coach??], if you wanted to know something about the Chatham’s which we didn’t know. Just talk to some of those lads, and you’ll have a good yarn. But most of the time, they were wanting to know about Stewart Island.

CRAWFORD: Even at that time, Stewart Island was remote?

SMITH: Pretty remote, yeah. But they knew we had good Crayfishing. See, they started ’51. But they knew it was lucrative. Of course, the Port Chalmers boats used to leave Otago Peninsula, and they'd fish Fiordland. That's how good the Crayfishing was. But we didn’t have to do that, because we had our big boats right here.

CRAWFORD: At the end of that eight-year period in the merchant marine, it was marriage?

SMITH: Yes, ’68. Three days after the [Wahine??] sank, we got married in Christchurch. 

CRAWFORD: Married in Christchurch, and then relocated here?

SMITH: I was fishing prior to that. And I had a short stint, a [Manipouri??] run, the boats on the lake. But the water wasn’t salty, so it didn’t do much for me out there. I got married about a month after that. I had already arranged to run one of [Keith Harburn's??] fishing boats out of Bluff, knowing full well that when we got married, we’d come to Invercargill. Diane already had a job teed-up for teaching in Invercargill, because one of the supervisors in Invercargill lives on the Island - and knew it would be a good job for her there, close to where I was fishing. So, for the first twelve months, I fished out of Bluff, but fished here around the Island.

CRAWFORD: You were Skipper?

SMITH: Yep.

CRAWFORD: How big was the vessel?

SMITH: 44 feet.

CRAWFORD: And what was it geared for?

SMITH: Originally, it had trawl gear on it, and I tried that, but I had no experience and I didn’t make much money. So, we just went Blue Codding.

CRAWFORD: Potting?

SMITH: Lines. I never commercially fished Blue Cod with pots. The only pots I used for Blue Cod when I was fishing, was to catch bait for the Crayfish pots. So, all of the Codding I did was with lines. But then by that stage, we developed these haulers with a groove where you could put the line in. It was running continuous when you fished right. You just waited until the fish come to the surface, you’d lift them up, take them out, and put it back over. So, that was easier on the hands. We did all that for those years.

CRAWFORD: Fishing out of Bluff, but fishing where specifically?

SMITH: The whole Island. We would fish [Ruggedy??] regularly, after Christmas, all around here. Port Adventure till late Autumn. Winter we'd fish Traps.

CRAWFORD: That's a long way.

SMITH: Yeah, it’s a long way. You get half a tonne per man out there, just on handlines. That’s with the haulers. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Anything on the western shore of Stewart Island?

SMITH: Yep. Mason’s, it's shallow out here. Fished right round, yeah. All Blue Cod, and Groper. Well Groper wasn’t ... we don’t have Gropers down here, like they do off Kaikoura or Cook Strait. They’re very shallow waters mostly around the Island, until you get out there. Well, it’s sixty miles out to the continental shelf. So, it gives you an idea it’s not that deep - unless you go out Fiordland way.  

CRAWFORD: While speaking of this, the Solander Trench seems to be ecologically quite different from anyplace. What’s happening there?

SMITH: I don’t know. I know some of the [trawlers?? or trollers??] from Bluff, they tend to fish in the 80-fathom, out here way. But I’m not sure about how deep. They probably need the bigger boats. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, you were based out of the Bluff, but actually fishing round Stewart Island. That lasted for a spell, then what changed?

SMITH: I only had that boat for a short time, and that’s when we bought the Sea Star. In ’69 we bought the Sea Star. So, the boat that I had for a short time was the [Faith??], and it’s the one we Blue Codded with. Then I got a boat called the [could not get this vessel name at all??], we actually Crayfished the Cape for the next season. So, that would have been ’69.

CRAWFORD: It was a mixed Crayfish-Cod operation?

SMITH: Yeah, both.

CRAWFORD: What was your season for Crayfish, roughly?

SMITH: Well in those days, it would be from end of July through to about the end of March. And then we’d be into the Blue Cod.

CRAWFORD: Same thing, fishing right round the Island?

SMITH: Yeah, same thing. When we bought her, she had a 5-tonne freezer and we put a 6-cylinder Detroit diesel in her. Yeah, she's a good boat. You could sail away for ten days with the big freezer.

CRAWFORD: Which means you had access to the entire Island.

SMITH: And I fished there for 25 years.

CRAWFORD: For that 25-year period, starting in 1969, was it fairly consistent in terms of what you were doing, and where you were doing it?

SMITH: Yeah. Fifteen years we fished here for Crayfish from the Sea Star. The last five years was here and out to the East. Then in ’84 I went working as a Manager for the Salmon Farms in Big Glory Bay till ’89.

CRAWFORD: Ok. 1984 was a distinct break then. You were no longer spending significant time fishing?

SMITH: Not round the Island. It was associated mainly in the Inlet, because of the Farm.

CRAWFORD: Which means that you were spending time mostly in Big Glory Bay, spending time in Paterson Inlet? 

SMITH: Yeah. That’s the only place that was allocated for marine farms. ’84 I started. They put us in as Managers for the Salmon Farms, of which we knew nothing about. [Tom Leemont??] and I, he was a Scottishman, he lives in Picton now, we were Co-Managers. Probably one of the biggest Salmon Farms that was eventually established in Paterson Inlet. Of which it all fell to custard in 1989 when they got a big algae bloom, and it wiped out all the fish. So, the company we worked for closed down. And that’s when I got into fulltime [touristing??].

CRAWFORD: So, you had your years of living as a Fish Farm Manager.

SMITH: Well, I actually had from ’84, I had four years as a Manager. And then in ’88, I left and went as a labourer for Joe Cave who had a Salmon Farm. And when the algae bloom affected every company, of which there were five of them in those days. Three of them closed down, the other two hung in there. Joe was one that closed down. We had a boat called the [Valantis??], that’s the photo there. After we sold the Sea Star in ’85, we needed a boat to live on, to service the Farm. The company didn’t want to spend money on accommodations. So, I bought that boat, which was suitable to live on. When I left the company, I left the boat with that Salmon Farm as a lease arrangement. I bought the little [Matangi??], and just went into the tourist industry. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. We’ll get to your tourist charter operation in a second. The fish farms - when did they start?

SMITH: 1981. When I started in ’84, they were well established by British Petroleum - they were the company that started it.

CRAWFORD: But there were at least three or four operations?

SMITH: Yeah, later on. There was Big Glory Seafoods which was BP for the start, with a joint venture with the Ministry of Fisheries. They, in turn, later years they sold out to ... I think it was Regal Salmon. Then, Stewart Island Salmon started, which was Joe Cave, [47 South Chinook??] which was [Peter Schofield??], and New Zealand Salmon was us. After the algae bloom ...

CRAWFORD: Which was when?

SMITH: 1989. That was terrible. We lost 900-tonne of fish in one cage, because the gills were all clogged up with these algae. But anyway, that’s the year that I had there. The future in Salmon farming for me as a labourer was ... I had a lot of back trouble, even when I was fishing. So, I gave it up. And when we bought the [Matangi??], that was ’89. I wanted to do something that no one else was doing. I didn’t want to roll up at the wharf every day, competing with two other boats to take three or four people fishing. When three boats go out, you only got about three or four instead of one boat with twelve. I wanted to do something that no one else was doing. So, I’ve been taking people during the day to look for Kiwis in Paterson Inlet. Just one or two, just as a matter of interest. "Where can we go?" "I’ll take you." No permits, nothing, you didn’t need them. And I never missed a day without finding Kiwi in the daylight. There was an Ornithologist's Congress in Wellington, and the curators of about three of the museums in New York were at it. Prior to the official opening of the Congress, they came to Stewart Island just to check out what was happening down here. And just by sheer luck, I ended up with the three of them. They wanted to go and see a Kiwi. I thought, “Oh, shit. I’ll take them to Ocean Beach. It’s a hell of a lot easier there.” And it just kind of snowballed from there, just because of these three prominent people. We went over and saw six or seven Kiwis. There were a lot more birds in those days, and it was a hell of a lot easier there. When they got back, they couldn’t believe it, they were just amazed. They couldn’t believe that you could stand and watch a Kiwi, go along the beach to find another one.

CRAWFORD: In daylight?

SMITH: No, this was at night. I did it at night, knowing full well that they were there. I was a bit reluctant to take people out at night, for the safety factor and all that, is what I was thinking about. Now you don’t even think twice about it. Anyway, when they opened the Congress, he was the official spokesperson to open it all, and he highlighted the importance and the uniqueness of this activity. A fortnight after the Congress closed, we were taking eighteen people ... he'd actually convinced the biggest majority from overseas that they needed to come down and experience what we were producing. I didn’t have a permit or nothing. The [Matangi??] was licensed for 18 people, this is how the figure got out. I couldn’t take any more, because it was a breach of survey, and it wouldn’t take long for someone to figure that out. Over that time, that’s when really the knowledge got out about it. It just really snowballed from there. I certainly never got as many after they all went home, but the word was out. And it was out through local people of New Zealand at that Congress. So, we carried on for probably about fifteen months, and DOC [Department of Conservation] comes round - there's a knock at the door one day, and they said “We understand you’re taking people over there. It's a Scenic Reserve. You need a Concession.” It was the first concession here on this Island. 

CRAWFORD: When?

SMITH: 1990. And today if you asked, they will never concede that I started it - they’ll say that they set it up for me. And that’s bullshit. I actually started, but there was no regulations to say it was illegal then. But they made it illegal without a Concession. It doesn’t matter, it's water under the bridge anyway. So, we’ve been doing it ever since. Apart from that, lots of days ... like yesterday I had all the Pub staff out for their Christmas party, had a few beers and a bit of food. So, we do that. We do pelagic birdwatching occasionally, with the groups. And we do Kiwis every night - that’s mainly what we do. Every day of my life, I’m on the water. I’ve never had a shore job, as such, in my life.

CRAWFORD: Alright. In terms of the charter operation, that was 1990 to the present - so we’re talking 25 years. Roughly, what percentage of the time would you be Kiwi spotting, versus doing some type of pelagic charter?

SMITH: Probably 80% of our income from Kiwi spotting. In other words, we go every night that its suitable and the weather is good.

CRAWFORD: But you also do occasional pelagic charters?

SMITH: Yes.

CRAWFORD: When you do a pelagic charter work, where do you go and what kinds of things do you do?

SMITH: I don’t go much really further than here, Port Adventure. They called it *Wreck Reef out here - it’s a good place to visit the birds. A lot of my work has been taken over by another operator, because he goes down there. That’s too much for me to do a Kiwi spotting at night, go down there, and come back to do a Kiwi spotting again that night. By the time you get home and have tea after doing this day, it’s a long day. I know he has a fast boat, and I say good luck to him. That’s what the folks want, take them, I can’t do it. But I'll go as far as here, and sometimes into Paterson Inlet. Depending what bird you’re looking for. If you’re looking for Yellow-Eyes, and its blowing hard, you go here.

CRAWFORD: Here meaning what?

SMITH: Like around the Bravo Island here. If it’s a fine day, you can go anywhere out here, back of the Neck for Penguins, and down here for the Mollymawks and Albatross.

CRAWFORD: Right. It's largely birds though. Even when you’re talking pelagic, you’re talking birds?

SMITH: Yeah, but we often fish ...

CRAWFORD: Handlining?

SMITH: Just with a rod, to catch a few fish to feed the birds. If I can’t get a box of fish from the fish factory for chum. Now, there’s the odd day we’ll just chuck a line over and catch a few, then we’ll keep the good part of the fish, and use the frames to chum the birds alongside.

CRAWFORD: Any pelagic work around the Titi Islands?

SMITH: Yep, because there’s lots of birds out there. But also, in conjunction with this, we take hunting parties too. Most of the hunting parties will be down as far as *[Big Koory??] there.

CRAWFORD: When is that, during the fall?

SMITH: That’s usually from now on. It'll go through until about June. And lots to Lords River, *[Chikatara??, Little Koory??], Port Adventure.

CRAWFORD: These are transport charters?

SMITH: Yes. 

CRAWFORD: You’re taking them and their gear, dropping them then picking them up.

SMITH: Transporting, yeah. It could be six, eight blokes - with four or five tubs of gear, couple of dinghies, outboards. They’ll go ashore, they'll spend a week to ten days. We’ll go back down and get them.

CRAWFORD: They would be inland, staying in huts for hunting?

SMITH: Yes, well these are the Māori Blocks, down here. There are six huts on the Māori Land Blocks. And of course, there's DOC huts down here too that they can go to. I just transferred one to my Brother today, because I couldn’t do it. Also, up along here on the DOC Blocks, we’d take people up as far as Yankee River. I don’t do this, cause it’s too weather-dependent. They’re best to go in by helicopter if they want to do these. Or fixed-wing on Mason’s Beach and Doughboy.

CRAWFORD: Right. In terms of the time that you’ve spent over the past 25 years on Paterson Inlet, other than shuttling - do you do any charters, or any other type of activity in the Inlet itself?

SMITH: Yeah, well like yesterday with the Pub party - and its relative to the wind. We come into the Paterson Inlet, went up to the Salmon Farms. A lot of them are from England, Scotland, Wales, France, working at the Pub. And they haven’t seen anything yet, outside of the main bar. So, they were really revved to go up to the Salmon Farm area. The little bay called Sailors Rest, which is landlocked, you can steam into there, and you wouldn't know anything was out there. So, that was just something interesting for them. Had it been a request to go to where the Norwegians had their Whaling base up here, that’s an interesting history. We would have gone there, but they didn’t have the time.

CRAWFORD: That’s the Whaling station where they did repairs?

SMITH: Yes, that’s where they did the repairs. 

CRAWFORD: Speaking of which, before I forget ... back in the day, were there Whaling stations around Stewart Island that were primarily focused on rendering or processing?

SMITH: There are still [try pots??] up on the beach at *[Lord Bay??] here. Where we anchored the boat, there's an old one there. We were trying to work out ways to shift it. Of course, now with the helicopters you can do it if you want to. But our mindset now is "No, leave it. They got them at the Museum. You don’t have to take it away." So that was the main one. Port William up here, shore-based.

CRAWFORD: That was a processing station as well?

SMITH: Yes. I don’t know any on the West side of the Island, because the exposed nature. They would go in here in the bad weather, they would process them on the ships. That’s how Big Glory got its name. There was a Whaling ship called the Glory, used to come in from sea with the Whales.

CRAWFORD: They towed the Whales in to Paterson Inlet?

SMITH: Yeah. And they’d process them all .., I was told by [George Fyfe??], he was 93 when he died, but he was a young lad in the war years, before the war too, during the Depression. He was born in 1915 - the Old Man was 1917. They would be just young, 18 to 20 year-olds in here. They would spear Flounders, and sell them to the boarding houses. Little Glory Bay, in the corner - you never went in there because of the bones of the Whales on the seabed. They couldn’t spear any Flounders, because of all the bones that were thrown off the ship. In the days of diving - I was a qualified scubadiver when I worked for the Salmon Farms. Prior to that, I did quite a lot without a certificate. I went up there one day deliberately, with my family for a picnic, and I swam all around Little Glory. Expecting to find, perhaps the remnants of Whale bones. But I never found anything. George said in those days they used to use a wooden glass box for looking down to wherever the Flounders were. They didn’t have to get out of the dinghy, they never swam. But I did, with snorkeling and with tanks. I was so interested in it. I was expecting to find like an Elephant’s graveyard, with all these bones. But I never found anything. You’re looking at probably 1930s to about the 1970s - about 40-odd years. And I know that bone breaks down in saltwater, over a period of time. 

CRAWFORD: With regards to the Whale processing operations, specifically with them towing Whales into Little Glory or Big Glory. Roughly when would have been when?

SMITH: Probably in the 1880s, 1890s. The Sealing was sort of in the '30s till about the '50s, then the Whaling from the '50s through until about the '90s. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. I was going to ask you about the possibility of them using Big Glory Bay as a processing bay, whether that would have attracted some big White Pointers. But that’s forty, fifty years before your time. 

SMITH: I don’t know of any anecdotal stories about Sharks round the Whalers. I would only imagine they would be.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Getting back to Big Glory in a more modern context, and especially your experiences, as one of the Managers at the Salmon Farm. Why was it that Big Glory Bay specifically was sited for these Salmon aquaculture operations in the first place? Why there, as opposed to anyplace else?

SMITH: I guess the best story I can say is - it was political. The Minister of Conservation didn’t want anything else. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s the wrong place to have it. There’s no tidal flow in there - which is the most important thing for fish farming, for Salmon especially, not so critical for Mussels. Even today, if they could get out - they'd be out tomorrow.

CRAWFORD: So, they were put there?

SMITH: They were put there, yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Even a Canadian freshwater ecologist like me, knows that flushing is critical for aquaculture operations. 

