Hennessey Part 5: Pups

Hennessey fled the broken boogie board, scattering parts of it across the waters near the beach - and left a riot of worry and chaos behind. She’d been spotted by nearly a dozen people: lifeguards, swimmers and beach goers. Her casual circuits around the doomed board captured the attention of everyone. Parents hauled their children in from the water, piercing whistles from every life guard tower alerted everybody else. If Hennessey had had a rear view mirror, it would have shown panic.

One contradiction floated nearby, though Hennessey did not notice. A small boat had been motoring calmly as Hennessey’s attack on the board progressed. The young woman who piloted the boat watched intently as Hennessey disappeared offshore.

The tumult fell behind. Hennessey looped around Seal Rocks, passing to the north, and fell into her normal migratory pace. She had one last destination in her memory – one last place that would have the food she needed. Far to the north was a giant hook of sand and rock. It was where the warm Gulf Stream veered off to the east, crossing the ocean in its weakening current of loops and gyres. The base of that hook was her target now – a place she’d seen bigger seals congregate in previous years.

She swam, and the sea bed disappeared beneath her - so that the floor of the world gradually darkened to the ocean green of deepest water. Hennessey was one of the largest creatures in the sea, but here she was reduced to a tiny speck by miles of waves in every direction. She stayed within a body length of the surface most of the time. There, the angling sunshine rippled through the waves, casting a patchwork of light and shadow through the water. And it showed her no other large creatures – none appeared within the broad reach of any of her senses. She walked the ocean in solitary dominance, and travelled the rhythms of a solitary migrant alone.

But not entirely alone. She had seven companions. She had her pups. One of the rarest gifts of any fish in the sea, she had her pups.

In the long evolutionary history of her kin, across hundreds of millions of years, the advent of pupping rang a loud bell of evolutionary innovation. Unlike the bony fish, almost all sharks nurtured their eggs inside of their bodies even after they hatched, helping the young grow and become stronger. There were very few pups per brood – not the millions of eggs a big codfish would carelessly spawn into the uncaring ocean – so the pups entered the world strong and ready. But they had to be fed.

The mothers of her species – in fact Hennessey’s whole clan of warm-blooded sharks - made eggs in two types. The first dozen or so eggs could be fertilized and would grow. But afterward, she produced a second type - a nurse egg - meant only as food for her young. She made them steadily in her uterus, powering their production with her own body stores of fat and muscle. And each hatchling ate them and grew, and ate more. Her pups now were over four feet long, after 11 months of feeding them. They ate a lot of nurse eggs, and her body now cried out for fuel.

So she trudged towards the promise of food to the north. A place that now called out: Here was the food that could give your pups their final push.

Occasionally, she dove, angling down, using her weight to coast deeper into the green ink. The temperature collapsed as she sank, gaining the chill of the ancient water of the deeper depths. The light failed, but her other senses kept watch, and she could skim the seabed 500 meters deep with a flash of fins and sharp-dagger tail, raising a cheer from the worms that lived such dull lives, kicking up a stream of sediment that had not been disturbed for a thousand years.

She stayed in the deep only a little while. The bone cold challenged her ability to keep her pups warm with only the energy of her working muscles. So, she returned quickly to the warmth and light, returning to the world she could see and scan for opportunity. She’d look for a faint glimpse of distant prey to chase. She’d look for a challenge, or an easy meal.

She’d look for any opportunity that came to her.

Start at the beginning of Hennessey's journey here.