ONEMILLION-DOLLAR TARPON TOURNAMENT
Adventure can’t be mapped or planned or scheduled on a calendar. It arrives unexpectedly, often disguised as just another boring day, because boredom—as much as we dislike it—is also a door that, when opened, can lead to all sorts of surprising events.
For instance, on that warm, sleepy Sunday morning in Florida, Lucas O. Jones, age twelve, had no idea that a great hammerhead shark, fourteen feet long, would soon nearly bite his foot off. And his best friends, the Estéban sisters, had no idea the boy’s close call with the shark would change their lives in ways they could not have imagined.
Maribel Estéban, age thirteen, certainly didn’t expect to partner up with a famous teen influencer, or to play a role in catching one of the world’s rarest fish. And Sabina, eleven, didn’t plan on casting a hex on a zombie hunter—although, when not writing poetry, the girl was happy to pester bullies with her knowledge of magic.
Luke didn’t believe in magic—well, at least not in public—because his employer, Marion Ford, a marine biologist, was a practical guy who trusted facts, not superstitious nonsense.
“People are catching tarpon and feeding them to sharks on purpose,” the biologist said to Luke on that warm, dull morning. “They want the whole bloody mess on camera. More views on TV. More clicks on the Internet.”
He was disgusted. He sat at the computer in his laboratory. On the desk were test tubes in racks and a microscope. Along the wall, a row of aquariums sparkled with fish and oxygen bubbles.
The boy looked up from a bucket of dirty water. It was mid-March. He’d worked in the lab on weekends and holidays for nearly a year. Cleaning aquariums was part of his job. Spring break began next weekend, and Luke, tired of this boring work, was eager to have some free time. He, Maribel, and Sabina had plans to camp on a beach nearby.
“You watching a video, Doc?” he asked.
Almost everyone on Sanibel Island called Dr. Ford “Doc.”
Doc pivoted in his chair and removed his wire-rimmed glasses. He seemed surprised that he wasn’t alone in this wooden house built on stilts in the shallow water of Dinkins Bay on the west coast of Florida. The lab smelled of pine wood floors, salt water, and chemicals.
“A million-dollar fishing tournament,” Doc replied. “They’re streaming live on the Internet just a few miles from here. Twenty or thirty boats are involved.”
“They’re fishing for tarpon?”
The man confirmed it with a look. “The fish’s scientific name is Megalops atlanticus. Tarpon have huge eyes that are … well, let’s just say unusual. Their vision adapts when they move from deep to shallow water. It’s an extraordinary ability, like almost no other animal. That’s one reason tarpon have survived on this planet since the time of the dinosaurs.” He motioned to the computer screen. “But those people aren’t fishing. Not really. They’re cheating, I think. Some, anyway.”
“I didn’t know there were dinosaurs in Florida.” Luke liked reading about dinosaurs.
“There weren’t,” Doc said. “Florida was covered with water long before Tyrannosaurus rex and most of the others disappeared. But tarpon—Megalops atlanticus—outlived them all. Day or night, their color vision is ten thousand times better than a human’s.”
“Because their eyes are so big?”
“That and because they are so ancient,” the biologist replied. “They’ve had to change to survive. Not just their eyes. Their lungs, their scales, their behavior. Some people call tarpon ‘silver kings,’ and they are kings in a way—king predators. Megalops fossils have been found that date back more than one hundred million years.”
Wow. That was impressive.
Luke filed the strange name away in his head. Meg-a-lops. It had a scary sound even though tarpon were just fish. Yeah, sort of like those giant meat eaters in Jurassic Park.
Doc switched off the computer. He began making notes in a notebook. “Question is, how are those people cheating? Come on, we’ll take my boat.”
“Now? I’ve still got four more tanks to clean.” Luke didn’t want to mess up his plans to go camping.
“You can finish later. The TV cameras won’t show how they’re cheating. Or if they’re intentionally feeding tarpon to sharks. We need to see it for ourselves.” He patted his pockets in an absentminded way to be sure he wasn’t forgetting something. “Where are the sisters today? We should take them along—you’re teammates, remember.”