SMITH: [Jim Jensen??] - he’s from Seattle - he was the first Overseer with a degree in Marine Biology. He started with the joint venture between BP and the Minister of Fisheries originally.  It was always a bone of contention with him - the area. "Pollution is going to be horrendous. It’s not the place." No matter what he said, it fell on deaf ears. And today, they still experience ... probably not to the same degree as when they first started, because it was feeding fish to saturation - which doesn’t work, because they don’t eat at all on the bottoms. They just make a horrendous mess. They tried to make it look as if the algae bloom in ’89, that was the cause of it - but it wasn’t.

CRAWFORD: Was the cause of what?

SMITH: The algae bloom. It was just a natural thing.

CRAWFORD: Well, that was my next question. I mean, that’s a significant event. When you hear something that is that large in scale ... what do you figure, based on whatever sources you had? What caused that algae bloom?

SMITH: The Salmon Farmers, their research that they did on it, there was a definite report to say that it wasn’t contributed by the Farms. My own personal feeling, having dived under those Farms, was - bullshit. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: That there actually was a cause-and-effect mechanism with the Farm operations?

SMITH: Sulfur dioxide coming up because of the excess fish feed and fish feces. You could drop a fish [plate??] into the middle of that heap of shit under the cages, you’d leave it there for one minute and pull it up and that rusty fish [plate??] was black. You can’t tell me there isn’t things down there causing problems for the environment. But anyway, the report that went through, by the Cawthron Institute, they called it a Red Tide. My own personal feeling was that the water temperatures were high, and I know we’ve seen this before, we’ve seen it in Foveaux Strait when the water temperatures change, they do bloom. But my own personal observations and feelings are - you can’t tell me that the Farm didn’t influence the algae bloom in some way. And they’ll probably tell me, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t mind that. I saw what happened first-hand. I was the first one to find out, because I was the only one that did diving on New Zealand Salmon for quite a long time. It was probably illegal. When I highlighted the fact that it was happening on the seabed to the extent that they actually ... we used to feed to saturation. Then we reduced it to 75% of what would be the normal consumption, in relation to the size of the Salmon - because it differs from size to size. We certainly helped to rectify the problem. In other words, the fish were getting most of the feed before any would go through. They have a better raising now, through experience. They’ve learned. Anyway, in those days, as I said we didn’t know the first thing about it, and they put us in as Managers and we tried to our best.

2. EXPOSURE TO MĀORI/LOCAL/SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

To what extent has Māori culture and knowledge affected your knowledge of the ocean and the life in the ocean, including but not limited to the White Pointers? Is that Māori contribution, very low, low, medium, high or very high?

SMITH: Oh, it’s always been a high priority to us. Any of the history and stories of settlement of tangata whenua, of which we were here in the early days. Those stories have always been important to us and our family. I’ve got Old Granny, who was the daughter of [Mohi Muritai??], I’ve got all those books out. They’re actually reproductions now, the originals are in the Hocken Library in Dunedin, because of the importance of them. But I’ve gotten it all written here. Most of it’s in Māori which has been deciphered by Tipene O'Regan and a few others. It’s really, really important, and we’re very privileged that Granny could do that. A lot of that history, which is really not that long back, through her Father, which was [Mohi??], the last to die. A lot of the stuff that she’s written comes from him, and probably his Father. That’s very important to us. I’ve just got something that was delivered to me the other day. The legend of how Foveaux Strait was formed by Kewa the Whale. It's all portrayed in this ... Tipene O'Regan organized this carver to do for me. I actually made this, and it’s [blue wiless??], I made this to this very crudely like that. He sent it to his carver, with the intentions of portraying the legends of Kewa the Whale. When the Chiefs were coming down the coast, they struck this big sand bay between Stewart Island and the mainland. So, they called on Kewa the Whale, and he chomped his way through. In the course of doing it, all the crumbs of the sand fell out, and created the Muttonbird Islands and Centre Island. Now these portray Dog Island, [Little Koory Island??] which is the light house, Centre Island, Codfish, Kewa the Whale and [Ihu??] the tooth that fell out after he did it, that’s Solander Island. So, that’s a [taonga??]. 

CRAWFORD: I’m a little bit familiar with some of the things with Indigenous people back home in Canada. They cherish not only their own creation story, but they cherish the other people’s creation stories too - the similarities and the differences. I brought the Ogimaa, the Ojibway Chiefs I worked with here to Aotearoa a few years ago - to explore possible collaborations with like-minded Māori iwi and organizations. Chief Akiwenzie passed within six months of getting back to his community in Canada, but he said coming here was a trip of a lifetime - he'd never really been out of Canada. When we were here, Chief Ralph said to me “These Māori are just like us. Make sure you give back to them as well.” This is part of what I’m looking for with this research project, an opportunity to give back to the people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Because these discussions are for the record. People are going to be reading these interviews long after you and I are gone. They’ll come back to these parts of our conversation, and I hope they think “There is nothing preventing a Scientist from recognizing the valuable knowledge that exists in Indigenous and Local cultures, where stories and with embedded information and knowledge and wisdom are stored. The overlap between the two cultures, it doesn’t have to be so 'us-and-them'. That there’s plenty of room for this type of respectful, reciprocal dialogue." It's going to take work, though. I still get Scientists who say “Māori? Why would you talk to Māori? They wouldn’t know anything at all about the White Pointers.”

SMITH: I can show you teeth that I got in a little container in there that came off a Māori necklace. They were prized for that adornment.

CRAWFORD: Even a trans-Pacific scholar like me, it didn’t take too much history research to realize how important the White Pointers are not just in Māori culture, but in Polynesian culture generally. I mean, how could these massive, iconic animals not be prominently featured in the cultures of the Pacific Indigenous people who lived and interacted with them?

SMITH: Yeah. I’ll show you the difference. That’s 13th century from Bravo. That’s where Yankee settled in the late 1800s. It's the earliest known occupation of Polynesian ... they think they were Moriori. That was carbon-dated at the University of Otago by Les Lockerbie, probably in the 1950s. I found that about twelve years ago, where the foreshore of our landing site had eroded. I still reckon I was supposed to find it. It was sitting like that in the dirt, where the bank had fallen away. I was rowing in, of course you always row the Pakeha way. [chuckles] And the Māoris think "What are these men doing? They’re not looking where they’re going." [both chuckle] I turned around, I looked straight at it, and I thought “Bloody Hell.” I actually thought it was wood until I washed it, and it was bloody [podu paoua??], Whalebone. It must’ve been in the ground ... I reckon someone tried to dig with a spade, and it's cut it. Because that’s as hard as hell, but that's a definite cut. I reckon it might’ve been the end of a spade from someone going like that. I don’t think they parrying a the blow, unless it was a sword. It always intrigued me, that piece. That is the 13th century. The Daughter of this Les Lockerbie, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of him, but he used to come in here with all the University students at Christmas time, they were studying archeology. He always took them to the same areas, and they always took the same artifacts away. My Father used to just about pull his hair out, he'd say “If I went out to the East Road Cemetery with a long-handled shovel, and started digging up things like that - they’d put me in jail.” And here they were doing it on our doorstep. Foreshore lease - you couldn’t do anything about it anyway. But they had no regard or any thoughts about consulting with the landowner who were tangata whenua, you know what I mean? The Old Man being the Old Man, he never did anything about it anyway. But funny how things happen. The woman, his Daughter, me being on the Museum Committee, they’ve just been in touch with the local Museum and have asked “Would we like all of Dad's collections?” So, they’re coming back. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Really? When did you hear that?

SMITH: About a month ago. Elaine Hamilton said it to me - she brought it up as part of the business. She said they received a letter from the Daughter “Would we like Dad's gear?” I just looked at her, and I said, “Yes. Yes please. Don’t lose sight of that. It’s got to come back.” Not for the benefit of having it in the Museum. But because it never should have left here. They should have never taken it away. It'll be laying in the archives of Otago Museum somewhere, in boxes. Another one that came through recently, was actually seashells from Stewart Island, which are not quite so important. But they’ve been offered back too, and I’ve said the same thing, “Yes.” But the stuff that Lockerbie took ... I’ve got bits and pieces in the locker here that I actually found myself. I never dug, but over the course of my hunting and that, I go mostly where beaches are. Anywhere there’s been a slip, you'll find bits of bones, and I always bury them back. But anyway, that’s the two different eras. Now, this bone here was originally dredged out of the water. For what I hear, [Manuel Whaitiri??], he’s the same age as my young Brother, and unfortunately he died. It's twenty feet long, this piece of bone, and Manu gave it to [Lance Lecall?? and Greg Northe] -  they carve bone, they're real artists. Greg works with me. He cut it up into small pieces and gave it to them. Well, Lance gave me a piece, and that’s what I made these two out of. When I sent it away, there was a lot of pockmarks in here, and he’s very painstakingly, actually chiseled them out to make it more characteristic of the whole thing, and not so obvious for all the blemishes. And then he’s carved like waves, rather than try to sand it out, which would have made it too thin. But anyway, when he got the bone, and I always thought it was a Sperm Whale because that’s usually the only bone they used to carve with. But the guy that carved it, he said that it’s a Blue Whale. I don’t know anyone with Blue Whale, other than this piece that Lance and him got. Blue Whale is the biggest animal in the world. Largest living thing is a tree, but the biggest living animal is a Blue Whale. So, that makes it even more special too.

CRAWFORD: Those family connections through Māori lineage - they're obviously an important part of family history, going back a fair ways.

SMITH: Well if you look on the tangata whenua side, if you look at Yankee's Wife - she was a half caste. She was half Portuguese and half Māori. They lived on Codfish. Her Mother was [Pura??], she was Ngāi Tahu, and she was sent down from Kaiapoi, just north of Christchurch. When [Te Raupahara??] was looting and raiding all of South Island, they sent the woman down here ...

CRAWFORD: As a refuge?

SMITH: Some of them went to Women's Island, Tiny's [Metzger's] Island out here too. They called it Women's Island - for safety, away from the tribal wars. But the ones around here, they're the ones that got married to the Sealers and Whalers. 1830 they settled here, in the Sealing Era, and then the Whalers came along later, with Yankee and all them. [Pura??] was their Mother. Through the whakapapa on her side, my Cousin across the road, Rosemary [Coons??], when she was going through university in the 1960s, she did a thesis on the whakapapa. She goes right back through to [Tahu Porike??], one of the original Chiefs, right up the top of the North here. Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha, [Rapui??], and then Ngāi Tahu. The Ngāi Tahu influence to our tribal affiliation comes through [Pura??]. Māmoe and Waitaha were already here, that's [Mohi??]. So, indirectly we're all related. That whakapapa to [Tahu Porike??], there’s probably eight or nine generations, I suppose.

CRAWFORD: You've talked a bit about your ancestral lineage, making reference to your American ancestors. In terms of Māori, were there traditional stories or classic legends where there were interactions with White Pointers? Stories that were passed down from generation to generation?

SMITH: Not to my knowledge, along that line no. I know they prized the Whites and the Makos for their teeth, adornment and stuff. That’s about all I know for how they use them. In a situation where they used to flake stone for knives, they could use the teeth, and they probably did that. But I wouldn’t imagine they would deliberately try to catch them to do it. It would probably be Shark strandings, which happen occasionally. They did have nets, they made their own nets. You only have to go back through the history books to show you that. And probably accidentally they either did catch them. I don’t know or have heard of ever them specifically making any effort to catch White Pointers.

CRAWFORD: It seems obvious that Māori culture and knowledge has had a Very High effect on your knowledge of ecological things in New Zealand's coastal waters as well. Same question, but this time about the effects of the Science knowledge system on your understanding of marine ecology in this region?

SMITH: Well, I've got to admit, all the research and studies that they’re doing ... I’m really interested in them - regardless of Shark diving. I mean what Clinton Duffy's done here, this was prior to the Shark diving. I’ve always asked Steve who runs the boat or [Shorty Grey??] who used to run the Jester for them when they first started. Daily I’d asked them “How'd do you go today?" And he'd tell me. I was fascinated. The fact that they could bring these Sharks alongside the boat, chumming them up, and put tags on them. I never thought it was possible. And good on them for doing it. And that in itself, that’s clever.

3. WHITE POINTER DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE

 CRAWFORD: What was your first memory as a young person, of either hearing about or seeing a White Pointer?

SMITH: Probably from the early linefisherman. Stories from them that just seemed to float around the township when anything happened in the way of identification of a White Pointer. We grew up knowing at a young age, that they are and were here. Some of the experiences of the old fisherman who had physically sighted them. Even their reactions to it, some were funny, some weren’t quite so funny. But at an early age we got to know that, living on the Island.

CRAWFORD: How old would you have been, roughly, when you were hearing these stories from the linefisherman?

SMITH: I guess through my Father and that. Dad was a daily fisherman ... when I say daily, he fished permanently, like all his life actually.

CRAWFORD: But day trips? He was a dayfisherman?

SMITH: Yes, in some cases. When he first started fishing, the boats that Dad fished ... when we were just big enough to go with him, which was about six or seven. None of the boats had a freezer in them, until later on in our lives. So consequently, when he went fishing - three days would be the maximum. They would process the fish to the extent of trying to get all the blood off them, and then to keep them cool we cut kelp ... take the dinghy into the rocks, cut kelp, and chuck the kelp over them to keep them cool. You couldn’t do that for any more than about three days. So, three-day maximum trips. Probably two was the norm.

CRAWFORD: Ok. When you were less than ten, you were hearing these stories about White Pointers. What did the old-timers say about them? Were there areas where they saw White Pointers? Or regions where they were more likely to see them?

SMITH: Yes. Well, in those days the most common sightings that we heard about were mainly round the nor'west corner. Around the Ruggedy to Smoky Bank, Codfish and this area, and even the Hellfire area down here. 

CRAWFORD: Just behind Codfish Island, heading down to Mason's?

SMITH: Yes. And the other area that we heard they would be sighted was when they had the fish freezers at Pegasus, they were often seen. They were probably attracted by the boats heading back into port at night, cleaning fish all the way. And they were occasionally sighted down there. But the most common place that people would see them was always this area, East Ruggedy and Waituna. Yeah, you talk to any Bluff fisherman that fished here a lot ... in those days, with Codding and that. It was usually after Christmas when we would normally fish for Cod here. It was always in the summer months we’d fish here. And then as winter come, you’d go to Port Adventure. And then through the winter it would always be down in this area, and sometimes around the Cape.

CRAWFORD: Down towards Pegasus, and then South Cape. Why do you reckon the Ruggedy’s would have so many White Pointers?

SMITH: That’s where we shot that one, that day. Out in Ruggedy, just on the edge of the Ruggedy Passage. And Smoky Beach, Bishops. Any sightings were always there. And I think if you talk to the Riverton fisherman, a lot of them were sighted them around Centre Island, too. 

CRAWFORD: And Escape Reef?

SMITH: Yeah. So, whether it’s an annual gathering of them at that time ... it was always known that they were more prominent there in those months, rather than any other time. 

CRAWFORD: Yes, I have talked to fisherman from Buff and from Riverton. Depending on who I talk to, there are different interpretations. And this is part of our discussion - it’s focused on patterns, and the mechanisms that can explain the patterns. 

SMITH: A thing that I’ve noticed in my life growing up here ... when we were kids, if you wanted to know a story about what was happening round the place, just go down and sit on the seat at Bragg's [General??] with the old-timers. And just make out you’re sharpening a knife or making a [Shanghai??] ...

CRAWFORD: And just listen. Yep.

SMITH: We haven’t got those people anymore. Not only that, but when somebody wanted to know something about the area, like say the City Council Chairman, he’d go and talk to old [Kipa Root??], he’d talk to [Bob Tipney??]. That doesn’t happen now. DOC will go to someone that’s never lived here, they’ll come back with the person’s name, and all these degrees before and after, he’s an 'expert'. And that’s where we are, man. That’s where we are today. The whole place is no longer any indication that they want to talk to ... I’ve been doing Kiwi-spotting for 25-years, with a concession. I’ve never been asked to go to that Department to discuss my operation. I get a letter in the mail, telling me what to do - because somebody on the mainland has decided that Phillip should know this. And none of them know anything like what I know after 25 years of seeing birds every bloody night we go there. Missed about six times in 25 years. That’s what annoys me here. It really annoys me. They change names of our geographical places on a DOC map, without any consultation. Nothing. The history of those places are gone. It’s now been superseded by these 'experts'. It’s different. And it’s not changing.

CRAWFORD: I'm here to let you know it can still change.

SMITH: Well, hopefully yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Prior to the protection of the White Pointers, I’ve heard from some people that on Stewart Island there was an interpretation that if a White Pointer entered into Halfmoon Bay or Horseshoe Bay, that it was out-of-bounds. There was a general feeling in the community that any White Pointer that came into the Bays, the appropriate response was to do something to remove that individual Shark. If people saw a White Pointer in the Bays, gear went out, or that people went out with the purpose shooting, hooking or netting that animal to remove it.

SMITH: Talk to Helen Cave’s husband, Joe. He used to set a net in Horseshoe Bay, or Butterfields. One day he caught two. I helped him skin one on the beach here. But that was because they were sighted previous.

