Would you believe that I landed a shark yesterday? Note the careful choice of words: I did not say that I caught a shark but that I landed one. Whatever, it was an unplanned and thoroughly stimulating experience.

The story goes like this: I was taking my usual sunset walk through the surf on Lido beach when ahead of me I see a line-up of four fishing poles all with lines leading into the sea. This was no surprise, since most evenings that I walk there, this Hispanic gentleman sets up his line of four poles and watches for action from a beach chair. I have walked by him now some dozens of times coming and going, but never once have I seen his tranquility disturbed by a sea creature. However, yesterday was very different; as I approached I could see that he had taken one of the poles out of its clamp and he was reeling in and the pole was seriously bent so I figured it was something of major proportions. He was still working on this line when another of the four suddenly started dancing and arcing towards the water and even someone as ignorant of the art of fishing as I am knew that there was another bite. The fisherman saw it also and hurried to deal with it. By this time I had come abreast of him and he suddenly pushed the first pole at me and uttered something in Spanish (I suppose) that was completely unintelligible to me. However, given the situation and the urgency of what was happening, I assumed that he was asking me to reel it in. So there we were, he was reeling in the second bite and I was holding onto the first for dear life, trying to figure out how to operate the reeling device on the pole. Once again, however, my remarkable intellect was equal to the situation in that I figured I could bring the fish to shore simply by walking backwards away from the sea; this would have the same effect as shortening the amount of line. So I proceeded thus and soon I saw the animal that had been caught and was thrashing about in the shallow water in a battle with the hook in its mouth. It possessed a long nose, a wide mouth and the tell-tale dorsal fin-I guessed that I had landed a shark! Now that the fight was effectively over, I walked back to the edge of the sea and replaced the pole in its clamp allowing the critter to do its threshing on the sand. I looked over to my companion and saw that he had a similar catch, viz., a grey shark. He was yelling “Shark” at me which either confirmed the identification or there is a Spanish word that sounds like shark. My little blighter was about 2 feet in length and his was about 3, not exactly the size of Jaws, but sharks nevertheless. I wish that I had carried a camera, phone or other photographic device with me so that I could have recorded the identification and size, but alas I did not. Now that the show was over I continued on my walk, leaving him to do whatever he needed to do. The unexpected drama of suddenly being required to land a shark, even a little one, made my day-sort of.