Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo, Mike Capuzzo

its progress was halted by a vast net suspended perpendicular to the coast, stretching six miles straight out to sea and covering every inch of potential passage from the surface to the bottom of the ocean. This was the first of some twenty-five fish “pounds” strung like a series of labyrinths along the coast of Long Beach Island. The pound fishermen hung the net from a series of ninety-foot poles of North Carolina hickory buried in the ocean bottom and rising above the waves like the masts of a shipwreck. The pound was framed on the three sides and bottom with great nets, forming an immense boxed trap. The island's thriving pound industry, second only to tourism, landed ten million pounds of fish a year. Even if the traps were empty, given the scarcity of fish, the surrounding coastal waters were habitually flush with the by-product of industry—guts and offal from cleaned fish—
a cocktail of the living and the dead that drew the shark toward shore.
    Something else, people of the time believed, attracted the shark. Another “sea monster,” black and torpedo-shaped and glistening with dark water, surfaced on the East Coast later that night. It was the German U-boat
Deutschland,
315 feet long, the largest submarine ever built and the first to cross the Atlantic. It inspired awe and fear, and the press described it as having “eyes like a monster sea dog”—an ancient reference to the great white shark.
    The
Deutschland
slipped beneath the English blockade and four thousand miles of waves while the crew drank French champagne, read translations of Shakespeare and Mark Twain, and played selections from
Peer Gynt
on the phonograph. Although it was carrying only cargo, not weapons, as a German U-boat it alarmed Americans—the previous year a U-boat sank the passenger liner
Lusitania,
killing 128 Americans. For the rest of the summer of 1916, the great white shark and the German U-boat would be linked, in editorials, cartoons, and letters to the editor, as invading twins of darkness on an innocent American shore. People speculated that the submarine attracted the shark as they shared the same waters, but in fact if the shark ever spied the U-boat—thirty-five times larger than itself—it would have simply fled.
    Sensing intense organic activity, the young white picked up speed, perhaps to five miles an hour, in the direction of shore.

Red in Tooth and Claw
    C harles stood knee-deep in the shallow surf, feet planted on the soft golden sand, the outgoing tide gently swirling about his calves. His feet were pale from indoor work and fully visible in the cool, clear water. The breeze was mild, the sun pale and forgiving in the late hour, the ocean bottom free of seaweed. This was why people from the great West, as far as St. Louis, rode the Pennsylvania Railroad to the bather's paradise of the Jersey shore. It was a place of legendary beauty, a place to feel
alive.
Even with calm weather and high blue skies, Charles could feel the whisper of an undertow, the faint rocking motion of distant waves, the immense tug of the sea. He looked out at the flat surface of the ocean, which concealed the softly sloping coast for which South Jersey was famous. Ahead bobbed the diving platform Robert Engle had installed in front of his hotel for the new season; in the distance floated a line of salmon clouds. The water was chilly, but in a few moments Charles would be used to it. Behind him he could hear the dog splashing and paddling toward him. It was a red Chesapeake Bay retriever, the only American breed in the American Kennel Club, a rugged, tireless seventy-five-pound bird dog. Charles recognized the breed on sight, for any man who handled a rifle—and Charles had been a member of the gun team at the university—admired the beautiful water hunter of the vast Maryland bay. The Chessie had the steadiest of retriever personalities, sound of judgment, biddable but not silly, a stout worker bred to partner with man. He and Charles