CRAWFORD: That’s one of the most famous examples that I’ve heard about. Many different people talk about that event.

SMITH: And several others have done the same thing. Joe had special nets made specifically for that reason.

CRAWFORD: That’s what I’m talking about. But I hear it wasn’t just a Joe thing. That it was many in the community that said they wanted this done.

SMITH: We relished in helping him. "There's another couple out of the system. It makes the place a lot safer." Because we were still swimming off the wharf in those days. And there was never any fear about Sharks with us when we were kids. 

CRAWFORD: How long did Joe's Shark nets run - before the protection came in?

SMITH: They would have been out of the water long before there was any protection. Simply because Joe moved away. And there was no one else to do it.

CRAWFORD: Joe was the only one that ever operated those nets?

SMITH: No one borrowed Joe’s nets. He was the only one that did it.

CRAWFORD: When did Joe move away?

SMITH: Well, when he started his Salmon Farm, I think him and Helen were at about the stage when they separated. Joe probably started the Salmon Farm about ’86. I worked there in ’89.

CRAWFORD: You think he would have been out of the process of fishing the Shark nets by then?

SMITH: He would have that much on his plate, he wouldn’t be doing this netting by then. And he wouldn’t have caught them when they were protected.

CRAWFORD: Right. In all that time, the fifteen-year period that Joe's nets were deployed - from about 1970 to about 1985 - roughly, what would you guess would be the number of White Pointers that were caught in those nets?

SMITH: If I had to hazard a guess, I would probably say five or six.

CRAWFORD: Which really isn’t that much. I think other people expected that it was more. But once again, it gets back to that idea about what people perceive.

SMITH: Well, I’m just thinking about what I experienced with it. The one I helped him skin. I knew about the other two, and I think he probably got a couple in Horseshoe. It could be more, but I would honestly say at least five.

CRAWFORD: Do you think removing those White Pointers had a general effect on reducing the number of individuals that came into the Bays?

SMITH: I guess for a short time, the fact he caught them, there were no more sightings. So, yeah it would have.

CRAWFORD: At least on a short time-scale, during and after the running of Joe's nets?

SMITH: Yeah. And I would say it was sort of like an annual thing. That next year, another one might show up - and of course, the nets would go out again. I remember one day ... I think they’d been in the water for something like two or three months. And of course, to check them, all you had to do was steam up to the buoy, and steam along in the boat. Nothing in it, go away. After a couple of months, they’d start to get all weeded over, they hadn’t caught anything. “Oh, bugger. I’ll take them out.”

CRAWFORD: I’m trying to balance what the effects of Joe's Shark nets were. Some people think it’s possible that the inquisitive, the bold or the aggressive White Pointers were being selectively removed from the population. And that there could have been a 'quieting' of the population by removing those particular individuals. But it seems we’re talking about such small numbers.

SMITH: Yeah. But then again, some of the observations I’ve heard, by the Shark divers... I heard that they reckon there are only about four aggressive ones amongst what they see. I don’t know whether that’s true.

CRAWFORD: Well, this is exactly what we’re going to focus on now. Starting with the research by Clinton and Malcolm, and then progressing to the Shark cage diving. When is the first time that you remember that Clinton or Malcolm were down here, doing work on the White Pointers?

SMITH: Well, it was through [Allan Gray??], because he was Skippering the Jester. Al and I are good mates - he lives in Cromwell now. But he was Skipper of it. I said “How’s the Shark thing going?” Of course, he was fascinated with it all. The fact that they were actually being able to physically put tags on them. 

CRAWFORD: Roughly what year was this - when they started tagging White Pointers?

SMITH: The DOC still had the Jester, and they got the [Hananui??] ... it would probably be about five years ago, I suppose. Maybe a bit longer. They were actually doing it round January, February each year. I think they'd actually started maybe a couple years before I even knew what they were up to. I think they were keeping it pretty low-key. I mean it was just a scientific ... whatever you like to call it. 

CRAWFORD: Just another DOC research project?

SMITH: Research, yeah. I said to Allan a couple of times “Give us a yell when you’re going out again. I wouldn’t mind coming out to have a look.” I don’t know whether through DOC he wasn’t allowed to, but I never got the invitation. I said to him several times “You haven’t given us a ring.” And it was “Ah, shit. I’ve forgotten.” I don’t know whether it was "I’ve forgotten" or "I wasn’t allowed".

CRAWFORD: Did you ever hear about the discussion between DOC and the Shark cage dive operators, with regards to how many different White Pointers were actually in the Titi Island region, where they're doing the cage diving?

SMITH: I heard that they estimated about 150.

CRAWFORD: You heard that through the grapevine?

SMITH: Through the grapevine, yeah. I think it might’ve even been in the paper. It could possibly be up to 150 in the area.

CRAWFORD: Here’s where we get to some of the broader population ecology questions. Because population ecology is all about abundance and distribution. So, abundance estimates are very important to us. But part of it has to do with what you’re defining as a population anyways. And most biologists, say that definition has to do with the reproductive nature of the animals. You might have White Pointers all along the northeast coast of Stewart Island. You might have individuals that are here in the Titi Islands today, but tomorrow they might make it down to Port Pegasus, or whatever, right? Might be that the whole island could be a single population.

SMITH: Yes.

CRAWFORD: Then you bring in the satellite tags that Clinton and Malcolm put on the White Pointers, and we find out for sure this is not a local population.

SMITH: No.

CRAWFORD: That at least some of these animals are going tremendous distances.

SMITH: Well, I think they had one in Tahiti. Great Barrier Reef.

CRAWFORD: And then they come back.

SMITH: They come back yeah. And I have heard from the evidence that they actually ... there’s a train of thought they go right round global. Right around the southern oceans, up as far as the Pacific.

CRAWFORD: That’s very interesting. Do you remember where you might’ve heard that? Was it on TV?

SMITH: Probably, yeah. The thing about it was, they were relating the Sharks in South Africa, South America, Australia and Stewart Island. The inference was, they could possibly be global.

CRAWFORD: They could possibly be a single global population of White Pointers?

SMITH: Yeah. The only thing I heard was ... and it was from the South African perspective, was that “No, these Sharks are different. Their habits are different.” 

CRAWFORD: Their behaviours are different?

SMITH: The behaviours are different. They’re not as aggressive as what they’ve seen here. Because that South African woman was with them when they came out. I think they might even have been with Peter Scott or Mike Haines. Or maybe with Clinton. She wanted to swim with the Sharks. "You won’t get in the water with these ones, Lady." And they wouldn’t let her. I don’t know whether that’s true. I just heard that.

CRAWFORD: I want to know what your thoughts are about why the White Pointers come back to Stewart Island? Why would they come back to the Titi Islands, or in behind Codfish - the northwest ‘sharky’ area we had talked about before. What do you think it is about Stewart Island, Rakiura, that brings the White Pointers back every year?

SMITH: My personal thoughts would be because the food. Seal rookeries. I mean these are ... have you been out round the Island?

CRAWFORD: Going out to see them soon.

SMITH: I mean, there are thousands of Seals here in this area.

CRAWFORD: If that’s the case, when the dead White Pointers that were historically caught - what was in their guts?

SMITH: Seals.

CRAWFORD: Some of them, yes. Others, apparently had been feeding on Cod frames. A whole bunch of different things. 

SMITH: Michael Ryan, unfortunately he’s passed away too. He found one of the biggest Sharks - already dead. He reckoned it was the best part of twenty feet, and it had two Seals in it - that’s what killed it. And that’s why it never sunk, the blubber of the Seals kept it afloat. Michael didn’t do anything with the Shark, because it was after they’d been protected. He thought if he got caught in possession of the teeth, he would be prosecuted. And he probably would have been. I mean how do you tell someone, “Oh, we found it dead, with two Seals in it.” Most people would be skeptical about it, probably wouldn’t believe him. So, he wouldn’t touch it.

CRAWFORD: This was an incidental post-protection White Pointer he found?

SMITH: Yeah. All they did was they found it floating on the surface. But when they ripped it open, there were two bloody Seals in it.

CRAWFORD: It wasn’t entangled in gear or anything like that?

SMITH: No. They reckoned it died because it swallowed two whole Seals.

CRAWFORD: Where abouts was this? Do you remember?

SMITH: It was just down the southeast coast of the Island here. Just south of Lords River. Michael used to fish the Traps, or Pegasus, the Cape, and all that. He was coming down here ... I’m not sure exactly where, but they steamed past it. And he called the boys on the radio and told them. So, they went straight in and got it.

CRAWFORD: I’ve never heard that story. Roughly when was this?

SMITH: Well, since they’ve been protected.

CRAWFORD: I think it’s important to know, because White Pointers just don’t up and die for no reason. You can imagine maybe seeing a White Pointer dead, if it was emaciated - in very poor condition somehow. Or an Orca killed it. I mean, they do have to die natural deaths somehow as well, right? Just as we all do.

SMITH: Well, their own personal comment was, they reckoned the Seals ... it couldn’t digest them. Or they must’ve gotten stuck in the stomach. And it died.

CRAWFORD: But also, the cause-and-effect that it was having the Seals in there, and that their blubber is what kept it afloat. Because otherwise it would’ve sunk.

SMITH: Well, the only thing that will keep a Shark like that afloat would be something like blubber. Their liver floats, but it won’t float the whole Shark. That’s why Smoky Joe sunk, and we couldn’t get him.

CRAWFORD: Ok. I wasn’t expecting that story. Let’s bring it back specifically about the food. If I was listening to you correctly, you’re strongly of the opinion that the White Pointers come back here to Stewart Island for the food? The Seals in particular?

SMITH: Yeah. Like, you asked me a specific question and I would have had no idea, until all these studies had been done by Clinton and them. That there’s so many of them, and they’re migratory. My own personal feeling was that they must be coming back because of the food.

CRAWFORD: Ok. There have been rather dramatic changes during your lifetime in the abundance of Seals round Stewart Island. Would you describe both the number, but also their spatial distribution? Where have they been increasing?

SMITH: Our Muttonbird Island is a bloody good Seal rookery. There’s not a place you can't go where the Seals breed and live. Since I was a kid, the population now is probably 100% more than what they were when we were kids. That’s a natural progress since the Sealing era - they nearly wiped them out. Over my lifetime, in this area where you catch your Muttonbirds, the Seals are now reclaiming the ability of the Muttonbirds to nest there - because of the sheer numbers.

CRAWFORD: When you were a kid around your Muttonbird Island, approximately how many Seals do you figure would have been around there back in the day?

SMITH: Oh, bloody hell.

CRAWFORD: Roughly. Are we talking about 20? 100? 500?

SMITH: Ah, it’d be more than 20. It would probably be a couple hundred. But now I’d say there’d be probably a couple thousand. And that’s relevant to all the Muttonbird Islands, I’ll tell you that.

CRAWFORD: Has it been a steady increase? Or has it really taken off in the past ten years or so?

SMITH: In the last, probably ten years at a place called *[Kori??], they’re coming right across the Peninsula. They never used to. That’s purely for numbers.

CRAWFORD: So, you feel like it’s picking up?

SMITH: Yeah. Every year now, this is what happens. From my observations and stuff that I’ve read. It’s a slow process, but you'll get to a peak where all of a sudden, it just expands dramatically in a short time.

CRAWFORD: That’s consistent with what I’ve heard from elsewhere regarding Stewart Island generally. Do you think there is an increase in White Pointer abundance that is associated with an increase in the Seal abundance?

SMITH: I don’t think I’d have the balls to say that straight out. All I would say, because of what I’ve heard, and the observations, and what they’ve been doing out here - we’ve been told there’s more. So, that is sort of what I would think. I would believe what I’ve been told by these particular people who are bloody experts at it, that they’re right.

CRAWFORD: But if they’re saying that the Seal numbers are going up ...

SMITH: The Seals are, yeah. But by the same token, those 150 Sharks that are in the area, they could have already been here anyway.

CRAWFORD: Could have been.

SMITH: And I wouldn’t be able to say “There was only 50 Sharks. Now there’s 150 because of the Seals.” I wouldn’t be qualified to say that.

CRAWFORD: And I don’t think I was really asking you about that, because that’s a tough thing to know. I guess what I’m more interested in is, do you think that it’s reasonable that if there’s a dramatic increase in the Seal population around here, and if the White Pointers are here for largely for feeding on Seals - is it reasonable to expect that the predator population would increase dramatically, in response to a dramatic increase in the prey population?

SMITH: Well, I guess being just a sort of an observant layman, I would say that it would be natural to think that. That because of the population of Seals are increasing ... I mean, let’s put it this way. If there was 150 Sharks come in regular now, and I don’t know whether there was, but say there was, and the limited number of Seals were around in the ‘50s and ‘60s when we were kids. There may not have been enough Seals to sustain that Shark population. We don’t know. But there may not have been 150, there might've been ...

CRAWFORD: There might’ve only been fifty or twenty back then. Something like that?

SMITH: Yeah. And it’s not just in here. In the history of the Sealing, they did the whole of the bloody country. And they took bloody thousands and thousands of Seals. It’s incredible. They didn’t wipe them to extinction, but it wasn’t far from it. And when they opened that season, I think it was 1947, when they went down to the Snares. I think they opened the Sealing season for about three years. And it's been closed ever since. 

CRAWFORD: Other than the story with the Hamilton's rowing their dinghy ashore here, were there any other specific accounts of people who had seen White Pointers in either Halfmoon Bay or Horseshoe Bay?

SMITH: The ones that I know of that they physically saw them, the linefishermen when they were coming in. They would clean at a little place, a little bay down there called *Deadman's. Those boats were slow. Most of the time you’d have your fish cleaned before you got into port - they’re only about five or six knots. But now and again there would be a day where they had a good day fishing. They wouldn’t clean them in the Bay, mainly because if there’s any issue, all the stuff would get washed up on the beach.

CRAWFORD: Here, in Halfmoon Bay?

SMITH: Yeah. That was their concern. So, often they would drift outside the big rocks without even an anchor down - they'd just drift around. The Mollymawks would be eating all the heads. But I have known that probably most of those fishermen would’ve seen one at one time. It could’ve been the same one hanging around for a week or more.

CRAWFORD: Yes. That possibility has come up several times. It’s become fairly clear that the White Pointers have been responding to those cleaning stations. But you also made an important observation, that back in the day the dayfishermen's boats didn’t actually move all that fast.

SMITH: They were slow. The boat I had, she could do ten knots. When we were coming in from the Traps, it's no good coming in in an hour at ten knots, when you’ve got two hours of work to do. So, we’d just…

CRAWFORD: Throttle it back to, like three or four knots?

SMITH: Stick her on pilot, set up on the deck. You’d be watching as you’re coming in, your distance. And you’d think, “Oh, I’ve still got a ways to go.” You wouldn’t worry about increasing the revs, until you were nearly finished. Because the last thing you wanted to be doing if there was a bit of a breeze, is having to drift around or drop the pick. It was easier just to quietly handle them as you went.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, what speed would you have been at - on auto pilot?

SMITH: Probably five or six knots. And you would know, because it was an hour's haul, say from the North Traps. From Whale Passage to the North Traps it took us about an hour. Well, if you were coming out of the North Traps with a boomerang back into Whale Passage, at five or six knots it’s going to take you just on two hours. You’d look and think "By the time we clean and scrub those, by the time we get to at least Whale Passage, to the moorings, we’ll drag the fish down below, have tea, and away to bed." [chuckles] You know, people say that the Sharks have been following boats for years. But when you’re steaming like that, and it wouldn't be uncommon that you would have 60 to 80 to 100 Mollyhawks following the boat, and Albatross too, and all the little Gulls. We were head and gutting - all the guts and the heads went over the side. There’d be rarely a head would ever sink without a Mollyhawk getting it. I think they would clean it up like a Hoover.

CRAWFORD: You’re not the only one that’s said that it was the rare head or rare piece that would actually reach the water. But when it did it was still fair game, and these birds would dive.

SMITH: They could go a body length, two body lengths at the most probably. So, there was very little left. As soon as it splashed, the Mollyhawk would have that. And these are big heads too, from those big Cod.

CRAWFORD: But in all the time that you were on fishing boats back in the day, when you were cleaning on your way while steaming slowly back to port ... did you ever see, or do you remember anyone else ever talking about, any of these White Pointers following the boats?

SMITH: Never. I've never heard anyone say that. The only feedback I’ve got is when they’re hoved-to.

CRAWFORD: At the cleaning stations?

SMITH: Yeah. While you’re fishing sometimes, one would come and cruise round the boat. It wasn’t that often you would actually see them near the surface. Sometimes you’d know something was there, but not what it was. Because you could get a Groper like that - come up and it's bit in half. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: And that takes a substantial bite.

SMITH: And it takes quite a good bite. The biggest Shark ever caught at the Traps was a 10-foot Mako. We actually harvested that. We got it aboard, and the fish company we were fishing for - they were buying Shark. But they didn’t say what size. We had a 10-foot Mako, so we cut it in strips to about the length of the smallest Sharks that they were buying, put them all in bags. When they got it, they took one look at it ... we ended up taking it back, and using it for Crayfish bait. [both chuckle] But all the teeth ...  I’ve got earrings made out for Diane, they're actually in the bedroom there. But that’s the only Shark I physically caught, deliberately caught. Apart from the one we shot at Ruggedy, which we never actually harvested, because he sunk. 

