During my last semester (an all-summer session) at Texas A&M, I spent the summer taking 2 classes to graduate "post-senior year" so I could graduate in August. (Details long but due to ROTC class requirement change my senior year). I only need 2 classes but took 4. Plus I had a "summer job" for A&M catching sharks. I majored in Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences - Fisheries Ecology. One of my College Station professors was studying shark parasites - and he needed (duh) sharks to collect parasites from.
Every Friday evening I would go down to the west end of Galveston Island and string out 150 ft of gill net perpendicular to the beach across 2 or 3 sand bars, beating a couple of pipes into the sand bars to hold the net tight. On Saturday morning, I would swim out to the far end of the net and pull the pipe out of the sand bar that I had beat into the sand (ever try swimming with a 6# sledge hammer - not as easy as it sounds). I let the waves carry the far end into the beach while I swam back in and pulled the inner pipe out of the inshore sand bar.
I would take any sharks I had caught and prep them for storage in big coffin like stainless steel vats full of formaldehyde and haul them the 150+ miles to College Station. I got paid $50 per shark over 3 ft long. Smaller sharks, I only got $30. And I got to use a university truck and gas to make the delivery. $50 may not sound like much, but minimum wage was only $2 an hour.
Best night I had was when I caught 5 at one time. Usually it was only 1 or 2 3+ footers. Biggest was 5 feet long. All of them were Bull Sharks, like what's been hitting the folks on the east coast.
It wasn't as dangerous as it sound because almost all Bull Shark attacks occur in shallow water between the beach and the first sand bar - the sharks are looking for crabs and shrimp as they snuffle along. Their eye sight sucks. They rely on "small" and the electrical charge a body produces as the body moves through the water. And most of the shallow water attacks are to the feet - the shark sense potential food, bites it, and spits it out because humans taste like poop to most sharks.
I got to know lots of folks in Galveston while I was there - some people called my "that Crazy Shark Boy". When my finals got close and I needed to quit fishing, I told the professor "Hey, you kow, if you talk to the shrimp fishermen, they sometimes catch sharks in their nets. You could get your sharks that way." Wasn't about to shoot my gravy train until AFTER I had made my money.
