Nature, red in tooth and claw
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Editor’s Note: Recently, TR Don Kiesling sent me a copy of The Devil’s Teeth, a book about the Farallon Islands, a group of islands and sea stacks in the Gulf of the Farallones off the coast of San Francisco, California. Published in 2005, this book was a New York Times Bestseller, a San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller, A Men’s Journal Top-10 Read, and a Sports Illustrated Best Book of 2005. I loved it.
At the time The Devil’s Teeth was published, author Susan Casey was the development editor of Time Inc., where she had previously been an editor at large. She has also been the editor of Sports Illustrated Women and the creative director of Outside magazine. Casey got hooked on the idea of visiting the Farallones after seeing a television documentary about the great white sharks that inhabit the waters of this forbidding place. An impressive story evolved from her obsession with the Farall
ones and the sharks that go there to feed.
Casey was initially drawn to the Farallones because of the sharks, but The Devil’s Teeth isn’t just about sharks. The islands have a violent, desperate history, and have hosted murders, innumerable accidents, and even a homegrown war. Nowadays, though, no one lives there year round, and people seldom visit. For one thing, the National Wildlife Refuge to which the islands belong is tightly supervised, and you can’t land. There is literally no place on the rocky sides of the islands to pull up a craft. The only people allowed to visit the Farallones by law are biologists who monitor wildlife, and they land and launch their boat off a cliff via crane, usually in rough seas.
The islands have an incredibly harsh environment and the 27 miles that separate them from the Golden Gate Bridge are considered to be the most dangerous waters on the West Coast. The Farallon Islands are also sometimes referred to by mariners as the Devil’s Teeth, in reference to the many treacherous underwater shoals in the vicinity.
The Farallones are also the only place on earth where it’s possible to study great white sharks behaving naturally in the wild, without the behavior-altering influence of tour boats, chummers, and cage divers. The majority of the sharks show up in September and stick around until November, forming one of the densest and largest congregations of great whites in the world. No one knows exactly why they come, or where they go when they leave. What we do know just heightens the mystery.
The Farallon Great White Shark Project was founded in 1988 by Peter Pyle and Scot Anderson, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. By the time Casey met them, these two biologists had spent over a decade studying the wildlife of the Farallones, especially the sharks. Through the eyes of the author, the reader gets to know these dedicated, passionate men and learn all about this wild, creepy place and its denizens.
When a kill is sighted, the biologists run down to the boat launch, jump into the 17-foot Boston Whaler, swing it up and over the cliff with the crane, and lower the boat 30 feet down into the winter swells. Then they power out to where a frenzy of birds indicates the kill. The biologists hold video cameras attached to long poles:
The dorsal fin of myth and nightmare rose from below and came tunneling toward them like a German U-boat, creating a sizable wake. The shark made a tight pass around the boat, pulling up just short of the stern. Its body, which was almost black as it broke the surface, glowed with cobalt and turquoise highlights underwater. “He’s coming up!” Peter yelled. The whaler rocked. A massive triangle of a head lifted out of the water and, in a surprisingly delicate way, bit the back corner of the boat. Scot leaned closer and filmed. The shark’s black eyes rolled; they could plainly see the scars all over its head and its two-inch-long teeth, backed by rows of spare two-inch-long teeth. Then, as quickly as it had come, the shark slipped beneath the surface, dove under the boat, and reemerged next to the seal. As the great white snatched the carcass, shaking it, bright orange blood burst from the sides of its mouth.
“It’s Bitehead!” Scot said.
The huge females that patrol the east side of Southeast Farallon Island (Sisterhood Country) are over 17 feet long and have names like Betty, Mama, and The Cadillac. The smaller males are around 13 – 14 feet and have names like Spotty, T-Nose, and Cal Ripkin. The males as a group are called The Rat Pack, and have their headquarters and hunting grounds to the south and west. Over the years, the biologists have come to see different personalities in the sharks, like “sneaky” Cal Ripkin.
Susan Casey was determined to visit the Farallones, but she quickly discovered how difficult it would be. “It was off-limits, forbidden in every way,” she writes. But she managed to wangle, first a day pass to write a story on the islands for Time magazine, then permission to return later for a week to gather information on the mating habits of cassin’s auklets (the U.S. Fish and Wildlife folks who manage the Refuge wouldn’t let her come back for shark season).