CRAWFORD: There was a market for the Shark flesh - even though they didn't specify what kind. Was there a market for Shark oil?

SMITH: No. In the early days, there was a market for the livers. At the fish factories, I’ve seen it and I’ve handled them - those big 10-gallon milk cans that they used to put the livers in.

CRAWFORD: And then the teeth. Obviously, that’s a different thing.

SMITH: Yeah, that’s a personal thing more often. But I do know people that have been privileged enough to catch a few of those. It wasn’t illegal at the time, but they would sell the teeth to a jeweler. He'd put the gold on them, sell them, and make big money. I’ve got several made that I’ve given to my Sisters, and they’ve still got them. They're big Whites.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any other kind of instances, with White Pointers coming in and cruising around the Bays?

SMITH: Not until about ... the first Shark that was caught in the Bay here was the work of Joe Cave with his nets.

CRAWFORD: And that would’ve been in the 1960s?

SMITH: When Joe first came here was in the mid-60s. We were just married, and I think Joe and Helen might’ve been working in Fiordland. Those Sharks were actually physically sighted, and then Joe decided he’d just set a net, a normal net, and I think he got one. But then he had this idea he would make a net. It might’ve been six and a quarter inch mesh. Specifically for the big Sharks.

CRAWFORD: How frequently did people observe White Pointers coming into the Bays? Was that once or twice a year, or twenty times a year, or what?

SMITH: It seemed to be more in the summer months.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Sometime between December and March, April? That kind of thing?

SMITH: Well, it would probably be from November through till March, April. In the summer months, yeah. I’m not sure how long they had that Shark-hook with the barrel. But the reason they would have that, was because they’re in waters where we’re more active with dinghies and stuff.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, how frequently were those observations of White Pointers coming into the Bays being made?

SMITH: Well, I don’t know as far as numbers, because one Shark could hang around here for days.

CRAWFORD: Yes, you're quite right. It could have been repeated observations of one individual Shark.

SMITH: I wouldn’t say there was twenty per season. It’s like the one at Ruggedy here, that we reckoned was Smoky Joe. The reason why we thought that, they said “He’s covered in scars.” Well, this thing was covered in scars. He’s probably habitually there all the time. He may not be one that migrates. I think we might’ve said to old Archie “We reckon we got him." "Oh, you'd have to be clever to get him" he said. So, he obviously knew. Like they were talking about an individual. Smoky Joe was his name. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: That’s an important part of the puzzle. Because we’re dealing with such big animals, and because it’s possible in some circumstances that you can pick up a scarring pattern or some type of shape or deformity or clip on the fin. Something that people could and would be able identify. And maybe give that individual a name.

SMITH: Well, we had an Orca, out off Broad Bay, where we Crayfish. Every October those Orcas would be there. Not to the day, but to the month. And there was one with a fin like that. [flopping??] We were fishing there one day with my Uncle Denny, and he said to me “I see your old mate's back.” I turned around, and here’s this ‘your old mate’ [chuckles] because that pod ... and it could’ve been a pod that just does New Zealand. But that month. We reckon it must’ve been a specific feed that they would get at that time. To come back like that every year.

CRAWFORD: Yes. Could be exactly the same thing with some of the White Pointers too.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: I'm going to guess that back in the day, when you were a kid up until you were a young man, that White Pointers did come into the Bay on a seasonal basis - but it was not a common thing. Like maybe a few every summer, that kind of thing?

SMITH: I would say the sightings at those times, would probably be between five and ten. I wouldn’t say over that.

CRAWFORD: Ok.

SMITH: Because it wouldn’t be every day. But over that say, two- or three-month period, different people would have seen it. But whether it’s the same one, that’s another thing.

CRAWFORD: Right. Over time, from one decade to the next, did the number of White Pointer observations increase, did it stay the same, or did it decrease?

SMITH: It actually decreased, only because most boats stopped fishing with lines. See, the Crayfishing started in ’51. And when you’re getting one and five pence a pound for Crayfish against nine pence for Cod ... The biggest problem when the Crayfish started was getting enough Cod for the markets that they used to have to the extent they lost a lot. It was easier to get the Cod from the Chatham Islands, because they didn’t have a Crayfish industry until ’65. So, that’s a significant thing, as far as sightings go.

CRAWFORD: Yes, it is. Very important factor.

SMITH: There was still the old stalwarts that couldn’t be bothered with Crayfishing even at the price. But there wasn’t many. Well, it’s purely economics - you want to double your money.

CRAWFORD: And the Cod fishery, by nature and what and where they were doing things ... they were going to see White Pointers at a much, much greater rate than the people are gone Crayfishing?

SMITH: Sure. Once my Father started Crayfishing in ’51 ... him and Ken Johnson were the first. He did do Codding later on, when he got a boat with a big freezer in it, through the winter months because didn’t Crayfish through the winter months. It was mainly the other months.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Question regarding differences or similarities between Horseshoe and Halfmoon Bays. Was it the case that you’d never see White Pointers in Horseshoe - would you only see them in Halfmoon? Or was it both?

SMITH: The first fish factory in Horseshoe Bay, like the Johnsons and the [Tolson’s??] and the [Hawkins'??], they would fish into that factory. Because that’s where the people lived, and it was convenient. The biggest percentage of fisherman on the island, of which there was about 60 to 70 permanent fishermen in those days, between the two Bays, the biggest percentage would fish into this factory here on the wharf.

CRAWFORD: Here in Halfmoon Bay?

SMITH: Yeah. Which was a different one. It was owned by different people in those days. And Leask's Bay was an earlier one too. But regardless of that, the Sharks were still seen in either Bay. But in saying that, when the Crayfish came ... not necessarily to a halt, but where it was bloody hard and expensive to catch them - that’s when I stopped. 

CRAWFORD: When was that?

SMITH: About ’84, ’85. They set the quotas in ’87, knowing full well if they didn’t do something to sustain this species, it could be outfished. That’s when the quotas came in, and when they did ... I guess it’s slowly gone back to Codding, but it’s with Codpots. Now, the methods are different - but once the fish are on deck. If you’re just heading and gutting Codpotting, that offal all of a sudden starts again. If you’re filleting the fish, you’re chucking the frames over like you used to do sometimes when you’re handlining. So, the methods changed but you’re getting back into that situation where you’re chucking the offal back in. And then as you carry on, the factories decide "We won’t give you as much money for your fish, but if you bring the fish whole, you’re going to gain by the weight which is the head and the guts. And we'll process it all in the factories." And that’s virtually what’s happened now. So, there’s little spikes like that, that actually all of a sudden slightly alter it. It’s not quite the same, you know?

CRAWFORD: Yes. I think this part of the discussion is emphasizing that for any analysis of a situation like this, you have to be quite sure that you are familiar with the changes in the nature of the fishery, and in the gear, and anything else that would have affected the frequency of the observations.

SMITH: Yes. And also what goes hand and hand with that is, the Cod are quota-ed now. I understand from my Brother, who is a Blue Cod fisherman, it's set far too high. Because they don’t even catch it now.

CRAWFORD: They don’t even meet their own quotas?

SMITH: No. The tonnage that’s been allocated by the Ministry of Primary Industries on the Blue Cod fishery, is far in excess of what they can actually physically catch. Anyway, but there’s all those little things that an analyst would have to take into account.

CRAWFORD: Getting back to the fish factories, and the discharge of fish blood and guts. So, that wharf is not without a signal the White Pointers might lock into. If you have the fish processing plants that are in the Bays, or the fishing boats ... if the White Pointers do follow boats, or if they do associate certain boats with the idea of having Cod frames around, or whatever. It’s a more complex situation than what most people had thought.

SMITH: It would be more, I guess attractive when all the fish would be taken up into the fish factory in baskets. We used to work there. We’d scrub them, all the blood and all the guts - straight down through the factory into the floor, and into the sea. We’d put them in the big tubs to wash them. At the end of the tubs, there’s three brass grills. They pulled a wooden [batten??] up, and the grill was to stop the fish going through. Periodically some fish would, small ones, would go through and end up on the rocks. Now, there would be more of an attractant from that ... plus the boats coming in fishing, Codding every day, anyway. But there was more of an attractant in those days, with that particular habit. Now it doesn’t happen, because the fish go straight to the factory, and they’re all dumped in one place. Everything's taken out, because they’re not allowed to put it in the water here. Because of the hygiene regulations.

CRAWFORD: When did those hygiene regulations come in? Do you remember?

SMITH: Oh, they’d be in for ... we ran fish factory at Horseshoe Bay there - they were in all the time. We bought that about 1958, ’59. We owned that factory. And we were under the same regulations as the [Cotts??]. We weren’t allowed to put any of that stuff into the water. It had to be all filtered and strained and everything.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let’s back to the days when people were deploying the barrel drums and baited hooks for the White Pointers. From your memory, had that always been happening? Or was it something that started in your lifetime?

SMITH: It was probably earlier. Like, I was born ’43. As we grew up, we knew it was happening. But I never actually went out in the boat with Dad. He said to me “Oh, that’s the Shark thing there.” I think it might’ve been done by the boys out of Leask Bay, the fishermen out of there. I don’t know for sure. It might’ve just been somebody’s quirk. It’s like, you see that photo in the book of me with the Shark? Well the Old Man, I know for a fact there were times when he’d seen, maybe at Pegasus cleaning fish - and if the Shark was around, he would set that.

CRAWFORD: He would set the barrel?

SMITH: Set the hook. He wouldn’t have it on a barrel, he’d probably have it off the stern of the boat. But to my knowledge he never ever caught one. He had a hook, and I’ve never seen that hook for a long time. I don’t even know where it us. He got an engineer in Halfmoon Bay ... he had a crowbar, tensile steel. They heated it, and bent it up to a hook, put an eye on. He set that. I think he had a leg of venison on it, or something. They never got the Shark, but the hook was partly straightened. 

CRAWFORD: A crowbar that had been twisted into a shank to form a hook?

SMITH: Yeah. But the Old Man reckoned maybe the heat probably took the tensile off. 

CRAWFORD: Oh yeah, maybe.

SMITH: But even so, he said "It must’ve been a big bastard to physically straighten that out" I don’t know where that hook is, it was around. They probably dumped it. But that other hook is under the house, that one of me in the photograph. Now this has come down through the family since I was that age - it’s hanging up under the house down there. [chuckles] I can show you it. A big rusty hook.

CRAWFORD: I would like to see it. Let’s move forward in time from then to the setting of Joe Cave's nets. And you’ve already clarified one thing, which is that there was an initial period of time when regular setnets were put out, and there might have been some entangling with them. But then Joe had Shark nets set up.

SMITH: Yeah, he specifically made them.

CRAWFORD: Was he the only one?

SMITH: He’s the only one ... and Trevor Atkins. Matt lives across the valley here - his father Trevor, he caught them in nets too, but I don’t think his were specially-made, I think they were just normal Greenbone nets, like we all used. And of course, they’d just entangle in them. Joe, in those years prior to coming here, he was fishing Fiordland. We all got to hear about Joe with his successful fishing. And then he came down here with a little boat, and slowly progressed further. So, it would’ve been about then into the '70s, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Right. So, we have another natural break. But going back to that incident when Joe's nets brought in the White Pointers ... was your memory that there was one White Pointer? Or a group of White Pointers that had been coming in on a regular basis?

SMITH: My observations at the time were that a White Pointer had been sighted, so Joe set the nets. The minute the word was out, that was when Joe's net went out. I think one day he actually got two. I would probably say they'd only seen the one though, but they got two because ... no, it was the second time he only got the one. I actually helped. We skinned the whole Shark, and he sent it away to get tanned.

CRAWFORD: Was that the time when he caught one White Pointer? Or the time where he got two?

SMITH: No, this was when we only got the one. But he got two one other time. And then Barry Atkins I think might’ve got two there one time too.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember where the nets went out?

SMITH: Yeah. Just off Butterfield's Beach there, in the clear sandy bottom.

CRAWFORD: Not that far out?

SMITH: No. You’d probably see the buoys from here.

CRAWFORD: So, maybe 100 metres offshore?

SMITH: Yeah, that would be about all. A couple hundred at the most.

CRAWFORD: Alright. Do you ever remember if there were repeated observations that White Pointers were coming in, deeper into Halfmoon Bay? That they could actually be seen from the wharf, and people would come down to the wharf during the day to see them? 

SMITH: No. The nearest one that I know of that was ... see the faraway grey boat there? In that area, the Rakiura was anchored there. She was a beautiful fishing boat, with a big ketch. She’s gone now. Anyway, [Mason Huntley??] had it, he come from Picton. And he used to work Tory Channel, with the Whaling station. They would be experts at harpooning Sharks - and he had a harpoon from Tory Channel.

CRAWFORD: They would be experts at harpooning what kind of Sharks?

SMITH: Whites. You know, when they took the Whales into Tory Channel. They'd tie them up the [slipover??]. The Sharks would be there then. And he harpooned one here in the Bay off the Rakiura - where that grey boat's anchored now. The Shark come round the boat, he upped with the big long lance, and when he hit, it just stiffened it. Somebody said, “Shit. That was a good shot.” It was through the gills. He knew where the heart was, because of his experience with them. They hauled it aboard, and cut the teeth out of it. This was where that boat is now.

CRAWFORD: First I’ve heard of that incident. Roughly when was this?

SMITH: That would’ve been when the [McManaway??] boys came down to fish. I was fishing with Danny on the [Digger??]. ’65, ’67. About there.

CRAWFORD: Just a few years prior to the Shark nets getting made up, and Joe starting to work them?

SMITH: Yeah. It was before Joe started doing the nets. But only a few years before.

CRAWFORD: That’s an important observation. And In terms of proximity, that’s only a stone’s throw from the wharf.

SMITH: You mentioned about people seeing them off the wharf. I don’t know of anyone seeing them off the wharf.     It’s a bit like us that day - the two boys, when the Hamiltons were sculling ashore. I think everyone thought we’d seen it, but we didn’t see it. All we knew that they were in shit's straight, and they were getting out of it.

CRAWFORD: That is another strong theme that's coming from these interviews. That the White Pointers can be right there - and you not see them.

SMITH: No.

CRAWFORD: Alright, let’s get back to Joe’s nets. Roughly how long were they?

SMITH: Joe being Joe, they'd probably be at least 70 to 100 metres. 

CRAWFORD: Do you remember the gauge on the twine?

SMITH: I think they were about six and a quarter mesh. I actually saw them - I worked with Joe in 1989. We were building Salmon cages in his big shed, and they were in great big [wheelbarrows??] up on the shelf. They were the Shark nets. I remember grabbing the mesh one day, and I thought "Shit. That’s a big net." But that’s what is was for. They might even be still there.

CRAWFORD: Were you there, when the White Pointers were pulled out of those nets?

SMITH: No. Well, only the one that I helped him skin.

CRAWFORD: And for that animal, was it hung up on the wharf or brought ashore?

SMITH: It was on the beach.

CRAWFORD: When you skinned it, did you cut it open to see what it had been eating?

SMITH: I don’t think we did. See, we didn’t want to create a mess. We skinned that Shark on the beach. The whole reason I helped him was that I wanted some to make slings for my rifles.

CRAWFORD: You wanted some White Pointer skin for that?

SMITH: That was the deal. I said to Helen years later “What ever happened to that bloody Shark skin? He was going to give me some and he never did.” She said “Oh, it laid in a bag somewhere and went rotten.” Oh, no I think he put it in freezer or something. But anyway, it deteriorated to the extent he said, “Oh, bugger” and he dumped it. I thought, after all that trouble, you know? But anyways, that’s the only one that I did there.

CRAWFORD: When the two White Pointers were caught together in his nets, did you hear what was in their guts?

SMITH: I never, no.

CRAWFORD: Several people told me it was Cod frames.

SMITH: Ok. There was another one that Bruce Nelson caught, it was a Thresher. They brought it in on the Rakiura - he had her, in those days. We were kids on the wharf, and this thing had a massive tail on it. One of the boys working in the fish factory went down to have a look at this thing, and he said “Did he have anything in it?” All they said was “Yeah, it had a red gumboot - and it was an Aussie one.” [chuckles] But I mean, who knows.

CRAWFORD: Who knows. I think it would be fair to say, from a variety of different perspectives, there’s no telling what these animals are going to swallow.

SMITH: Well you only have to look at some of the documentaries, and when they do open them up its amazing what’s inside them. 

CRAWFORD: Right. Let’s spend a little bit of time talking about Paterson Inlet. You spent time there as a kid. Did you ever see any White Pointers in Paterson Inlet?

SMITH: Never, no.

CRAWFORD: Did you ever hear of anybody seeing any White Pointers in there?

SMITH: No. It’s just a matter of interest ... when Clinton Duffy had one of his buoys here.

