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MARINELAND OF FLORIDA - THE WAY IT WAS
THE HARVEST OF THE BEAU GREGORY - RE-STOCKING AFTER THE WAR
Apart from the shark-repellent project, little remained to mark the existence
of the Marine Studios except its huge investment in steel and concrete. Even
this deteriorated shockingly in the grip of four years of weather. The cement
walls of the oceanarium cracked and chipped away and the metal surfaces grew
ugly jackets of rust. At the end of 1945 the directors had to decide whether
to accept their losses or to try to recover them by spending a great deal
more money. They chose to man the pumps. ( Actually, there were at the moment
no pumps to man, as they had been turned to shipyards and war factories.)
While the rehabilitation crew went to work early in 1946 the directors had
to decide how best to restock the oceanarium. The Porpoise I had been sold
early in the war and since they now had collecting boat of their own they
decided to engage Captain William B. Gray to conduct what was undoubtedly
the most ambitious expedition of its kind in history. Gray's Marine Studios
task force consisted of a 36-foot cruiser , the Beau Gregory , together with
several smaller power boats. For the reason that captured fish had to be quickly
brought in and transferred to the oceanarium, Gray's expedition was not just
one long marine safari, but a series of shorter ones. In six months he caught
literally thousands of fish for the oceanarium, certainly a record both from
the standpoint of quantity and variety. The gigantic haul included a number
of jewfish, none weighing under a hundred pounds, eight six-foot barracuda,
two tarpon, a dozen moray eels, sea turtles weighing up to two hundred pounds,
three tiger sharks all over twelve feet in length, a sawfish, a twenty-two
hundred pound manta ray and six porpoises. Also Octopuses, sea horses and
additional hundreds of pounds of assorted tropical fish from the Caribbean.
In the capture of the large sawfish Gray, after reeling him in to within a
few feet of Beau Gregory , entrusted his pole to a crew member. Then he seized
a coil of hemp rope and made a lasso, which, when the sawfish was brought
alongside he dropped over the five foot saw. The sawfish lunged off as if
this were his first run and it was all Gray could do to hold on. When at last
he tamed the creature he realized that he had nothing to put him in to take
him back to Marineland 150 miles away. He had some sea-going trailers, such
as Tolstoy used to transport sharks, but they were not big enough. While considering
what to do, he tied the sawfish to some offshore pilings and continued fishing.
There was, it seemed, only one solution and this required going ashore. Buying
the hull of an old boat and riddling it with holes, he towed it out to sea,
tied the sawfish in it so that it would not beat itself to pieces, boarded
over the top and started off on the long haul to the Studios. A storm overturned
the old hull en route and the sawfish, for perhaps the first time in the history
of his species, spent an hour upside down while the crew labored to right
the boat. To prevent this peculiar accident from recurring, two empty oil
drums were fastened to each side of the boat for the remainder of the journey.
The sawfish arrived in good condition, but since his saw made him just too
long to fit into any of the transfer tanks, a major engineering effort was
required to move him from the Inland Waterway landing to the oceanarium. An
amphibious vehicle had to be rigged up to carry him across the highway to
the foot of the tanks. Here he was hoisted up and lowered into the flume by
means of the usual boom, block and tackle.
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