TEETH.(Brief Article)

On a recent Sunday afternoon, John Dumke and Kristina Harvey's two young sons were digging in the sand on Gibson Beach, in Bridgehampton, when Harvey noticed something odd. An unusual number of gulls and terns were diving at the water, at a large, shifting, circular mass of grey shadow, which, she soon realized, was bearing down quickly on a group of swimmers frolicking in the surf. She watched it come. This thing was big--a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, by Dumke's estimate. Now others saw it, too, and soon parents were rushing to the water's edge, waving their arms, and yelling, "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" The bathers looked around them, then dashed onto the beach. As they regrouped at the tide line and gazed out at the waves, they saw what they'd run from: a school of bluefish, a feeding frenzy.

Off eastern Long Island, August is high season for bluefish feeding frenzies. Paul Rickenbach, the mayor of East Hampton, said that, while schools of feeding blues are best avoided, their presence should not deter tourists from visiting the area's beaches. "You're going into a natural element, and that's the Atlantic Ocean, so you're going to encounter fish and marine life of all kinds," Rickenbach said. But Captain Ken Rafferty, who runs a charter service out of Three Mile Harbor, in East Hampton, has seen firsthand what bluefish can do. Years ago, an eighteen-pounder bit through his right middle finger, leaving it permanently bent. (This has earned him the nickname Captain Hook.) Rafferty says that bluefish, when they are in a frenzy, are "insane" and will try to eat anything. He once demonstrated this by tying a flip-flop to a fifty-pound test line, and dragging it across the surface over a school ...