CRAWFORD: His hydroacoustic sensors? 

SMITH: Yeah. And he had another one here off Native Island. He sent us an email "Why do you think we’ve got twenty hits on this buoy at Native, and none on the one at Pipi Rocks." I emailed him back "I had no idea that twenty White Pointers were going into Paterson Inlet."

CRAWFORD: So, what do you reckon? Why White Pointer detection at Native Island, but not Pipi Rocks?

SMITH: There’s no Seal rookeries as such. There’s a few Seals at *[Tomahow??] Island, up the top here. There’s more Seals now that frequent the Salmon Farms because of their activities. So, there may be a little bit more of an attraction for them. But the only Shark I’ve physically sighted in the Inlet was about an eight-foot Mako at the Pipi Rocks. We had a tour party, and we split the group - Squizzy and I, so there wasn’t too many on each boat. We were probably fifty metres apart, and this Mako, it was a pup, I would’ve called it a pup. What did I say, eight feet? Yeah, that might be a bit generous, might have been about six-and-a-half. It wasn’t a fully grown one. And it was on surface, just stooging around there, and took no notice of us. But physically, that’s the only decent-sized Shark I’ve seen there.

CRAWFORD: Another thing that appears to be coming from the interviews is that there are very few people who have seen, or heard of White Sharks being seen, in Paterson Inlet. And yet when you start poking around you realize, the animals are indeed there. Once again, they’re just not being seen very much.

SMITH: Well, Greg just said to me that as recently as a fortnight ago, they've sighted a couple at the Farm.

CRAWFORD: In Big Glory?

SMITH: At the Big Glory Salmon Farms.

CRAWFORD: That is very interesting.

SMITH: Yeah. And the other sighting recently as last summer, when Pete Scott was coming in to anchor ... I’m not getting at Pete. He anchors there, Port William or Halfmoon Bay. Easterly weather, he’ll come in to Thule. Well, Golden Bay, Watercress, and Thule. He anchors just off those three bays here. If you talk to [Nudge??] ... what’s his real name? He's Greg's mate. Twice when they left the wharf to go to the Mussel Farms in the morning, they had a White follow them out. That’s only this last summer. And the inference was because it was following Pete in.

CRAWFORD: There are two important things about that inference. First, possible following behaviour. Second, possible association with boats.

SMITH: Pete only does about six or seven knots. It’s got a big eight-cylinder diesel in it. And he quietly comes in. We were bloody good friends, Pete and I. But since this has happened, and I haven’t done it, he’s sort of isolated himself from us, because he thinks that we don’t want him to do it. Which he’s right. Zane’s fronted him up. They’ve talked personally about it, and they agree to disagree - but they can still look at each other in the face. Pete won’t come near me now. But he used to, he valued my friendship. But it’s a bit different now, there’s so much shit gone down, as he sees it. But anyway, his boat going in there, they started to see the Sharks. So, that’s a worry for the people that utilize that Bay.

CRAWFORD: Well, Paterson Inlet is a perfect example of how local knowledge can provide unique insight, because you’ve got people that spent a substantial amount of time there prior to cage diving and as well as later. And it could be that the White Pointers are doing whatever they're doing in the Inlet, but they're just not behaving in a conspicuous way. Whether it's stealth behaviour on their part or not.

SMITH: Well, Pete wasn’t Shark diving when Clinton had his buoys there.

CRAWFORD: No, he wasn’t. That's a very good point.

SMITH: So, they were coming in at their own initiative even before Shark diving.

CRAWFORD: There you go. But on top of that, in some ways Paterson Inlet is very similar to Halfmoon Bay.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: You've got people that are living over there, people that are spending time working there. You have a tremendous amount of recreational activity under the right kinds of conditions. Kayaking, swimming, scubadiving, spearfishing, that type of thing, right?

SMITH: Yeah. And that’s where you teach your kids to swim.

CRAWFORD: And yet, I've never heard about any Shark nets or baited drums that were ever placed in Paterson Inlet.

SMITH: No. Well when I used to dive on those cages ...

CRAWFORD: The Fish Farm cages?

SMITH: Yeah. It’s like a great big chocolate box, the end of that mort sock - full of Salmon. Some fresh, some have been there two or three days and starting to decompose. You would have thought if there was a White hanging round consistently, it would have grabbed it and ripped it apart and feed on it. But that never happened with me. Of course, they changed the nets to much stronger now. And I have heard that there’s been the odd attack on the bottom of the net, that they don’t think it was a Seal because the amount it had been ripped. But you can’t say it was a White.

CRAWFORD: No. And Sevengillers are known to be in Big Glory as well.

SMITH: And Sevengillers too, yeah. The first I heard of a White Pointer in Big Glory, let alone anywhere else, was in ’89 with the big algae bloom.

CRAWFORD: Oh, really?

SMITH: When we were shifting all those dead fish at ... I think it was Regal Salmon in those days, before Sanford’s. The boys, apparently they'd seen one around one of the cages. We had a cage at Joe’s, we had 90 tonne of fish in there, that were dead. So, if they were coming in normally - even though we didn’t see them - that probably would be enough to attract it to that area, I'd say. But I don’t know how many saw it, and how many days. They may have only seen it once.

CRAWFORD: Right.

SMITH: When Greg run the Salmon Farms, he would leave from Golden Bay pretty regular, where [Nudge??] does now with the Mussels and that. Since Pete’s been coming in, that’s where they’ve seen a couple of Whites.

CRAWFORD: I'm interested in the historic observations, but I'm particularly interested in the recent observations.

SMITH: Yeah. Well see with [Nudge??], it would only be this last summer. And it happened to them twice, where they’ve left the wharf ... they’ve got a wee boat, they call it the Stinky. It’s a wee black steel boat. [both chuckle] And when they left the wharf, Pete was anchored there, and this bloody White followed them out. Then I think a couple days later, I don’t know whether Pete was still there or maybe not. But anyway, apparently it happened twice. That’s what I’ve heard - that it followed them twice.

CRAWFORD: Ok. So, we basically have two different things to follow-up on. First is the straight observation of a White Pointer at Golden Bay, and second is the idea of it following boats in and around the Inlet.

SMITH: See, the wee Stinky, it only does about six knots. It takes them a bloody hour to get to work.

CRAWFORD: This is the boat they take the morts out to dump?

SMITH: No, no. It’s just transferring the boys to work in the morning.

CRAWFORD: Oh, I thought it was 'Stinky' because of the smell of the morts.

SMITH: No. It’s just a Stinky Poop, they call it. [both laugh heartily]. Anyway, its anchored at Thule.

CRAWFORD: Ok.

SMITH: As I said, it’s very slow. Anyway, when they looked over the side, this thing was following them. And it’s happened twice. But Nudge would verify that. Greg told me that, and I don’t think Greg would tell me bullshit.

CRAWFORD: No. Ok, thank you for that. Does that pretty much cover it for Paterson Inlet?

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. The idea of White Pointers dying in nets - Joe's nets, or fishermen's Greenbone nets, whatever. Some people talk about the reaction of other White Pointers to a dead White Pointer.

SMITH: I’ve heard, and this comes from South Australia, where they had Shark cage diving. I would call them rednecks - the anti-supporters went out and deliberately harvested as many Sharks as they could. What I was told is that when you take a Shark out of a system, the rest of the bloody Sharks know. And over a period of time of deliberately doing that, they reckoned that the Shark divers had to close down because it wasn’t viable. All the Sharks were gone. Now I don’t know whether that’s 100% true, but I did hear that there's almost like a mourning period, when a Shark is taken out of an area.

CRAWFORD: That's an example where there’s knowledge coming in from another knowledge system. And you don’t know about its reliability, but you know that you’ve heard of it. And it lives on in your mind as a possibility, right?

SMITH: Well, Zane’s probably already told you this. But when he caught that Shark out there, the one that Mike Hanes was feeding right alongside his bloody nets. When he went out that night, my Brother [Seppe??] went to give him a hand to retrieve it. They couldn’t do anything. It goes into his catch records that it was an accident, it died, produce it to DOC. They told him "Get rid of it." That was the time when the cage diving boats couldn’t find any more Sharks here for about three weeks. To Zane’s way of thinking, that was an indication that what he'd heard was right.

CRAWFORD: But there are a lot of people who think that these are big, dumb, White Pointers - rogue predators, that aren’t capable of that kind of complex social behaviour.

SMITH: Well, I wouldn’t actually say that. I think that they’ve got their heads screwed on the right way. I mean it’s like any species. They’ve got a right to be on the Earth, like anything else. And our perception of a lot of these things is probably unfair.

CRAWFORD: Not only unfair. But when we do see White Pointers like the ones that were coming here into Halfmoon Bay back in the day ... some people say there was a large Shark with two smaller ones, swimming around here together on a daily basis.

SMITH: Well, they’re not doing any harm.

CRAWFORD: That’s what Allan Anderson said. He was over at Paterson Inlet when he heard about this. "Were they hurting anybody?" Well, you’re less than a kilometre away from Bathing Beach. It comes back to risk and risk perception, right? But you’ve got to ask the question "Why would they be swimming together like that in the first place?" Is it really too much to think that a mother White Pointer could potentially teach her offspring where to look to food?

SMITH: Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with thinking that. But it’s the mindset of people ashore ...

CRAWFORD: That we’re potentially the food?

SMITH: Yeah. And that’d be instilled in us. I remember running ashore as kids in the dinghy one day ... and we always asked the Old Man questions. I said “What would you do if a Shark came along there, Dad, and grabbed the dinghy?” He said, “Well, I’d jam that oar down his throat.” Like, he didn’t say "I’d kill it." But he said "I’d jam it down his throat. To protect us." We had the Dog with us, and he said, “No, I wouldn’t. Actually, I’d chuck the Dog out first.” And he looked like he was going to grab the Dog right there. [both chuckle]

CRAWFORD: You said on a couple of occasions in this discussion, that you dove around the Salmon Farm operations. Did you see any other animals interacting with the Salmon in the cage?

SMITH: No.

CRAWFORD: No Sevengillers around?

SMITH: No. But they do now. 

CRAWFORD: Yes, I’ve heard that. 

SMITH: We’ve always known there’s been Sevengillers though. Zane was by the shoulder on Codfish one day, when he was Pāua diving. They’ve always been in those shallow waters. But my own personal experience, the only Shark I’ve ever seen diving in the water, was the first day [Diane??] got her wetsuit. We were at [Sydney Cove??] on Ulva Island, off the boat. We geared her up, hopped over the side, we swum round the [Nugget??]. I was still busy getting my facemask on, and she went down, came up, and said “Oh look, there’s a Shark down here.” Took the mouthpiece out, I had a look down. It was one of those Grey Nurses, but it was cruising under us and going away. Never saw it again. That’s the only Shark I’ve seen in the water, while I’ve been diving. I’ve seen plenty off the boat, big ones.

CRAWFORD: We’ll get there. There is one other thing about the Salmon Farms. You were a Manager for four or five years? 

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: In terms of mortality disposal, what was the practice back in the day? I’ve heard about it more recently, but what was the practice back then?

SMITH: I’m ashamed to say it. We would take what we referred to as 'morts' ... because the type of construction of nets we had in those days, they were so flimsy that a Seal could bite a hole in it, just like that. [snap] Depending on the size of the fish ... if they were smolts, we could have up to thirty thousand fish in the cage, of which the Seals never seemed to worry. But as they got to about 500 grams in size, they were more attractive to a Seal. So, those were the nets that would be targeted. Now he didn’t always eat every fish, but he would maim them. And that’s what we called 'morts'. The bottom of these eight-sided nets, which were the most inefficient thing you'd ever have, but we didn’t know at the time. At the bottom was what we called a 'mort sock.' It was like the Cod-end of a trawl. All the dead fish sinks down into it. So, every day when they’d see there had been a Seal attack, you’d pull it up and there might be 50 to 100 dead fish. I got photographs of it laying on the walkway, just a mass of fish like that, all with pieces taken out of them. But anyway, they would go into bags, the feed bags were 25-kilo bags. We’d fill them up, we’d steam out of Paterson Inlet, and dump them in the deepest part off [Whero??] here. It’s quite a deep hole about there. We would dump it into the deep. Now we had heard from some of the Blue Cod fisherman that they’d seen a White, and it was probably because we were attracting them with that. What I’m saying is, some days it would be anything up to half a tonne.

CRAWFORD: My understanding is that more recently, those morts - for the most part - are heading back to Bluff for processing. To become fertilizer or fish food.

SMITH: They must’ve cleaned their act up, because Greg Northe fishes, he's one of my Guides, he was Manager of the Farm. He’s been working for me for six years. Prior to that, he had eight years as Manager. Their boat, the mort boat, they would go out and they'd dump it out here. After they dump it, you could steam through ... I’ve been coming up when they’ve been dumping it, and there’d be an oil slick as far as you can see on the water. With the oil from out of the fish, because the fish feed is 15% fish oil - so, naturally it comes to the surface. If they're doing that processing in Bluff, great stuff. Because it's stopped all that. If they’re taking it for processing for fertilizer, good on them. That’s a good thing. But prior to that, I mean there would have been hundreds of tonnes of fish dumped out there because of that.

CRAWFORD: Some of the history I’m getting is that in the early days, the mort dumping wasn’t even outside of Paterson Inlet. It was done right off Ulva Island. 

SMITH: That’s right.

CRAWFORD: And that it was only more recently that Environment Southland, or whoever is managing this practice said “No. You've got to come out here in the Strait to dump the morts.” And then most recently, I don’t know if this is the current business model or new regulations, but the vast majority of the morts are actually going for secondary processing in Bluff.

SMITH: Yeah. That’s a hell of a good thing, if that’s happening. With our boat ...

CRAWFORD: Your charter boat now?

SMITH: No, the Salmon Farm boat. We had those aluminium punts. And on a fine day, they'd put all the bags on the punt, and they’d dump it on that corner. It's 44 metres, deepest part of Paterson Inlet. That would be dumped here, but not only was that dumped here, I heard through the grapevine that they'd cut up a lot of the old Salmon cages. They were octagonal, and they cut them into segments for ease of management, and they dumped them in the big hole.

CRAWFORD: And they’re still down there?

SMITH: Yeah. I was appalled at that. There’s a full-rig sailing ship just across from where they dumped it, and there’s nothing left of her now. She was wooden with bronze and copper fastenings and that. This is steel, and I know that it'll rust away in time. But for the sake of another twenty minutes, they could have been at Golden Bay on the back of a truck, and taken it to the pit. But they didn’t. 

CRAWFORD: Well, to be fair - what are the regulations for how to handle their fish waste at the fish processing plant over in Horseshoe Bay? Environment Southland or whoever dictates what the policies are for the release of fish waste?

SMITH: Well, if you look at it this way, when we were Managers of the Farm it was left to our own decision what to do with this rubbish. We did discuss it at one of the board meetings, of which we were privileged to go to sometimes. Our own personal comments were, providing we take it out where there’s good deep water it’ll decompose. There’s enough Sea Lice and stuff like that. I’ve seen what happens to the head of a Deer overnight - it’s just skin and skull left next day, because the Sea Lice clean it. They do the same with anything, so consequently they would clean a lot. My own personal feelings towards it, would they be capable, after they take the top layer, to do what’s left? Over a period of days, maybe they got to the stage “Shit, we’re not eating that.” So, all of a sudden, it’s something we shouldn’t be doing.

CRAWFORD: That's more of a contamination issue. I’m concerned about ultimately, a berleying factor, an attraction for Sharks. Even if the White Pointers are coming into the Bays or the Inlet, they could be coming in for who knows what reasons. But if there is a signal that is being generated locally here, it doesn’t have to be the dominant factor, but if it's related to the occurrence or the frequency or abundance of White Pointers in these waters, then it’s something that needs to be discussed. Second last thing in terms of White Pointer ecology in the region. You've said you think the White Pointers are here for the food. Do you think, or have you heard other people that think, this region might actually be a place where the White Pointers are doing courtship and reproduction as well?

SMITH: It wouldn’t surprise me, if they were amalgamating in such big numbers like that. I mean, where else would they get together to do it? They all got to be together.

CRAWFORD: Have you seen anything, or have you heard anything from anybody else that would - even remotely - have been construed as courtship behaviour, or anything like that?

SMITH: I know my Brother, when he was Sharking with the nets ... I think he caught a White Pointer pups.

CRAWFORD: Oh really? Whereabouts?

SMITH: I think it might have been up Te Waewae Bay.

CRAWFORD: Over here, on the other side of Foveaux Strait?

SMITH: Yeah, I think it was up there. He said to the boys, because they were filleting all the fish for the market. He said to them “Keep that. I want to keep that. I want to take it and show it to somebody.” Anyway, while they were steaming down the coast, one of them, picked it up and threw it over the side. [chuckles] He said it was only about that big, but it was a White.

CRAWFORD: Only about a metre?

SMITH: How old it would be from being born I don’t know. That’s what he wanted to know.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember roughly when this was?