One of the reasons it’s so difficult to get permission to visit the islands is that the wildlife there took what Casey calls a “mugging” at human hands over a long period of time. A relentless parade of rapacious fortune hunters plundered the islands starting in 1807, when Jonathan Winship discovered an abundance of fur seals. He returned in 1810 and over 2 years killed 73,000 seals. Winship was a partner in the Russian American Fur Company, employing Kodiak, Aleut, and Pomo Indians as hunters. They took seabird feathers, eggs and meat; sea lion oil and meat; seal skins; and sea otter pelts. By 1830 the seals were gone. Whether the northern fur seal or the Guadalupe fur seal was the native fur seal is unknown, although the northern fur seal is the species that began to recolonize the islands in 1996.
In 1849 the egg hunters showed up. Things got so crazy with the “eggers” that they were forcibly removed from the islands in 1881 by a U.S. marshal and 21 soldiers. Then from 1946 to 1970, the sea around the Farallones was used as a dump site for radioactive waste under the authority of the Atomic Energy Commission. The drums are scattered across the sea floor, much of it in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. The drums are unstable and many have broken open. The presence of the waste is a concern for the environment and the California coast.
Attempts to establish recreational tourism at the islands have had mixed results. In January of 1962, a spearfishing competition was held at the Farallones. The competition ended abruptly when a spearfisher lost a leg to a shark. That same year in November, a skin diving club anchored at Middle Farralon. A shark attack ended that expedition as well. In her book, Casey recounts being ferried back to the mainland on a tour boat. The boat buffets through 14-foot swells around the islands. “A half-dozen people clustered along the back railing, their sheet-white faces drooping with misery. Several more were buckled over the side.” When they traveled a few more miles out to look for whales, “the wind whipped the ocean into towering swells”. And of course, it’s wicked cold.
Once it became known that the Farallones are a hot spot for great whites, people started running boat tours out to the islands, hoping to catch a glimpse of the legendary beasts. However, pretty much everyone in the 20th century who has tried to cash in out there has been defeated, beat back by the weather, the frigid water, the low visibility which is about 15 feet on a good day, and the sharks. It’s worth noting that the Miwok Indians in the 17th century called the Farallones the Islands of the Dead, basically an offshore hell where bad Indians are condemned to live for eternity.
Gold diggers, lighthouse keepers, even the US military had their stints messing around with the Farallones. Finally, in 1969 the islands were collectively designated a National Wildlife Refuge, and the Point Reyes Bird Observatory was contracted by the U.S. government to repair the damage. Slowly, the Farallones began to come back. In addition to being a feeding ground for sharks, the Farallones are now a bird-watchers’ paradise. Red-flanked bluetails, Eurasian wigeons, and Xantus’ murrelets are some of the exotics spotted there. Even an African pink-backed pelican showed up one time. When Susan Casey arrived at the Farallones for her second visit in August of 2003, there were around 100,000 murres, 40,000 cassin’s auklets, 20,000 cormorants, 4,000 pigeon guillemots, and smaller populations of others like tufted puffins. The islands also host the world’s largest colony of ashy petrels.
Casey’s third visit happened in September of 2003. She’d scored a chance to live for about 5 weeks on a 60-foot steel-hulled yacht anchored in Fisherman’s Bay on the northeast side of Southeast Farallon. Due to new restrictions, the Shark Project needed a boat to serve as a research platform. Without permission to actually be on the island, she could stay on the boat, visit with the biologists, and research her story. This time Casey was to have her own harrowing experience with the fearsome power of the Farallones.
The Devil’s Teeth is a well-written, well-researched, in-depth story about the Farallon Islands, their wildlife, and the few people privileged to set foot there in modern times. By the time you’re done reading, and it’s a page-turner, you’ll be almost as well-acquainted with the islands as Susan Casey. History, ornithology, biology, environmental science, adventure, danger, and surfing (yes, surfing) this book covers a lot of ground. Enhanced by color photos of the islands, the wildlife, and the biologists at work with the sharks, this book is a keeper.
Thanks, Don, for introducing me to The Devil’s Teeth. I used to see the islands sometimes, small and sharp on a clear day, when I lived on the coast south of San Francisco. They both attracted and repelled, and somehow didn’t seem quite real out there on the horizon. I wondered what it would be like to go there. Now, I know.
For questions or comments, click below. To buy this book, go to https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Teeth-Obsession-Survival-Americas/dp/0805080112
