Second Nature

Chapter 10

10 

Cade Seaborne glanced up at a tattered gray blanket of scud riding in fast on a freshening onshore breeze. The chop was still small, one to two feet, and the tagging work was going smoothly, but they would need to head back within the hour, because he could see and smell a squall brewing on the horizon. Not a threat, but no use trying to net and tag dolphins while bouncing around in heavy swells. 

"Wind's picking up," he said. 

Jimi MacGregor nodded, prescription sunglasses pushed back atop his head, one eye glued to the view through a digital camera. He videotaped an Atlantic spotted dolphin lying on a foam rubber mat on the deck of Cade's 30-foot Hatteras dive boat. "I'm listening." 

"We need to call it quits soon. Head in" 

"No problem." Jimi looked up and his auburn pony tail, sun-bleached to orange in strands, brushed the middle of his back. He squinted at the darkening clouds in the west and flipped down his sunglasses. "Yeah, looks nasty. We're almost done here." He plugged the digital camera into a laptop computer and uploaded the dolphin video. 

In spite of the afternoon heat, Jimi wore a long-sleeved white T-shirt and pajama-like pants to protect his fair skin from the sun's burning rays. Between videotapings, he shaded his face with a long-billed fisherman's cap, but the sun had still managed to microwave his nose to a tender-looking pink.  

By contrast, Cade was shirtless over faded denim cut-offs and weather-beaten boat shoes. The sun had deepened his café au lait skin tone to a rich chocolate that accentuated bright green eyes. Long dreadlocks spilled over his bulging shoulders like thick ropes of dark brown wool, sun-streaked with golden highlights. 

Jimi read aloud the white numbers on the blue plastic tag stapled to the dolphin's dorsal fin. "Three-twenty-eight." 

Haven, Cade's nine-year-old daughter checked the tag against numbers listed in a notebook alongside descriptions of dolphins. "It's Sawtooth," she said. "See the cuts in her dorsal fin?" 

"Yeah. Thought so." Jimi stooped and drew a syringe of blood from Sawtooth's pectoral fin. "Look at her nipples. She's got a new calf." 

"Awww..." Haven jumped up and leaned over the gunwale. "Where?" 

"Close by, for sure," he said. 

Haven stared at the blue water of Coolahatchee Bay, watching for a dorsal fin. "There, I see it." She pointed with her ballpoint pen. "Oh, how cute! So little." 

"Cade, can you get me closer?" Jimi said. "This'll be the last tag, we'll head in." 

Cade started the Volvo Marine inboard diesel, spun the wheel, and nudged the throttle ahead slow. He didn't bother to haul in the sea anchor, but let it drag slowly along the sandy bottom. 

When they neared the place where the baby dolphin had breached, Jimi hoisted onto his shoulder a fat tube that looked like a miniature bazooka. As the baby breached again, he quickly aimed and pulled the trigger. With a loud pop, a CO2 cartridge shot a net from the tube in a squiggly ball that spread open in flight like a spider web. The weighted net draped over the dolphin calf and instantly sank. 

Cade quickly tugged the seine net alongside the boat, then bent down and with Jimi's help, hauled the baby dolphin aboard. They laid the speckled dolphin on a foam rubber pad and Haven sponged it with saltwater. She made cooing sounds to it, and petted its slippery smooth skin. 

"It's adorable." 

Jimi flipped the dolphin on its side and with a fingertip gently palpated the outer edge of the genital slit. "Male." He drew a syringe full of blood; placed the blood specimen in a rack inside an ice chest.