Luke, Maribel, and Sabina were all members of Sharks Incorporated. It was a shark-tagging club they, with Doc’s help, had started as part of a research program designed for schoolkids.
During the last year, the trio had tagged close to two hundred small sharks. They had also solved three mysteries and won a big chunk of reward money.
“Maribel went to feed the animals,” Luke told Doc. “Sabina is writing a new poem. She calls her stuff poems, even though a lot of them don’t rhyme. She might be at Captain Pony’s place, too, by now.”
He was referring to Captain Poinciana Wulfert, an old fishing guide. Before her death a few months ago, Captain Pony had entrusted the kids to look after her property and livestock. The woman’s rickety home stood at the mouth of Dinkins Bay in a sandy secluded area called Woodring Point.
There was a beach there perfect for camping. It was only a mile from the lab.
“We’ll pick up the girls on the way,” Doc said, going toward the door. He took time to smile at Luke’s long-sleeved shirt and baggy shorts. Black socks protruded from the boy’s white rubber boots.
“You dress like an old mullet fisherman,” the biologist remarked. “That’s smart. Keep the sun off and the mud out. Don’t forget your inflatable PFD. Mine’s on the boat.”
A PFD was a personal flotation device. And mullet were a bug-eyed fish common in the area. Netters almost always wore long sleeves and white mullet boots.
Luke slipped into his life vest and went down the steps. He had never caught a tarpon, but he had seen videos. Tarpon were sleek fish with scales like polished chrome. They grew to be eight feet long and sometimes weighed two or three hundred pounds.
The west coast of Florida was famous for tarpon fishing.
“Did you say a million-dollar prize?” Luke asked. “No wonder people are willing to cheat.”
Doc’s twenty-five-foot boat had been custom built at the Dorado factory in Clearwater, Florida. It was fast, with a gray hull and a huge outboard motor. A canvas T-top provided shade. Mounted at water level, on the transom, was a swim platform for snorkel diving. Above the console were all sorts of complicated electronics.
Doc liked unusual gadgets. He had a scope that fit over one eye so he could see at night. Earbud amplifiers could record underwater sounds, or people talking from a hundred yards away. Anchored outside the lab was a cool little seaplane that could land just about anywhere.
You never knew when Doc was going to fly off and disappear. Or when he would return.
Often the man was accompanied by his pal Tomlinson, a tall, scarecrow-thin sailor. They were an unlikely pair. Doc was clearheaded, unemotional, and quiet. Tomlinson, with his scraggly hair and goatee, was none of the above.
Most people didn’t think of the biologist as mysterious. Luke did. But that was okay because Doc was his closest adult friend.
They waited until Doc’s boat had pulled away to talk about the fishing tournament. It was called the Professional Tarpon Rodeo. Contestants fished in teams of two or three to a boat. It was a celebrity tournament. What that meant was, if a celebrity caught a big fish, they won twice as much money as other anglers. But the famous person was probably rich anyway, so they were expected to share their winnings with their teammates.
There was also a special prize: one million dollars went to any celebrity who landed a rare piebald tarpon.
A piebald tarpon, Doc explained, had so many yellow scales that the fish was golden, not silver.
“A million dollars?” Luke couldn’t imagine that much money. “What did you call that fish again?”
The unfamiliar word, piebald, was repeated.
The boy anchored it in his head by picturing a pie stuffed with bald-headed fish, which was silly. But it was a memory trick that worked—even for Luke, whose mother had often told him, “You’d forget your own head if it wasn’t attached.”
“Piebald animals are genetic oddities,” the biologist continued. “I’ve never seen a golden tarpon. Very few people have. The sponsors bought a special insurance policy just in case it happens. Which isn’t likely.” He motioned for Luke to trade places with him in the boat. “Take the controls. Get the skiff up and running while I try to call Maribel and Sabina on the radio.”
