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the monthly reports, then pick up some lumber in the afternoon. The puppy followed him out onto the dock and jumped into the boat when he stepped aboard to start the engine. Belker barked at the dark water, and Hall looked to make sure no more logs were swimming toward his boat.
    The boat engine idled down a few hundred RPM’s when it was warm, and Hall took the puppy back to the cottage and locked him in the kitchen. He would need to take him to the vet if he planned on keeping him.
    “Try not to get eaten today,” he whispered.
    There was just a hint of pink on the horizon as he ran with the tide out of Calibogue Sound and into the Atlantic Ocean. He and Jimmy had been right here less than twenty-four hours ago, but it felt like a week had gone by. The black-white-black pattern of the Tybee Island lighthouse came into view as he hugged the shoreline of Dafauskie Island and continued south. He was closer to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge than he was to his home refuge, but the Savannah Refuge was over twenty-nine thousand acres so the refuge officer assigned to Pinckney Island worked the water. This agreement spread the workload between the officers in both refuges, although they both had the same boss and helped each other out on occasion.
    Several shrimp trawlers were coming in from their night’s work and Hall was going to check their catch. Last winter was mild and Hall knew the fishermen were hopeful for a good “roe” shrimp season. The spring season lasted only a month, and in a good year statewide harvests could exceed half a million pounds. Hall was required to make a certain number of commercial boardings every month to ensure the fishermen were adhering to federal regulations. Unlike a dolphin rescue, it was something he had done before. He and Jimmy boarded enough shrimp boats while he was in training for Hall to realize there was no way for him to know how he would be received. They had been cursed by a captain who had no violations and apologized to by a skipper who received a citation.
    Calibouge Lady had had a good night’s fishing and the attitude of the crew reflected it. Hall secured his boat by the bow line and was helped aboard by a crewman, letting the trawler tow his patrol boat behind. He heard and felt the boat speed up once he was safely aboard.
    “Show ’em the TED’s, boys,” the captain ordered.
    The crew lowered the nets onto the deck so Hall could inspect and measure the Turtle Exclusion Devices, a small tunnel in the net that was supposed to let endangered sea turtles escape. Jimmy told Hall that the devices were loathed by the shrimpers who knew that valuable shrimp also escaped and that the turtles rarely survived after tumbling along through the net and out the “Ted.”
    The three men on the shrimp boat were black, as were most of the shrimpers that Hall and Jimmy stopped together. Sometimes their thick accents made them hard for Hall to understand. Other times, when they didn’t want to be understood by outsiders, they spoke in Gullah-a beautiful, almost extinct language of many of the lowcountry natives. Many of the words they spoke were borrowed from African dialects, Caribbean islanders and Jamaican Creoles and represented the heritage of the speakers.
    Jimmy schooled Hall not only in the lay of the land and the depth of the waters but in the history of the region as well. Hall felt sorry for many of the residents of Dafauskie Island and other coastal areas who had lived in blissful indifference to progress for generations until developers raped their homeland. Folks who never knew they were poor and underprivileged sold their invaluable sea islands for the chance at a better life and watched their children grow up, move away, and take the future with them. Most realized too late that happiness couldn’t be bought, but it could be sold. Golf resorts and million dollar waterfront estates erased a century and a half of heritage in a few short years. Perhaps statutory