SMITH: He had a boat called the Jolly Roger, I suppose that must be about ... Well he’ll be here in a couple of days, he’s coming over tomorrow, actually. I'd actually have you on to Seppe. He's my youngest Brother, but he’s still actively Blue Codding. He’s fished all his life. Never done anything else.

CRAWFORD: What’s his name again?

SMITH: Raymond. We called him Seppe. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Seppe?

SMITH: Seppe. He had a nickname Guiseppe. [chuckles] And then one bloke came to visit us one day, and and he was drunk, he couldn’t get the Giuseppe. So, he just called him Seppe and it stuck. [both chuckle]

CRAWFORD: Ok. Alright. Yes, please connect us. I think that might be a very good interview to do. Getting back to White Pointer reproduction, you talked about them being here in high numbers anyway. If there’s an aggregation, you reckon that’s a logical place where they would find each other for things like mating?

SMITH: Where else are they going to find a partner? 

CRAWFORD: Right.

SMITH: And it may be timing with their biological clock, and all that. So, who knows? Seppe will tell you this anyway, but the little White that he caught had obviously swum into the net. It was only much the same as the rest of the Grey Sharks.

CRAWFORD: But this one was different?

SMITH: Yeah. It was a White.

CRAWFORD: Well, where is it that the females go? What kind of habitat do they need to give birth to their pups?

SMITH: And it could be the area that he caught it in, that could be the very area where they do it.

CRAWFORD: Yes. I wasn’t going to ask you this but ... All that good work on the White Pointers here by Clinton and Malcolm. You know, the hydroacoustics, the photo identification, the satellite tags. I think it’s pretty clear to everybody that we need more, rather than less of that good information.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: But they’re not doing that research here anymore?

SMITH: No.

CRAWFORD: Do you know why?

SMITH: The only thing I can think of - because he was very passionate about what he was doing - is that they pulled the money, pulled the finance.

CRAWFORD: Who was very passionate?

SMITH: Clinton.

CRAWFORD: He was very passionate about his work here with the White Pointers? But Clinton has his bosses. I don’t know, I haven’t asked him, but I don't know he would answer that question. I don’t know that he will agree to be interviewed. I don't know that they will let him be interviewed.

SMITH: From what I heard was, and I don’t know if it’s 100%, but I heard they tagged about 50. I don’t know it's 50 - that’s a lot, I know. But in saying that, they said “Oh, that’s nothing.” Because they reckon there's up to 150 there anyway. Another thing they said was ... and when I said 'they' - it was folks that have been working on the boat with DOC. When they’ve tagged a big number, it’s hard to get one they haven’t done. There’s so many swimming around with tags ...

CRAWFORD: In that place, during that season.

SMITH: Yeah, that particular thing. So, whether it’s because of that or the funding I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: Right. But then you take into account the observations from the cage dive operators ... they say they do see the same individual White Pointers. They have individual names for them based on their morphology or their behaviour. There's Slash, and Marbletail,  and Pip, and whoever. But then they’re also constantly seeing new Sharks as well. Even within season, they’ll say, “Oh, we haven’t seen this guy before.” Might be around for days or weeks or months, or it might bugger off straight away. So, residency can be a simple thing, or it can be a more complicated thing.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: We're just about to get into the effects of cage dive operations ... but it's not just what the potential effects are here in southern New Zealand. There are also cage dive operations in Australia, and they potentially do things differently with regard to feeding Sharks or whatever. The Government's also culling White Pointers over there in Australia, and that could be having significant effects on the White Pointers that come here to New Zealand waters, if the migrating individuals belong to the same population.

SMITH: There was another train of thought that I had too was, with all these Shark attacks in West Australia, could they be attributed to what they’re doing here? Because when you think of a Shark, its ability ... it's close from Bluff to Tasmania. That’s not far for a Shark, as the crow flies.

CRAWFORD: Maybe a week or so. You think maybe experiences there could be affecting what’s happening here?

SMITH: Or vice versa.

CRAWFORD: Their experiences here could be affecting what’s happening in Australia.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: I think you might be right. There’s actually an international discussion that needs to take place. And the same thing is true when you consider the South Pacific Islands. But there, you might be talking about people who are out there in little wooden outrigger boats.

SMITH: That’s right, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And here’s this White Pointer - maybe happens to have had experience here at Edwards Island or over in Australia. And that animal in the past may not have done anything at all with that outrigger. But maybe, based on its experience here or in Australia, it behaves differently to the little boat - or the person it?

SMITH: Maybe a lot hungrier because of the distance. There was a thing on TV last night that showed you exactly that. It’s based on fact, this chap was out on his wee paddleboard, and he was fishing - like they do over there. And it showed him sitting there with just his legs in the water, and it showed you ... it’s been re-enacted, but it shows you that it comes up, it physically happened. It took his leg off. 

CRAWFORD: A White Pointer?

SMITH: Yeah. And that was in Hawaii, between the two big islands there.

CRAWFORD: Well, these White Pointers will definitely take their experiences with them, when they head out on their big migrations.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: If you go back the thousands of years during the Polynesian Human migration ... I mean, the Hawaiians have always known about these White Pointers. Their ancestral lineage was navigating by the stars, and learning their ways all around the Pacific islands. But doing it all the while, on the ocean. They were never far away from these White Pointers. I have a feeling that there are some very special connections back there with these White Pointers.

SMITH: Well, a lot of the migrations from the Pacific, they came down following the birds. The Sooty Shearwaters, they go up to the Aleutians and come back down the California coast, back down through the Pacific, or Japan, back that way. They knew North and South.

CRAWFORD: And the Hawaiians knew from the birds that there were Islands down here, even though they hadn't yet been there?

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: And there are accounts there from time immemorial, people talking of White Pointers. Not primarily as being threats, but as being guardians and navigators. Not the Jaws relationship or fear.

SMITH: Long before Jaws, like as kids - that was instilled in us. The devilment of the White Pointer. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: But as we’ve already talked about, that could have been echoes from the Whaling days here, as much as anything.

SMITH: Well, bound to be probably. Down through the ages. Well, [Old Morgan Smith??], he worked on the Whalers, and he would actually swim to the Whale and put this thing on it. He didn’t care what the hell was going on. [both laugh] But I mean, that would be hereditary from probably his Father who came from Nantucket on a Whaling ship. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let me check my notes to see whatever else we need to cover before we finally get to the effects of cage diving. ... This sort of came up before, but do you know of any historical attacks, White Pointer attacks on Humans, in this region?

SMITH: This region, no. I was going to mention the Otago Heads, [Smalls??], and Campbell Islands. Other than those, I don’t know of any. I know of a bloke being bitten with a smaller Shark, that was Zane. Did he tell you about the one that grabbed him on the shoulder?

CRAWFORD: Was it a White Pointer?

SMITH: No, Sevengiller. That was at Codfish here. But not a White, no.

CRAWFORD: And when you consider the number of White Pointers in this region, and your lifelong experience here ... but you have not heard of any Level 4 encounters here? Fatal or non-fatal?

SMITH: No.

4. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - DIRECT EXPERIENCES

CRAWFORD: What is your earliest memory of seeing or hearing about White Pointers?

SMITH: My earliest knowledge of Sharks, or a Shark ... as kids, we were always playing on the bloody wharf. This was six, seven-year-olds. Quinn and Jack Hamilton had a little boat called the Wanderer, they were Blue Cod fisherman. They would come in, they unloaded their fish, had the boat on the moorings. Old clinker dinghies they used, they only had one oar ... well they had two, but they only ever used one to come ashore. There was a wee groove in it. I can do it today, you scull. Quinn would be sitting there with a smoke, and Jack would be lazily coming ashore with their bag with the thermos and the lunchbox. Come ashore, go to bed, and go fishing tomorrow. And all of sudden, we saw Jack turn around with two hands, and he spun the dinghy round, and went straight back to the boat. Flat out, because two hands you can make a dinghy go quite well. Bobby Goodman was with me and I said to him “Bloody Shark. They wouldn’t do that, unless something’s frightened them." When they come alongside the boat, neither of them had the [painter??] - the rope for the dinghy. They virtually both leapt aboard. The Wanderer had a cockpit, and they both stumbled in, and they grabbed the boat hook and hooked the dinghy. The Shark was following them. The quickest way was to get back to the boat, away from the fear of it. We sat on the wharf waiting to see what they were going to do. They couldn’t talk to us, they were just too far out of voice range. But we knew there was something amiss. Anyway, they did decide "Well, shit. There's no bunks. We’re not staying here the night. We'll have to go." They obviously lost sight of it. When they come to the wharf, it was both hands - flat out as fast as they could. They put the dinghies on an [windlass??] line, just like they do today. Climbed up the steps, and we probably said to them “What was there, Mr. Hamilton?” He said “A bloody great Shark.” That’s all they said, and away they went. That was all around the Bay the next day. All the schoolkids said "The Hamilton’s seen it!" And we were saying “Oh, we saw it. We saw what they were doing.” But that’s my first knowledge of the fact that the Sharks could be dangerous.

CRAWFORD: Six or seven years old?

SMITH: Yeah, probably only about that. Maybe eight or nine.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember what time of year?

SMITH: It would’ve been after Christmas. And it would be after tea, or after school at least. Probably February, March. They were fine days, that time of the year when they’re Codding, yeah.

CRAWFORD: And they were coming in. So, it would’ve been after a day of fishing, towards evening?

SMITH: Yeah. 

CRAWFORD: Did you see any other White Pointers back in the day?

SMITH: The Old Man had a doggy, called him Algae. Algae was like his right-hand-man. It was probably illegal to have the dog on a boat fishing with export fish anyway. But doesn't matter, everywhere he took that dog ... when he got into an anchorage, all the Old Man had to say was “Go to shore, Algae.” And the dog would jump over the side, and go ashore. When the engine started next morning after breakfast, as soon as that engine started the dog would swim out. We were in [Ben’s Bay??] down by Pegasus one night, I was fishing with him. We were in that night, we were cleaning our fish, and the lights in those days were a bloody 12-volt, and probably a 25-watt bulb. They were never very bright. You were running around in the half-dark, just trying to clean fish. And of course, you’d be chucking stuff over the side. The Old Man was about to tell the dog to go ashore. I looked over the side in the gloom of the light, and here’s this bloody White. Not a very big bay, but it was swimming between the shore - which was only probably 50 feet away, because we got a headline and a sternline to keep us straight. It was swimming past, and I thought “No, no, no! There’s a bloody Shark there.” The Old Man says “Ah, bullshit. Go to shore, Algae.” The bloody dog jumped over the side. Anyhow, I never saw the Shark again. The Old Man reckoned "Ah, you're bloody seeing things." [chuckles] I wasn’t seeing things, it was one. "You never seen one in here before?" He said "No." I said “Well, there was bloody one there.” Well, the dog got ashore no trouble. The next morning, before he started the engine, I said, “Just a minute.” I went round the boat in daylight to have a look, but no, I never saw it again. The dog come out, and we hook him up to the boat and take him aboard. At the wharf at Pegasus, which is up here through shallow, sand bank - we were laying, just off it. If we got chasing with the weather sometimes, we’d go straight up there and just finish cleaning the fish. You might end up with a few heads on the bottom, because the Mollymawks are full, you know - sitting in the one place. We occasionally would see a shadow, out in the shallow. All you could say was “It’s probably a White, because of the size." It wasn’t that often, maybe once or twice. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Did you see any other White Pointers back in the day?

SMITH: I’ve chucked Groper heads on the end of a line to attract the Shark to the surface, for the reason to shoot it. And it hasn’t worked. But I’ve used a piece of newspaper like that, on the surface, and it does work. They’ll actually come up, and we did it. [Georgie West?? and Carl West??] they'll tell you word for word. I got two shots into the Shark, it was a big Shark, a big White. He was about 15-, 16-feet. They used to call him Smoky Joe. He was covered in scars, and his nickname was Smoky Joe. We just assumed it was probably Smoky Joe. He come alongside a little boat called the [Loch Ells??], and we threw the Groper head over the side trying to bring him up. And you know the bloody thing, he’d come up like that, and go down again. Now Georgie had read in a book, somewhere, that a dark shadow on the water - like a sheet of newspaper - they’re inquisitive, they’ll come up. So, Carl and I were monitoring "It’s around this side." So, he shot down the [foksail??], and got a piece of newspaper that we used to use to light the [cull range??]. He come up, and while the Shark was over there, he managed to spread it on the water. It was just a calm day at the Ruggedy Passage. Spread it on the water, and I had the old .303 there "Let's see what happens." "Well, bugger me." The thing went round the stern of the [lockhouse??]. When it actually detected it, it come up, the dorsal come out, it come along with just the bridge of the nose just under the water, and the dorsal. As it got to the paper, I put a shot in by the head, and I managed to get another by its spine, below the dorsal. Carl had the other .303, and managed to get one shot in the tail. Now the second shot broke its back, and it rolled. Georgie grabbed one of the Codlines, and threw it over the back trying to hook it. [chuckles] He wanted to get the teeth. He had a hold of it, and the bloody hooks ... you know a Shark's skin is so bloody tough. But anyway, luckily the line hooked, and he grabbed the line, and he had it tight, and he took a turn. And I said, “No. No. No. Don’t tie it!” Because what happened, the way that the Shark just straightened the hooks out. All I wanted him to do was ... you can sort of just hold it, ease it, and we would’ve got the bigger grapnel, and tried to hook it through the gills. Anyway, we lost it. It just rolled out of sight, and we never saw it again. That’s the only Shark I’ve ever killed. 

CRAWFORD: When was that?

SMITH: That would’ve been about ’63, ’64. It was the year that John van Leeuwen swum Foveaux Strait. Anyway, that’s the only Shark, White Pointer, that I’ve deliberately shot.

CRAWFORD: During your fifty years - say up to 2000 before the Shark cage diving - roughly how many times in total would you have seen White Pointers in this northern region of the Island specifically? The Titi Islands, Horseshoe, Halfmoon, Paterson Inlet?

SMITH: The first White Pointer I physically saw out here was with Zane’s helicopter pilot mentor, Peter Innis and his wife and all their friends from Wanaka. It was only about four years ago.

CRAWFORD: Four years ago? Sorry, I was wanting to know about the fifty-year period from 1950 to 2000.

SMITH: Oh, sorry. Up until then, none around here.

CRAWFORD: In all the time you spent out there back in the day, including around the Titi Islands, no observations of your own?

SMITH: None of my own.

5. WHITE POINTER ENCOUNTERS - EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS

CRAWFORD: When the fishermen were telling their stories, there’s a natural way of describing encounters with these Sharks. [Discussion about project classification levels for Human encounters with White Pointers: Level 1-Observation, Level 2-Swim-By, Level 3-Interest, Level 4-Intense] When the old-timers were telling these stories, was they mostly observations, or drive-bys or interest or intensity?

SMITH: When we fish for Blue Cod... and we would have some bloody good days too, there would be very rarely anything that we threw over the side that the Mollymawks didn’t eat. The only way that you could accumulate anything where they couldn’t eat it, is when you actually physically tie up to a mooring in a shallow bay - which we used to do at East Ruggedy. Drop a [pick??], weather permitting. You’d lay out there at night, there’d be four or five boats. And it’s only a short distance from the Codding grounds, so you’re steaming in with probably a quarter of an hour, and you’ve got the [pick??] down. Out here, by the time you steam in, cleaning and heading and gutting, by the time you get the wharf - all the work's done, and the Mollymawks have eaten everything. Now I know for a fact, Billy Ryan told me this when he fished with the [Kapusa??] round there. They were cleaning fish, him and [Alfie Blako??] one evening ...

CRAWFORD: They were moored?

SMITH: Moored. The [Kapusa??], her rudder ... the stern of the boat was looked at, the rudder was level, like she was a double-ender, different to what my boat is. He said the next thing he looked, and the wheel of the boat went [WZZZZ-BANG]. He went out, and a bloody White had the rudder. The White had grabbed it, and given it a pull. That would have been ... they would’ve had the [Kapusa??] probably the '70s, early '70s. He said they looked over the side, and of course here’s the Shark. They let the Rutter go. And to back up the story, because everyone said "What a load of shit." When he went on the slip, there was broken teeth where the Shark had tried to eat the side of the rudder. So, there’s the evidence. Now what he did say, you know how the seabed in some places - and especially those ocean-exposed bays, there’s ridges of sand in relation to the way the rolls come in. He said because they were only head and gutting, all the heads were gone over and the Mollymawks couldn’t eat anymore. They ended up in one of these grooves.

CRAWFORD: The additional heads ended up in one of these grooves in the seabed?

SMITH: Yeah. Now Billy told me this, and I was thinking "Shit. A vacuum cleaner - that’s what it would have to be like." He reckoned the Shark went down at the start of it, and went along it. And when it come away, there was no more heads.

CRAWFORD: He saw that? Or he reckoned that?

SMITH: He said he saw it. If you want to speak to Billy, he lives in the Bluff. He runs one of the Crayfish factories there. I said "You know I’ve never seen them do that."