“Skiff” was what locals called a fast, shallow draft boat like Doc’s Dorado 25.
Luke turned his ball cap around and slipped behind the steering wheel. He put his hand on the throttle and pushed it forward. The March air was warm on his face as the speed increased.
When the deck settled flat and steady beneath his feet, he pulled the throttle back an inch. A boat was “on plain” when it behaved this way.
The speedometer read thirty-five miles per hour. The purring vibration of the big outboard suggested there was a lot more power if needed.
“Fast enough?” the boy asked. He had never driven the high-tech skiff before. It was exciting.
Doc had been busy talking on the radio. “What’s our speed?”
Luke told him.
“A little faster,” the man said.
Luke tapped the throttle ahead. In a car, forty miles per hour seemed slow. But in an open boat, the wind caused the boy’s eyes to water. It felt like they were rocketing across the surface.
The biologist stole a look at the gauges. “Do you have any idea how fast tarpon can swim?”
Luke shook his head. “Not a clue.”
“Think about a two-hundred-pound fish chasing bait underwater. Or trying to get away from a shark. Tarpon can swim at about the same speed we’re doing now.”
The boy was skeptical. “No way. Are they as fast as dolphins?”
Bottlenose dolphins were common in the area. Luke had seen them streak through the water like missiles.
“Faster,” Doc replied. “Tarpon are alpha predators—one of the fastest fish in the ocean. And among the strongest when it comes to pure muscle. Every few years someone’s injured—even killed—when a tarpon accidentally jumps into their boat.”
Luke listened as if this was news to him.
It wasn’t.
His aunt, Captain Hannah Smith, had made him and the Estéban sisters do weeks of safety drills before they’d been allowed to take a small putt-putt sort of boat out alone for their Shark Incorporated activities. The drills had included almost every possible emergency situation.
“Things can go wrong fast on the water,” Luke said in response. “Expect the unexpected. That’s what Aunt Hannah taught us.”
Doc had wide shoulders. Sun lines crinkled the edges of his eyes when he smiled. “You dress like an old pro, and you handle a boat like one, too. Keep driving. The wheel is all yours.”
The man moved to the side of the console and resumed talking into the microphone.
It was a calm, blue-sky morning. Pelicans dive-bombed bait in the shallows while seagulls soared. Wooden channel markers led to the mouth of Dinkins Bay. Luke followed the markers as if on skis, zigzagging the boat through the shallows. Make a wrong turn, oysters could knock the propeller off the engine. Rocks could crack the hull.
The boy was nervous. His attention was prone to wander. This had caused problems in the past with the guy his mother had married. (He no longer thought of the man as his stepfather.) Once, when the guy was outside taking a whiz near the barn, Luke had accidentally turned on the electric fence. What an agonizing howl the man had made! He had used some unusual swear words, too.
Luke had also driven a tractor into a pond.
“Can’t you do anything right?” the guy had bellowed.
This was on a small farm in Ohio after Luke’s mother had died. Luckily, Luke’s sinking the tractor had caused the guy to send Luke to Florida to live with his grandfather, Arlis Futch, and his aunt, Captain Hannah.
That’s how Luke had met Doc. Hannah was a famous fishing guide. She and the biologist were the parents of a toddler named Izaak. The kid was pretty cool—when he wasn’t stinking up his diapers.
“Good job running those markers,” the biologist said, done with the radio. “I’ll take the controls now. Maribel and Sabina are busy getting your camping spot ready for spring break.”
“Really? Think they could use some help?”
“Naw,” Doc said. “Besides, I need a good boat handler like you when we find that tarpon tournament. We’ll pick the sisters up later.”
Luke wasn’t used to compliments. And it was nice to be alone, just the two of them. Doc was fun in a sly, studious way. In private, some people referred to him as “the Professor,” because that’s what he looked like. He was a quiet man who didn’t miss much. There was no need to talk if there was nothing to talk about.
Copyright © 2023 by Randy Wayne White
Copyright © 2023 by Molly Fehr
