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Dave yawned deeply, watching Cobra's boat drift up alongside the dock near his apartment building. He stepped across, giving a sleepy nod of greeting as he joined Cobra in the wheelhouse.
"Good mornin', Dave!" said Cobra with his usual enthusiasm. "How're you feeling?"
Dave yawned again, hanging up his hat. "To be honest, not really looking forward to going down there again..."
Cobra laughed, more or less good-natured, as he got his boat underway. "You're not still sore about those narwhals, are ya?"
Dave shrugged, sitting down to start getting his surface clothes switched for his diving gear. "I just hate hunting cetaceans. They're so... they're just so friendly and smart, you know what I mean?" He sighed. "Then again..."
"Cha haw haw! Those things weren't really so friendly, were they?" Cobra let go of the wheel with one hand to make a dismissive gesture. "Must be the violent streak of the Blue Hole critters."
"I guess. And it seemed like a waste of good meat to not send them up when I had to kill them defending myself." He scratched his beard at a private thought, then fell quiet to finish suiting up.
Cobra picked up the slack, of course. "You see, exactly! And Bancho did marvels with them at the party last night. I'm still working on the permits, but soon! Soon we'll be serving them to the public and making so much money! Imagine, narwhal meat in the tropics! Fresh, even!"
Privately, Dave figured he wouldn't be sending any more narwhals up unless more of them picked fights with him, but he'd learned when it was best to just keep his peace around Cobra. And, with a sigh to himself as he pulled his second flipper on, he figured that meant he'd probably be sending plenty of narwhals up. Cobra was probably right in the sense that the narwhals of the Glacial Area were probably affected by same violent streak as so many of the other Great Blue Hole creatures; Dave was beginning to wonder if that story Tenzhin had told him about that ancient technician had something to do with it.
Still, why narwhals and not other cetaceans?
He supposed that was more of a question for either Dr. Bacon or the Sea People. Maybe he'd bring it up the next time he saw either of them.
...Which would apparently be right now. A familiar red motorboat floated near Cobra's usual anchor point above the Blue Hole, and as Dave walked out to the bow, he saw Dr. Bacon wave so hard it was kind of amazing his arm didn't fall off.
"Hello, Dave! Just who I wanted to see - it's so, so lucky!"
"Uh, good morning, Dr. Bacon..."
Cobra came out to the bow to see what the fuss was about, leaning on the railing. "Haw haw, what's lucky this time, Doctor?"
Dr. Bacon snapped his hand down into a cooler and produced a sheaf of papers, which he waved about wildly. "The narwhals! They aren't narwhals! It's so lucky!"
Dave and Cobra shared a look. "Uhh..." Dave looked at Dr. Bacon, frowning in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Heh, you're gonna have to go slowly for us, Doc."
Dr. Bacon grinned. "It's incredible! Listen! You sent Ecowatch both a male and a female, and I just got their report this morning and had to come show you!" He laughed, shaking the papers again. "They have! Gills! Claspers! Roe! Dave, they aren't mammals, they're sharks!"
Cobra and Dave stared at him, stunned. Cobra slowly grinned, his one-track mind on the same rail as always. "So it's a new species?"
"A new species!" Dr. Bacon confirmed. "Only found right here at the Great Blue Hole! Narwhal-mimic sharks! And such good mimics they have mammal-like spines! If this isn't proof of the ancient Sea People's genetic experiments, I don't know what is!"
Dave thought the exploding blood-belly comb jellies were plenty proof, though admittedly he hadn't been able to net or tranquilise any before they blew up yet. In any case, another consideration pushed its way to the forefront of his mind. "...Huh. So that's why they tasted a little different from muktuk."
Cobra's money-making euphoria was punctured by confusion, and he turned to Dave with an eyebrow raised. "I thought you hated hunting whales? But you've eaten narwhal before?"
Dave shrugged. "I was diving off Alaska a few years ago and ended up staying with some Inuit. When in Rome."
Cobra blinked, then shook his head, bouncing a bit on his heels as he turned back to Dr. Bacon. "Either way! Think of the tourist draw! And that's just one new species - Dave thought he saw some strange fish down by the seafloor!"
"Well, they were more shrimplike, really..."
Cobra and Dr. Bacon ignored him. "Yes, indeed!" said Dr. Bacon. "But for now, the Ecowatch scientists are trying to come up with a name for the so-called narwhals! Since you discovered them, Dave...?"
Dave thought about it for a few moments, then shrugged. "False narwhals?"
Cobra flailed his arms wildly for a moment. "Nononono!" He made an 'X' with his arms, tapping them repeatedly to emphasise the negation. "Think of how that would look for the restaurant! 'False narwhal sushi?!' People will get the wrong idea! They'll think it's like imitation crab meat!"
Dave made a resigned sound. "It's the obvious thing to call them..."
Cobra clicked his tongue and snapped his fingers. "I have an even better obvious thing to call them! 'Narwhal sharks!'" He got into Dave's space to throw an arm around his shoulders, sweeping his other hand along their line of sight as if gesturing to an invisible sign. "'Narwhal shark sushi' - now that! That will get people curious!" He pulled away and slapped Dave's near shoulder. "What do you say?"
"...I say the scientists can call them whatever they want, I guess."
Cobra laughed. "Oh, never change, my friend." He offhandedly took the papers Dr. Bacon offered over the boats' railings, thumbing through them without really reading anything yet. "Either way, keep sending them up!"
Dr. Bacon was still grinning. "I'll tell Ecowatch about your name ideas, anyway! Keep me in the loop about whatever you find in the ruins."
"Sure thing," said Dave, more answering Dr. Bacon than Cobra as he made his way to the Sea People's mirror. Well, he thought, maybe if they're sharks or shark-whale hybrids or whatever, I shouldn't feel as bad about it. And either way, like I said, it's a waste of good meat to not butcher them if I have to defend myself. It's just the same as all the other weirdly aggressive animals around here.
One relatively chilly morning about a year later, Dave's phone chimed at him with an email. Half expecting yet another party announcement from the Blue Hole Tourism Committee, he left it unread as he shaved, showered, and ate breakfast. It was only as he was waiting for Cobra to pick him up that he finally checked it, and with some surprise saw it was from Dr. Bacon.
"Very Lucky Dave!! Read Quickly!!!" read the subject line. Dave opened the email and found it was a link to a scientific paper. A slow, broad smile spread over his face as he read the paper's title.
"Unique fauna of the Great Blue Hole: the narwhal shark (Psuedomonocerus davisqualus, 'Dave's false unicorn shark')."