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any other stories about encounters with White Pointers back in the day?

SMITH There is another one when I was a kid, it was Malcom Adamson. I just remembered that. He had a little boat called the [Tamfeld Lee??]. We would be at school with his sons, John and Ellis, they live in Dunedin. Well, Ellis lives in Dunedin, he can verify this. But anyway, this was when we were kids at school, so that would be the late-40s, early-50s. It was a Level 4 that you’re asking about.

CRAWFORD: Intensity?

SMITH: Yeah. I remember Billy Ryan's story vividly, because Billy personally told me. Malcolm’s was what we heard. When he went on the slip, Johnny [Ericson-Owens??] who lives here, his Father was running the slip. They all, kind of tongue-in-cheeks thought Malcolm was. But when they checked his rudder, there was the tips of the teeth in the rudder. So that verified what Malcolm was saying was right.

CRAWFORD: This was late-40s?

SMITH: It would’ve been, yeah. I was born in ’43. I went to school in about ‘48. So, yeah - late-40s, or early-50s. It would be when we were probably six or seven. Just kids running around.

CRAWFORD: Do you have any idea where it might’ve happened?

SMITH: Well, he only fished out of Halfmoon Bay here. Malcolm probably never went outside the Islands fishing. He never went to Port Adventure or Ruggedy. Malcolm just linefished.

CRAWFORD: He was a dayfisherman, nearby?

SMITH: Just a dayfisherman, yeah. And it would’ve been out in this area somewhere that it happened.

CRAWFORD: Roughly how big was that boat, do you figure?

SMITH: The [Tamfeld Lee??]? I might be wrong. Malcolm had two boats, and I’m trying to think of the first one he had. It doesn’t matter anyway ... either of the boats would’ve been about 36 to 38 feet. It was a wooden fishing boat.

CRAWFORD: It was not a sailboat. It was under power?

SMITH: With a diesel motor, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you remember anything else about his story, other than this White Pointer that grabbed onto the rudder?

SMITH: Other than grabbing the rudder, and giving it a shake. That’s all that happened, really. After it did it, it just swum away, I guess.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any other Shark stories the old-timers would tell from the northwest corner of the Island?

SMITH: Yes, well that’s the area where the one fella, Archie Johnson was. I’m not sure what year it would be, but that’s a story I think Elaine, his Daughter would probably know. Once you hear stories about Whites, and start talking about it, then someone else might be like "Oh well, I remember one time ..." They talk about old Archie Johnson, he used to regularly fish this area. And he used to dinghy fish.

CRAWFORD: Off the northwest corner of Stewart Island?

SMITH: Yeah. They used to regularly fish the Bishops in dinghies, with the oars. Him and old [Joe Casterson??]. They could get up to half a tonne a day, just out of a dinghy. Fishing in amongst the reef systems at the Bishops. The story that we heard ... funny how all these little stories come out, because all of a sudden, Shark's the focus. "Oh, we remember that old Archie Johnson was around Bishops one day fishing, him and [Joe Casterson??]. Old Archie smoked a pipe, and Joe had a cigarette holder, and they were rowing along when Archie looked behind like that for some reason, and he saw a White nosing the stern of the dinghy. Archie took the pipe out, and he said to Joe “Do you ever get that feeling you’re being followed?” And Joe said “Jeez, bloody Christ mate, what’d you mean?” He said “Well, have a look at this.” Joe stood up, of course he's rowing like this, and Archie’s sitting in front of him because you row a dinghy that way. When Joe stood up and saw it, they reckoned he had about three strokes before he sat down, just out of fear. [both laugh] But old Corn Cob, as they called him - “You ever get that feeling you’re being followed?”" Now, that story went around. I mean every fisherman could tell that story because it was so bloody humorous. And I don’t doubt that that’s what old Arch would’ve said, 'cause he was just laid back. His attitude would have been "Well, if it’s not doing us any bloody harm - what’s the bother?" But if it had jumped into the boat, it would’ve been different.

CRAWFORD: Roughly, when was that? Do you remember? 

SMITH: Probably before I was born.

CRAWFORD: So, 1930s maybe?

SMITH: '30s or '40s. Elaine and I are the same age, we're on the Museum Committee. Well, I'd have to say that I probably wouldn’t know. It was just a story we heard. I drunk grog with Old Archie, as a teenager. [laughs] And we asked him about that story, and all he said was “Oh, yeah” and laughed. [laughs] So, he hadn’t forgotten it, but he wasn’t going to tell it again, no.

CRAWFORD: It’s the nature of knowledge. And the way that we Humans, whether we’re Indigenous or Local or Science people, we store our knowledge in stories. We put them in stories. We are natural storytellers and storylisteners. Those stories get passed on, and the knowledge that’s inside those stories gets passed on - that’s what makes it across the generations. That’s why people call it 'traditional' knowledge. 

SMITH: Yeah. That story really reflected old Archie Johnson’s mannerism and ... I wouldn’t say sense of humour, but that’s what he was like. He was pretty easy going. You’d never see old Arch hassled or upset. Maybe they would, his family, but I never ever saw him like that.

CRAWFORD: But even in a situation where you’re in a relatively small boat, and you’ve got a relatively big White Pointer, and that White Pointer is following close behind you ...

SMITH: Well, I guess the attractant ... and it was all of those dinghy fishers, I mean they’re pulling fish out of the deep. We have heard stories of, “We couldn’t catch much fish, we couldn’t get them to the surface whole.” Nobody knew what was grabbing them. It could've been just a Greyboy Shark, could've been a White, could've been a Mako. You know, any of those. And of course, what they would do is just move to a different area. I have heard instances where when they did shift, I guess the fish followed them - because it kept happening. But anyway, those are just little stories. Probably all of the dinghy fishers would’ve experienced those.

CRAWFORD: Was there anything that the old-timers said about what to do, or not to do, when a White Pointer was around?

SMITH: Normally, when you wanted assistance - whether your dinghy had that many fish that it was unsafe to put anymore in it, because that’s how prolific the fishing was at times. The idea was to sit with your oar up. One oar up. But apparently, when the shit hit the fan, each fisherman in the dinghy, they’d be both sitting there with them. [chuckles] Just a panic or a slightly panicky situation. And that would be natural. It wouldn’t matter if it was one oar or two ...

CRAWFORD: "We need assistance"

SMITH: Yeah. You need to come check us out.

CRAWFORD: Two means you need to come NOW! [both chuckle]

SMITH: Two would be, the Skipper on the boat would think “They must be in shit's creek, because they’ve got two oars up.” Or something like that. But that was thing. When I started fishing permanently ... well, I fished through my teenage years with my Father and Uncle and that. There was very little dinghy fishing at that era. It was prior to that, that most of that dinghy fishing was happening. Pegasus, when they had the freezer, they did a lot down here too.

CRAWFORD: You mean dinghy fishing - where they’ve got a tender that comes by and picks up the fish?

SMITH: Yes. Well, it’s a bit like the [Dogger Banks??], where they go out the main boats fishing, or as they call 'trawling'. And the boys in the dories, they'd have about 15 to 20 of them out. I think the same thing was there, if they needed to be. Similar thing, because a lot of these people came from those areas. Like the early Whalers and Sealers. Nantucket-Gloucester, the biggest fishing port in the American East Coast. And all those habits would come in. Johnson that built all the boats at Horseshoe, from where he came from. All of those habits would be brought here. And the same as the Shetland Islanders - the Leasks.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any direct observations during that fifty year period from anybody else you knew?

SMITH: Only Manny. I don’t think he would have ... he was a great exaggerator at times. I think we all get a bit like that with a couple of beers. But no, he saw a Shark alright. And as far as everybody was concerned, it was just one of them big bastards. Which to me, is a White.

CRAWFORD: Summertime?

SMITH: No. It probably would’ve been Muttonbirding time. He was out there specifically birding. I used to take him out. 

CRAWFORD: If I remember what you told me previously, he was out there, in a dinghy with no motor, getting a feed of Cod?

SMITH: Yeah, 12-foot aluminium. It’s in the Bluff, that dinghy too. I had it here last year. So, he still owns his dinghy. But unfortunately, he died. 

CRAWFORD: Do you think that Manny's experience would have been the kind of drive-by or interest kind of interaction?

SMITH: The fact that he was fishing, it was probably curious. The fish would have been under stress and everything.

CRAWFORD: Right. But the White Pointer wasn’t giving him a hard time or anything?

SMITH: No. Well, he said "It wasn’t worrying me, so why should we bloody worry it?" Now that was his attitude. He said that the fish went off the bite, which is probably normal. [chuckles] In other words, they couldn’t catch a fish for a start, so they thought "Oh, bugger it." So, he just went on towards the Kelp, and carried on fishing. But had it been me, with my own feelings towards them, I probably would’ve said “Bugger this” and got out of it. Well, I would have had Zane with me anyway. And that would have been for his protection as well as mine.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Any other stories about encounters that came from people you considered reliable?

SMITH: No. Not around here. If you look at the years that I was Pāua diving, I never seen a White Pointer while I was diving. I was certainly conscious that I might, and I didn’t want to be caught off guard. Bruce Skinner, who had the problem of bringing that bloke off the Mole up at Dunedin - he was actually bitten in half, and it was only the wetsuit that held him together. Bruce got a Humane Society medal for that. He was terrified. He would never swim across from one point of a sandy bay to the other, like I would. Bruce would go ashore, walk the beach, and come back in. I mean he was feared for the rest of his life. But he experienced something firsthand.

CRAWFORD: I've heard from people in Dunedin how profound those three attacks were for the people that were around at the time. Some hardcore swimmers, surf life savers, and boarders left the sea - and never went back for the rest of their lives.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: In our discussions, you’ve brought up something that hasn’t come up strongly in any of the other interviews. Given the strong North American Atlantic maritime influence here, the Sealers and Whalers in particular - it makes sense that they would bring with them their values, their norms, their practices. All of that. Do you ever remember anybody talking about White Pointers back up in the northwest Atlantic, as compared to the White Pointers here in the southwest Pacific?

SMITH: I can’t say I have, no. The only thing I’ve seen is what you see on documentaries and the History Channel sometimes. The early [Dogger Banks??] in England, and the Grand Banks in Newfoundland, and all that.

CRAWFORD: Yes. But there is a long history of many significant White Shark-Human interactions off the Atlantic coast - including Fisherman-White Shark interactions.

SMITH: Well, I guess the people that came from those areas ... and those like Archie, like he was born here, but his Father, those forebears that came from those areas. If they saw the same Shark as where they'd come from, because it’s self-preservation and protection. To me, I guess globally most people believe these Sharks are dangerous, and if you don’t do things right, they’ll get you. I think that probably came out with the early Pioneers here, too.

CRAWFORD: But in the case of Whalers at least, they were doing things with Whale carcases that are very strongly attracting the White Pointers. There you’ve got situations that are enormously risky, because you’ve got guys that are flensing - they’re standing on top of the carcass while they're processing, and that’s very slippery. If they fall in, they’re fair game.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Any other stories from other people you trust?

SMITH: Before 2000 - he’s dead now - Manny West, he was living in Gisborne. He separated from his Wife and moved away, but he came back. And the first year Manny came back, would’ve been in the '90s. He went out Codding one day, just in the dinghy to get a feed - because when you get a feed out there, everybody gets a feed, you know? But he said to me that day "There was a bloody Shark hanging around the boat." He didn’t have a motor. He had his wee mate with him. Actually, he disappeared out there, we never found him. But anyway, [Michael Whaitiri??] was with him, and they saw this thing was round the boat. I said, “Did you not be concerned?” “No, bugger it. It wasn’t hurting us.” And they just went on.

CRAWFORD: When was this?

SMITH: It would probably be in the ‘90s. He came back down with his new Wife, and he lived in Bluff and he built the house. He was actually with his brother Muttonbirding out there, and he built a house up top. His Daughter comes from Gisborne every year. So that’s the only other person I know - out of all of those years with us ...

6. EFFECTS OF CAGE TOUR DIVE OPERATIONS

 CRAWFORD: Now we’re going to particularly focus on cage tour dive operations. When do you first remember cage diving happening? When did it start?

SMITH: It would be four years about, four or five years ago. Maybe even a little bit longer. I think Peter Scott said in the paper there that they’ve been doing it for eight years, but I didn’t think it was that long. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. That doesn’t necessarily surprise me, because it might’ve increased in visibility or frequency over time. 

SMITH: Well, it’s a bit like my Kiwi-spotting. I was doing it for eighteen months before they decided ... same thing. Peter might’ve been doing it for those years like he said. Because there was nothing to say that he couldn’t do it at the time.

CRAWFORD: That brings in the concept of the permit. Do you know when the permit started?

SMITH: I thought they were only issued last year.

CRAWFORD: Ok. When the permits came in, they restricted activities to just around Edwards Island. And it set some of the things that were actually typical practice for both Peter Scott and Michael Haines anyways. Let's start with a very brief description of your understanding of their operations. They motor out of port, they’ve got the cage, and they’ve got their punters, they come over to Edwards Island. What’s your understanding about the next things that happen, after they arrive on station?

SMITH: Well, they've both got moorings on either side of the island, so all they do is pick that up to anchor the boat.

CRAWFORD: Depending on weather conditions.

SMITH: I guess first of all, they want to ascertain just how many fish are around. I mean, no point of getting people in the water if there’s nothing there.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Even if there aren’t White Pointers there right then, do you know what they would do to attract them?

SMITH: Well in the past, I guess they would berley.

CRAWFORD: They still do. So, part of the permit is about the berleying. There are restrictions on the mince size - it has to be fine. The idea is the current permit does not allow the actual feeding of the White Pointers.

SMITH: No, it’s an attractant. Same as what DOC does to being in the Sharks for their tagging. The method they’ve used, has been developed by the two Shark dive guys that are feeding them now - because it works. He can bring them round the boat, just by doing that. People will pay to hop in and have a look.

CRAWFORD: However, having said that, they are allowed to have a bait fish on a tow line.

SMITH: One. One a day.

CRAWFORD: One bait fish they can use to direct the White Pointers. Once they’re showing interest and circling, they’re showing Level 3 behaviour, the operators can draw them alongside the boat with the tow bait, past the cage. Then what happens? 

SMITH: I’ve never been out on any of the boats, but I guess they do a briefing with their clients to start, safety briefing and everything. 

CRAWFORD: Yep.

SMITH: And get them all kitted up.

CRAWFORD: And then into the cage they go.

SMITH: Once they’re kitted up, depending on how many people are allowed in, they would start.

CRAWFORD: Put the people in the cage. The people take their selfies or their pictures or whatever. They watch the White Pointers for a period of time, come back out of the cage, warm up, and maybe the next group goes in.

SMITH: And you know what I think of it? It’s just a zoo, it’s just a zoo. The only difference is, the animal is outside the cage. When I go to the Singapore Zoo, I can stand and look at a Tiger, he’s got bars in front of him and me, and he can’t touch me. I’ve talked to some people on a Kiwi-spotting trip they came out one night there. They said “Oh, what an adrenaline rush.” I said to this lady “If you want an adrenaline rush, get out of the cage. You’ll get all the adrenaline you need.” I can’t understand how you can have an adrenaline rush, sitting in a steel or aluminium cage - with a predator on the outside that has no way of touching you whatsoever - and get an adrenaline rush. That’s my perception of it.

CRAWFORD: Clearly stated.

SMITH: Anyway, I appreciate the people’s thoughts and views. So, whatever.

CRAWFORD: Ok. They’re in the cage, they’re having whatever experiences they’re having. They rotate in-out maybe a couple of times, and then it’s the end of the day, they lift out the cage.

SMITH: Six hundred bucks each.

CRAWFORD: And off they go back to port. And that’s it.

SMITH: Good on Pete. [chuckles]

CRAWFORD: Do you think that type of operation, as we’ve just described, has important, long-lasting effects on the White Pointers?

SMITH: Important?

CRAWFORD: Meaning ...

SMITH: Long-lasting ...

CRAWFORD: And I say that very deliberately. I don’t want to use the word 'significant' because Scientists have a reserved definition for 'significance'. But important - meaning, it’s not a trivial thing. Do the cage dive operations affect the White Pointers in an important way?

SMITH: It’s not a normal part of their association.

CRAWFORD: No, it’s not normal. By long-lasting, I mean that the animal wouldn't just forgets everything within 30 seconds or whatever.

SMITH: Well, they home in to the boat. We know that. So, the minute they arrive ...

CRAWFORD: Ok. My job is to structure this. One thing that you said, is that there is some type of an association. Do you think that the White Pointers make an association with the boat of the Shark cage tour dive operation?

SMITH: I believe that. I personally believe that they will.

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that?

SMITH: Well, a lot of nature ... Like, I can talk of a couple of Kiwis that know when I’m coming.

CRAWFORD: That would be an association between a Kiwi and a Human. Or maybe even the Human Phillip Smith, in particular.

