By Chris Fuchs
For Carlos Martez, the maintenance supervisor at Alley Pond Park in Bayside, it was a normal Thursday morning as mornings there usually go. He did his daily sweep of the grounds, to ensure that nothing was amiss, and nothing was.
But then just after 11 a.m. he got some unusual news: a couple of children out on the trails had found a dead shark.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Martez, a former butcher, as he stood on a deck overlooking the brackish basin where the 4-foot fish was discovered.
Although Martez identified the fish as a shark, Jane Rudolph, a spokeswoman for the Parks Department, said it was a dogfish and not a shark. Rudolph said dogfish are very common in both the East River and the Long Island Sound.
“It must have blown into the creek because of strong winds,” she said.
But a website called www.enchantedlearning.com identifed dogfish as a bona fide type of shark.
Sheer speculation on Martez’s part led him to believe that the shark came in from the Long Island Sound and then into the East River, a waterway that empties into the basin at Alley Pond Park.
“This is not a shark place,” Martez said.
For six years, Martez has kept watch over the vast acreage of Alley Pond Park and had never before seen a shark wash ashore. Irene Scheid, the executive director, also said as much, and her memory dates back even further than Martez’s — 1980, to be exact, the year she started work there as an intern.
Scheid said the city Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Environmental Protection are to determine where the shark came from and how it died. As of Tuesday, neither agency had reached any conclusions.
Word about the shark spread quickly through the 130-acre greenspace, just off of Northern Boulevard near the Cross Island Parkway. A usual stream of visitors arrived last Thursday morning on yellow school buses, some by way of car, all eager to trek the trails and experience a respite from the daily grind of gritty city life. The shark sighting made them even more eager.
For most of the morning, the shark, which gave off a smell much like that of a fish market, lay anchored in the shallow basin, its body tied with twine that was attached to the top of a 15-foot, concrete drainage outlet.
Martez wanted to leave the shark in the water until the city officials arrived, but feared that high-tide, which was beginning to roll in, would whisk it away if he had not tied it up.
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
