“Was it another whitetip?” she asked. They’d caught two oceanic whitetip sharks in their nets over the last three weeks.
Christine shook her head. “Bigger.”
“A thresher?” Elsa said, naming another common endemic species of shark that sometimes got entangled in their nets. Larger than the oceanic whitetip, threshers grew up to eighteen feet in length, though much of that was due to their unusually long caudal fin.
“No, not that either, Doctor. It’s a great white.”
Surprise crossed Elsa’s face. Although great white sharks were largely coastal territorial predators, they had a knack of staying out of the shark nets that lined the beaches up and down the southern coast. In fact, in all of Elsa’s time at SBMC, out of the dozens of sharks caught in the nets over that time, not one had been a great white. “Mark’s sure of that?” she asked.
“He sent me a picture. Have a look for yourself.” Christine tapped on her mobile phone’s screen and brought up a picture of a huge shark floating on its back next to Mark’s thirty-two-foot vessel. Sure enough, it was a great white, evidenced by the white underside, conical snout, and large jaws lined with deadly triangle-shaped teeth.
A huge great white, Elsa thought, a little starstruck.
“She must be close to twenty-five feet…”
“She, Doctor?” Christine said.
“Sexual dimorphism is present in great whites. Females grow larger than males, and I’ve never heard of a male reaching…well, this one has to be—”
Just then Christine’s phone rang. She answered it in Sinhala. Elsa could hear Mark’s voice on the other end of the line. Christine spoke easily and with a smile on her lips, causing Elsa to wonder, not for the first time, whether the girl and Mark were romantically involved.
When Christine hung up, she said in English, “He’s transferring the shark to his trailer right now. Should be here in about fifteen minutes.”
Elsa nodded. “I’ll meet him in the shed.”
∆∆∆
The shed was attached to the east side of SBMC’s main building and accessed via an internal door. The large interior resembled a morgue, with a cement floor and cinderblock walls and shelves stacked with all sorts of miscellaneous items. An oversized stainless-steel necropsy table dominated much of the space. Elsa flicked on the bright overhead fluorescents, then pressed a button that raised the roller door facing the beach. A gust of briny, saltwater air blew into the shed, tousling her blonde, shoulder-length hair. The moody sky, she noted, was already breaking, revealing patches of bright blue. The aggressive surf foamed where it crashed and retreated against the beach.
Two hundred yards to the east, Mark’s Toyota Hilux sped easily over the hard-packed sand close to the waterline, pulling a flatbed trailer burdened with its large cargo. He slowed as he angled toward the shed, the truck’s tires chewing through the loose sand. When he stopped before her, Elsa couldn’t take her eyes off the great white laying on its side on the flatbed. She estimated it to be at least fifteen feet from snout to forktail, its weight pushing one and a half tons. The crescent-shaped tail alone had to be at least six feet tall, the pectoral fins over three feet. The absence of clasper fins on the bottom of the body, which were used by males during mating, indicated it was indeed a female.