SMITH: As far as the boat goes, they relate it - I would say - through the noise of the boat. I would like to know the difference now that they’re not feeding them. I could understand the noise would attract the Shark to the boat, because they’re going to get a snack. Now when you stop feeding, what is there to keep them there? Well, there is something to keep them there now, it’s an attractant, not feeding. It’s a physical attractant with the slurry that they’re chucking into the water to bring them in.

CRAWFORD: Ok. What I’m going to do is start simple, and add factors one at a time. The simplest thing I can think of is - do you think that as a result of the cage tour dive operations, there would be a greater number of White Pointers at that place? Do you think these Sharks would associate the place - and by the place - in this case I mean Edwards Island. Do you think that would happen? That the White Pointers would associate the smell of food with the place, and increase their aggregation around that place?

SMITH: I think they would be still in the immediate area but not necessarily, exactly into those places. See, it's quite shallow.

CRAWFORD: It doesn’t have to be exact. But in general, around all of Edwards Island, let’s say. Do you think that there are greater numbers of White Pointers around Edwards Island now that cage tour dive operations have been going on for the past eight years? More than there would have been, if there had never been cage tour dive operations there?

SMITH: I guess all I would say, they'd be more consistently there, because of what’s happening to them.

CRAWFORD: I'll take that as a 'yes'.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Alright. Let’s now add one more factor. Let’s bring in the presence of a boat. No particular boat, just any boat. Do you think that White Pointers would associate this smell of berley, with the presence of a boat? If people went over to Edwards Island, and there hadn’t been any Shark cage dive operations that day, but they just took a boat over there. There might be some encounters between White Pointers and the boats anyways. But do you think that by having Shark cage dive operations, boats that go over there now have a higher encounter rate just because of cage tour dive operations?

SMITH: Well, I went down there one day after Peter had left. I steamed down to his position. We were only there five minutes - you ask Peter Innis and his Wife, they were with us - and a White came up alongside the boat.

CRAWFORD: But that was right in the specific region that they had just been attracted to by the cage dive operations immediately before?

SMITH: Yeah, yeah. And then we went fishing at the Maria Higgins Reef, which is straight off our landing. And his Wife actually photographed one. It wasn’t quite out of the water, but the fin was out. She got a photo of it swimming alongside the boat. And we can see ... it’s only probably about half a mile to where they're feeding them, so that Shark probably came across after.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Do you think that the White Pointers associate that smell of berley, the smell of food, with, Peter Scott's boat in particular? To a specific boat?

SMITH: It wouldn’t surprise me. There’s indications and there’s sightings that they’ve actually followed them in too. I’m not too sure about Haines, he had that [Kui Waipai??] that does about bloody 25 knots. I don’t think the Sharks would have a hope of following him.

CRAWFORD: As you’ve already mentioned before, following is in part related to the capabilities of the vessel. And it’s in part related to the behaviour of the vessel, if they are throwing Cod frames or if there’s blood and guts coming over. 

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Let’s get back to the potential effects on the behaviour of the White Pointers. We’ve talked about the potential association between the berley, the smell of food, and the place. We’ve talked about the potential of the smell of food and a boat in general. We’ve talked about the potential association between the smell of food and the cage diving boats in particular. Some people talk about the sound or the electromagnetic field of the motor on the boats. It could be the hull itself, in terms of the material or the paint or whatever.

SMITH: Tuna fish do that. 

CRAWFORD: Tuna respond to individual boats?

SMITH: A certain boat with a certain engine, Tuna won't go. You won’t catch any fish.

CRAWFORD: It’s just, there’s something about it ...

SMITH: There’s something about it. Like the old [Gardiners??], the Tuna fishermen will catch more fish than someone with a [GM??]. I reckon it’s because of the vibration and the acoustics and all that.

CRAWFORD: All of those things are quite possible. Not only quite possible ... when practical experience in the Tuna fishery says, “Ok fine, Mr. Know-It-All. *You* take this boat out and catch some fish.”

SMITH: Well they’ve done it. They've swapped Skippers on the boats "See if you can catch some."

CRAWFORD: Do you realize that’s just common science? Which means that really, it’s just common sense.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you think it’s possible that the White Pointers are associating the smell of food with the presence of Human in the water? Such that the Sharks, as a result of their experience with cage dive operations with the smell of food and Humans in the water, that at some other place and time, if they see a Human in the water without the smell of food - that they would have a greater probability of engaging with the Human? Level 1 instead of no engagement? Level 2 instead of Level 1? That type of thing?

SMITH: I think a lot of those attacks are more of an inquisitive thing. Like people on surfboards and swimming and that. I know that people in wetsuits look a bit like a Seal, the colour and stuff like that. When we were Pāua diving, [Bruce Skinner??] used to use a two-toned wetsuit, because he'd read that a Shark can’t focus on two colours at the same time, and there’s less chance of getting bitten. He believed that. I didn’t know, and I couldn’t afford a suit like his, so I didn’t bother. But other than that, I don’t think people in a cage would attract a Shark to them, I really don’t. I think it’s what they’re using on the end of the line, or tipping in the water, that would be bringing them around. Not the people in the cage. 

CRAWFORD: Some people think that the White Pointers perhaps don’t even know that there’s Humans in the cage. They just see a cage.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Other people say that the White Pointers are quite aware, because of the Human smells or whatever. Ok. Let’s talk about Pāua divers. I mean your Son is a commercial Pāua diver. He's in a wetsuit while he’s underwater, freediving in waters where White Pointers are known to occur. Do you think that Pāua divers here are at greater risk of a Level 2, or Level 3 or Level 4 encounter - specifically because of cage tour dive operations?

SMITH: I Pāua dived for probably 10 or 12 years, every end of the Crayfish season. And we caught probably more Pāuas than anybody around here in those days. I never feared of being attacked by a White Pointer. But since they’ve been Shark cage diving, and the interaction between water-borne craft ... I believe that now they have changed their habits. And I would be more fearful of getting in the water now, because of it.

CRAWFORD: Changed the White Pointers' habits how?

SMITH: Because of the feeding, and the association to the boat and people.

CRAWFORD: So, its association to boat, and association to Humans?

SMITH: Yeah. I mean, the people are in the cage. Whether they’re physically aware of them, I’m not sure. But they’ll certainly be keen on the attractant to the area.

CRAWFORD: Ok. That’s why I built the questions the way I did. You’ve got the area, you’ve got the boat, and you've got the people. There are three different cues. And it’s quite possible that all three of these cues could be involved. Just because it’s association of one, doesn’t mean it’s not association of the others.

SMITH: Like, there’s no way I’d get in the water at our Muttonbird landing to get Pāuas in the wetsuit now.

CRAWFORD: Whereas before you would?

SMITH: Well I can see the Shark bait feeding - doing what they’re doing, before I get in the water. And I wouldn’t be happy about hopping in there. I’d go down with my gumboots, and get Pāua off the rocks like I can do. But I wouldn’t swim out the end of the reef to do it.

CRAWFORD: Let’s imagine a world where there was no cage dive operations. We could be having this exact same conversation, and somebody could say "It’s only a matter of time until somebody, through a case of mistaken identity, or an animal that’s sick and can’t feed itself on Seals or something else that’s harder work ... For whatever reason, it’s only a matter of time, unfortunately, until a Human being in the White Pointer's environment, in this region, is going to be attacked."

SMITH: While Bruce Skinner was here, he was still feared of that. I was only feared about it, I guess in these areas where I knew they were more likely to be.

CRAWFORD: Up at the Ruggedy’s?

SMITH: Yeah. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Like we dived all round here for Pāua, just like they should be doing today. Never give it another thought. Bruce was more relaxed here, too. 

CRAWFORD: Ok. Here’s, I guess, another way of asking. I’m trying to get to a very specific thing here. Imagine for a second that twenty years ago, at a time when there were no cage dive operations whatsoever. Back twenty years ago, would you have been reluctant to go diving for Pāua off the Muttonbird Islands?

SMITH: No. Well, it would probably be 25. Because I’ve been Kiwi spotting for 25 years, and I haven’t really dived for Pāuas.

CRAWFORD: Don’t worry about the specific number of years. Would it be an increased number of White Pointers in this region that would stop you from Pāua diving now? Or is it the fact that they’ve been exposed to the cage dive operations that would stop you?

SMITH: It’s the fact they’ve been exposed.

CRAWFORD: And that is a concern for you because you think that it does affect the behaviour of the White Pointers? 

SMITH: I believe that, yeah.

CRAWFORD: In what way did it affect the behaviour of the White Pointers? How are they behaving differently now, after they’ve been around the cage dive operations?

SMITH: Well, because of the association with the small craft and boats and stuff. And so close to the shore where these things are happening. Which is a long way from where they’re feeding them, cage diving. I wouldn’t be keen to hop in the water, because they’re in the area.

CRAWFORD: But why? I know this is hard ... it’s hard to crack this nut, because most people don’t think - like this. But I’m trying to figure it out. Is it because you think that the animals are more interested in Humans than they were back in the day?

SMITH: More inquisitive I think, yeah. And more associated with people, than what they have been before.

CRAWFORD: So, you think at the very least, that the general inquisitiveness of the White Pointers that have experienced the cage dive operations has been increased?

SMITH: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: That they would check out Humans, differently? More?

SMITH: Well, I think we’re at the stage now where there hasn’t been an attack. But we’re all sitting back thinking, if this is allowed to carry on, sooner or later there will be an attack. And this is why we’re not going to get into the water.

CRAWFORD: Tell me if I’m getting this right. Because of the cage diving, sooner or later, there’s going to be an attack, a Level 4 encounter? It’s not just an elevation of Level 2 drive-bys up to Level 3 interest and circling. But also increasing Level 3 up to Level 4 intensity and attack?

SMITH: My own thoughts and observations and knowledge about what’s been going on around here over the last few years ... it’ll just be a matter of time. Now whether I’m right or wrong, I don’t know. But that’s the fear. And this is mostly fear that we got for our kids that used to jump off the wharf, and used to go out in dinghies, and stuff like that. We don’t want to take a chance and put them in a position where there’s a possibility it could happen. This is what Ken McAgnergny took to Parliament the other day. His Grandchildren said to him at Christmas “Is it safe for us to go Codding out at [Iona??]?” And he had to tell them “No, it’s not.” And they said “Why not, Papa?” And he said “Because there’s been a couple of White Pointers sighted down there.” So, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Do you think that the White Pointers that are being exposed to the cage dive operations, are they likely to go over to the other Titi Islands?

SMITH: Yeah. Well, I’ve seen them there. I don’t know whether I told you, but I went out at the end of May. Every year we take an anchor out, and drop it at the landing. So that when we go out, we don’t have to physically anchor. We just pick it up, put the [line on it??].

CRAWFORD: Yep.

SMITH: I went out ... it was the end of the season. It was actually June, because it was outside when you’re supposed to be ashore. I went out to get the [slasher??] out of the hut that we forgot to get, and bring my moorings in. I went for and lifted it up, and as I was putting the bit of lift over the side - and here’s this White. He was just cruising past. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen one at the landing.

CRAWFORD: And that was a drive-by?

SMITH: Yeah. That’s a drive-by. And that’s only this year. So, I got up and I told the wheelhouse - because they had to row ashore, which is about 200 yards. It’s about 100 yards to the edge of the Kelp, and then once you’re in there you’re alright because they probably wouldn’t get you in there. [chuckles] I go up to tell the wheelhouse that I didn’t want to leave the gear ashore, I wanted to get it. And it disappeared, I never saw it again. I waited about ten minutes, and I was up, I got the dinghy over of the side, and I rowed like bloody hell to the rocks. When I come out, I did exactly the same. But I never saw it again. Now that’s this year. And of course, they had long finished feeding by then. But that Shark was still there.

CRAWFORD: But we don’t know that that individual White Pointer had ever experienced the cage dive operations.

SMITH: It may not have been, I don’t know. I just assumed it would have been. The fact that it was so close to the landing. Another thing that happened this year ... I wasn’t there that day, but [Carl and Brett Hart??] ... there's a point out here on our Island called [Kori??]. They were walking around the edge of the [stay??], and a White ... Carl didn’t see it, all he did was heard the splash. But Brett saw it. He said this big White came clean out of the water, and smack down into the water like that. And that was just off the landing, too.

CRAWFORD: It was a full breach?

SMITH: Yep, full breach.

CRAWFORD: When was this?

SMITH: This would have been, probably the first week of May, this year. Of course, during the Muttonbirding they would have seen the Sharks. Well, we can see them every day. Just get the binoculars. And we just assumed that they were going to be there. But see, I don’t know of these things happening before. I’ve never seen one at the landing before like that.

CRAWFORD: There are at least two different possible explanations for you seeing White Pointers at places and times that you had not previously. One is, there are simply more White Pointers around, so the probability of encounter goes up.

SMITH: Yep.

CRAWFORD: Two is, that the White Pointer numbers were the same, but their behaviours are different. And of course, it could be some combination of those two possible reasons.

SMITH: Well, behaviour is certainly different. That one that swum past, well it had never happened before. And the one that jumped out of the water, we haven't seen that before. 

CRAWFORD: I forgot to ask you, back when we were talking about food ... Have you ever seen a White Pointer take a Seal?

SMITH: No. I’ve seen Seals that have been partly taken by them, and laying on the rocks with half their innards hanging out. And only a Shark could do that.

CRAWFORD: Roughly how many times have you seen that?

SMITH: Probably every year that we take people looking for Penguins at Bunkers Island out here. The other day, we had a group of American birdwatchers for pelagic. We went in to the landing, and this woman says “Good heavens, look at that.” And there was just blood, the Seal -  it was a big male Seal - he was laying on the ledge with half his innards out, and it was just blood running all down on the rocks. And the Seagulls ... It was still alive. If they hadn’t been there, I would have shot it. But I couldn’t.

CRAWFORD: To put the animal out of its pain?

SMITH: Yeah. She said, “What do we do?” And I said, “Oh, when we go in, I’ll tell DOC.” But I mean the thing was not going to survive anyway, by the look of it.

CRAWFORD: How frequently would that happen in a year? How many times would you see a wounded Seal like that?

SMITH: Every time we go out there, we actually look for it. To see if we can find any with scars on them. Because we tell people, that the White Pointers feed on the pups, and occasionally they get the adults. You’ll say “There’s one. See the scar down the side?” Sometimes the scars are healed. They’ll be just a big welt down the side. With my boat, and the deepness of the water, we can go - like from here to the cabinet off the rocks. And as I said, normally you'd put it out of its misery. It’s nothing new. I’ve seen them at the Muttonbird Islands down there too, exactly the same.

CRAWFORD: Has the frequency of wounded Seals changed over the past twenty years?

SMITH: Not really, no. It’s just something that the Seals have to put up with every year, that I’ve known them.

CRAWFORD: Right.

SMITH: I don’t know, up until I started fishing, whether it was as frequent then or not. But I know that pretty well most of my life fishing in these areas where there’s heaps of them, there’s always Seals laying around with fresh scars and old scars on them.

CRAWFORD: Have you heard of anybody else that’s seen a White Pointer taking Seals?

SMITH: No. The only other thing that I’ve seen, is the one Michael Ryan wouldn’t touch - when Nathan and them got it, it had the Seals in it. But actually physically taking them, no. Somebody could have seen it, but I don’t know of anybody.

CRAWFORD: Ok. Last question. What is it that we don’t know about these White Pointers that we really should know about?

SMITH: The fact that there hasn’t been a fatal Shark attack here. Why?

CRAWFORD: I’ve thought the same thing. Many times now. Because of all the places in New Zealand, that you could have predicted ...

SMITH: Well, Otago Peninsula - I can understand where there could be an accidental grabbing up there, because of the murkiness of the water. You know, there’s been several fatals off the Mole there. The Campbell Islands are different ... we wouldn’t have believed that there even would have been the White Pointers down in that cold water.

CRAWFORD: Seems it came as a surprise to everybody.

SMITH: Yeah. But the thing about it, with such a high number of Sharks, as we understand that are here now. And the habits have been changed slightly as we perceive it.

CRAWFORD: From the cage dive operations?

SMITH: Yeah. And what Clinton’s been doing. But there hasn’t been an attack. We fear there’s going to be. And I think it’s probably the fear of that, that’s driving a lot of people to simply just object to it. My Brother, he’ll look me square in the face and say “You don’t know what you’re bloody talking about, Brother. No one’s ever been touched.” He supports Pete.

CRAWFORD: What do you mean?

SMITH: He supports Peter. He doesn’t think what they’re doing with the Shark diving is wrong. And no mistake, he's been around. Like, he would catch up to five tonne of Sharks a day.

CRAWFORD: School Sharks?

SMITH: School Sharks, yeah. And he knows people that have been involved in the fishing. But I know that him and I agree to disagree. I don’t want to say, full stop - stop Shark diving. What I want to say is "Tiahoa. Until we know what we’re doing." At the end of the day, it could be alright.

CRAWFORD: And yet, other people ...

SMITH: Other people - shit, they don’t want it. If they could stop it tomorrow, they would.

Copyright © 2020 Phillip Smith and Steve Crawford