122 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC • AUGUST 2017
By Glenn Hodges
Photographs by Brian Skerry
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ane Grey made his name
writing adventure novels
about the American West,
but his real love wasn’t gunslinging or cowpok-
ing; it was deep-sea fishing. He held 14 world
records for catching saltwater fish, including the
first billfish over 1,000 pounds landed with a rod
and reel, a marlin he caught in Tahiti in 1930. But
nothing compared to the shortfin makos he en-
countered of the coast of New Zealand in 1926.
The first mako Grey got on the line was a
258-pounder, and when he reeled it to the side
of the boat, “quickly I learned something about
mako!” he wrote in his book Tales of the Angler’s
Eldorado, New Zealand. “He put up a terrific bat-
tle, broke one gaf, soaked us through with water,
and gave no end of trouble.” Once the shark was
landed, Grey marveled at its build—streamlined,
muscular, with a head like a bullet. “I had never
seen its like,” he wrote. “Every line of this mako
showed speed and power.”
But it was the 1,200-pounder that the captain
of his boat battled that led to almost mythical
superlatives. After a long fight in which the mako
“leapt prodigiously and made incredible runs,”
the shark bit through the leader and escaped. “I
was terrified,” the captain told Grey. “It seemed
that mako filled the whole sky. He was the most
savage and powerful brute I ever saw, let alone
had on a line!”
Almost a century later, shortfin makos still
have a herculean reputation among fishermen,
who love them for their fight and their meat in
equal measure. But a century of fishing appears
to have taken a toll. Shortfin makos—which are
distinguished from their much rarer cousins,
longfin makos, by, among other things, their
shorter pectoral fins (in this article, “makos” will
refer to shortfin makos)—are eagerly targeted by
recreational fishermen and frequently caught as
bycatch by commercial long-liners. Their meat
rivals swordfish in quality, and their fins are
prized in Asia for shark fin soup, a combination
that has put makos under significant pressure.
But how much pressure, and to what ultimate
efect, is uncertain. Scientists have no clear idea
how many makos there are in the Earth’s oceans,
and most of the data on catch and mortality rates
come from commercial fishing operations, which
famously tend to underreport catches. So biolo-
gists studying makos are trying to fill in some
huge knowledge gaps.
In the summer of 2015 I was invited to join a
mako-tagging operation of the Maryland coast
with scientists trying to bridge some of those gaps.
I thought it would go like this: We catch big ma-
kos; they put on the kind of show that Zane Grey
saw; and I get great color for this story. Instead, I
learned firsthand that Mark Twain was right about
seasickness (“At first you are so sick you are afraid
you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid
you won’t”) and was woozily indiferent when the
