Page 61 of The Art of Loving Lacy
Dane glanced at the little boy’s parents standing behind him with wide smiles. He leaned down so he was eye level with Ashton. “Come with me, buddy. I’ll show you.” He guided him to the monitor. “This is what we call a live-stream monitor. We put tags on sharks, and if the shark has a satellite tag, then that tag sends a signal to a satellite way up in the sky, past the clouds, and we get to see what that signal means here on the monitor.”
“Why do you need a satellite?” Ashton asked.
“Well, you know how you have to plug your television into the wall to get electricity? The satellite is sort of like that for our tags. We need it to read the signals. You wanna know what we track, right?” Dane asked.
Ashton nodded.
He pointed to the monitor. “Those dots that you see, those are sharks. This monitor shows us where the tagged sharks are swimming. See the different colors?”
“Yeah,” Ashton said. His eyes followed Dane’s finger to the colorful dots.
“Each color tells us how long ago the shark appeared in that location. We call that aping.”
Ashton laughed.
Lacy watched Dane as he taught the little boy. She swore she could feel her heart opening wider with every word he spoke.He’d make a great father.
Dane continued. “We can track the temperature of the water and the depth where the tagged sharks swim, and we can even track their swim patterns.”
He looked as if talking about sharks and teaching the little boy came both naturally and comfortably.
“I’m afraid of sharks,” Ashton said.
His father put a hand on his shoulder.
“I have a good friend who’s afraid of sharks, too.” Dane winked at Lacy. “But if you try hard enough to understand sharks, you might realize that they’re not really that scary. They’re just trying to live in the world they’ve been given, just like we are.”
Lacy’s mind took a different turn. She began thinking of ways to wrap the educational side of Brave into their marketing, reaching out to schools and even aquariums, science museums, and the like.
“Do you wear one of those wet suits? My dad says the shark thinks people are seals when they wear them, and that’s why they get bit,” Ashton said, looking at his father.
How often does he have to field the same questions, and how can he answer them over and over without any irritation?
“We do wear wet suits, but not for the reasons you think. You see, Ashton, sharks aren’t interested in eating humans, but they’ve been known to bump their noses into anything they see as potential prey.” He used the back of his hand to lightly tap Ashton’s arm. “Like that. When they do that, they emit electrical signals, like little shocks, and human skin makes those shocks conduct. That’s probably hard for you to understand, but if a person’s skin sends a certain signal to the shark, the chances are greater of an attack. Since wet suits don’t interact with electrical signals like animals and human skin does, we wear them to minimize those chances.”
Ashton’s eyes glazed over, and he reached for his father’s hand.
Ashton’s father stepped forward. “That might be a little over his head, but thank you,” he said.
“No problem. I’m always happy to explain what we do. I’m Dane Braden,” Dane said and extended his hand.
“Craig Knoll. Nice to meet you.”
“If you stop by that table, one of the Brave volunteers can give you an educational pamphlet. You’ll find a list of books that you can read to Ashton, so he can better understand sharks and maybe even work on overcoming his fear of them.”
“We’ll do that,” Craig said. He reached his hand out to the woman beside him. “This is Kathie, my wife.”
Kathie stepped forward, her cheeks flushed. She looked a little older than Lacy, and Lacy knew that part of that flush was due to the incredibly handsome man standing before her. Her eyes drifted back to Dane.And he’s all mine.
AFTER WATCHING A movie that explained how four decades of federal protection was the cause for the expanding seal population, Lacy and Dane left the visitors center and headed toward Provincetown.
“So if they protect the seals, won’t the sharks just keep coming as more seals are born or move into the area?” Lacy asked.
“That’s the issue. Part of what Brave does is to gather research about swim patterns, mating grounds, things like that. Something will need to be done, but the answer isn’t killing the sharks. We think the answer lies in somehow getting the seals to migrate elsewhere. But like anything else, politics take precedence, so decisions are slow, and meanwhile, great white sightings are increasing.” Dane glanced at Lacy and could see the gears in her mind working. He loved knowing that she was becoming interested in the process and reasoning surrounding what he did.
Dane pulled into the parking lot of PB Boulangerie, a little French bakery in Wellfleet.
“What’s next on our agenda?” Lacy asked. “I didn’t see anything else on the itinerary.”
