Paul watched, spellbound, from the raised safety of a pile of net- ting. Gamay had taken out a video camera and was busy filming.

“That's the biggest salmon I've ever seen!” Paul said. The fish was about five feet long.

“This is crazy,” Gamay said, holding the camera steady. “Salmon don't act like this when they're caught. They've got weak teeth that would break if they tried to do anything like that.”

"Tell that to the damned fish/7 Neal said, holding up the jagged end of the gaff handle. He tossed it aside and grabbed a pitchfork, speared the fish behind the gills and pinned it to the deck. The fish continued to struggle. Neal produced an old Louisville Slugger and whacked the fish on the head. It was stunned for a second, then started snapping again, although less violently.

“Sometimes you have to slam them a few more times before they quiet down,” Neal explained.

Moving with great caution, he managed to loop a line around the tail. Then he fed the line into an overhanging pulley, pulled the pitch- fork out, lifted the fish and swung it over the open fish hold, still care- ful to stay clear of the jaws. When the fish was positioned over the hold, he took a filleting knife and cut the line. The fish fell into the hold where it could be heard banging against the sides.

“That was the meanest fish I've ever seen,” Paul said, with a won- dering shake of his head. “It behaved more like a barracuda than a salmon.”

"It looked like an Atlantic salmon, but I'm not sure what it was.

Those strange white scales. It was almost albino.“ Gamay shut off the camera and peered into the dimness of the fish hold. ”Listen! It's far too big and aggressive to be a normal fish. It's almost as if it were some sort of mutant.“ She turned to Neal. ”When did you first start catching these things?"

Neal took the cigar stub from between his teeth and spit over the

side. “First boats started bringing them up in the nets around six months ago. The guys called them 'devilfish.' They tore the hell out of the nets, but they were big so we cut them up and sent them off to market. Guess the meat was okay, because nobody died,” he said with a smirk. “Pretty soon that's all we were catching. The smaller fish just disappeared.” He gestured to the fish hold with his cigar.

“That's the reason why.”

“Did you contact any fishery scientists and tell them what you were catching?”

“Oh yeah. We got in touch with the fisheries people. They didn't send anyone down.”

“Why not?” "Short-staffed, they said. Guess you got to look at it their way.

You're a marine biologist. Would you move out of your lab if some- one called and said big ol' devilfish was eating your stock?"