Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks & the Sea

by Peter Benchley

  The shark's teeth sawed off one wing of the stingray. Then, swallowing, it swam away, swinging in a slow circle to approach the bait again.

  As the cloud of sand cleared and settled, movement somewhere above made me look up. Halfway to the surface, perhaps fifteen feet away, was a second tiger shark, this one as big as a midsize sedan. It was swimming with agitated movements, and it looked angry.

  I knew why it was frustrated. In the world of tiger sharks—and several other species—the biggest feeds first. This smaller animal, which we decided later was about eleven feet long, had no choice but to watch as the tasty meal was consumed by the larger fellow.

  Again the big tiger bit down on the stingray, seeming this time to take the entire brain coral in its mouth. Its teeth tore the carcass to pieces. Shreds of gray-black skin flew out through the shark's gill slits and sank to the sand. Tiny fish snatched them up and retreated to eat them in the shelter of the reef.

  I was paralyzed, not from fear but from fascination and concentration. And then—

  Oh, no.

  I couldn't breathe. Trying to inhale was like sucking on an empty Coke bottle. Quickly I looked at my air gauge: zero.

  I was out of air.

  For once I didn't panic, and I didn't shoot for the surface. I knew the risk of an air embolism. If you ascend too fast, holding your breath, the air in your lungs will expand and blow a hole in a lung. Then an air bubble can travel to your heart or brain and kill or cripple you. If I was going to try a free ascent, I wanted to do it properly: drop my weights, open my mouth, and exhale constantly as I swam for the surface.

  But I also knew that there was, in fact, at least one more breath of air in the tank, though I'd have to ascend to get it. Air that has compressed as a diver descends expands when he ascends. Unless you have truly sucked a vacuum into your tank, chances are there's a bit of crucial, life-sustaining air left.

  Of course, to be on the surface above two tiger sharks, one feeding and one angry because it couldn't feed, was not an ideal situation. Still, it struck me as preferable to drowning. Besides, I didn't intend to stay on the surface for long. I looked up and saw the boat above me. If I went up at the right angle, I should be able to surface near—if not exactly at—the dive step on the boat.

  I turned to Stan and made the out-of-air signal—a finger drawn across the throat. Then I rose off the sand bottom, slowly, as quietly as possible. I straightened my legs for the first time in more than an hour and started to kick.

  Both legs cramped at the same time and in exactly the same way: my hamstrings sprang taut, snapping each leg up under my body. That left me with useless legs, feet, and fins. The sudden pain made me gasp … except there was no air to gasp.

  Now you are in trouble. … What to do, what to do, what to do?

  I pulled the release on my weight belt. Twenty-five pounds of lead dropped from my waist, so immediately I began to rise.

  A breath of air became available, and I gulped it down. I was careful to leave my mouth open to let my exhaling breath escape.

  The last thing I saw before my head popped through the surface was the second tiger shark, swimming in circles beneath me. Alerted by my noisy ascent, it had swum over to see what was going on. Its body was tilted slightly, so that I could see its eye watching me.

  No worries, mate, I thought. Just put an arm out and let 'em pull you aboard the boat.

  Frightened and disoriented by the pain in my locked legs, I extended an arm and … nothing. Nobody grabbed it.

  I spun in place, and … Well, no wonder. The boat was ten yards away and drifting farther. No! Impossible! The boat was anchored. … I was the one drifting. I was caught in a surface current and being swept away.

  I raised my arms, hoping to communicate that I was helpless in the water. Somehow that message got through to our director, Scott Ransom. He grabbed a rope, flung himself off the stern of the boat, and swam to me. Together we held on to the rope, and the crew pulled us to the boat.

  I never once looked down. If the tiger shark was pursuing us, I didn't want to know.

  Thus ended the “easy” part of the shoot, the get-acquainted-with-sharks part. From here on, I knew, matters would become serious. We were headed south, to Dangerous Reef. There I would climb into a flimsy cage bobbing in a sea of blood, and a crew of experts would do their best to get a great white shark to approach the cage and try to eat me.

  Why? I wondered. Why did I have to write a novel about a shark? Why not a novel about … I don't know … a puppy?

  4

  South Australia, 1974

  Part 3

  We flew to Adelaide, South Australia, and from there across Spencer Gulf to Port Lincoln. Port Lincoln was a rugged frontier town in an area full of places with names like Coffin Bay and—our destination—Dangerous Reef.

  This was the world of the great white shark. It was also the home of Rodney Fox, a national hero in Australia. Fox had introduced the crew of the movie Blue Water, White Death to the great whites of South Australia. He was a shark expert, a tour guide, and a conservationist. Even back then, Rodney knew ten times more than anyone else about great whites. He was the only person in the world who knew how to attract them and film them, underwater, in relative safety.

  It was Rodney who had built the cages, chartered the boats, hired the crews, and bought the dead horse to use as bait. It was Rodney who had convinced me that I would be perfectly safe in the cage. The same cage that was now being hammered to rubble by two thousand–plus pounds of panicked and enraged great white shark.

  As I was slammed about in the cage, I imagined myself reduced from a suddenly successful writer to a surf 'n’ turf snack for a prehistoric monster.

  The curious thing was that not only was I not afraid, but I knew I wasn't afraid. In all the turmoil, violence, confusion, and darkness, my brain made room for a conscious observation about itself. We had departed the realm of fear, my brain and I, and emerged into a peaceful pocket of detached observation. I felt no pain, except for the odd ache when my insulated bones thunked against the bars. I watched my stubby rubber fingers plucking uselessly at the little rubber ring that held my knife in its sheath. Every movement looked slow and deliberate, as if the Play mechanism in my mental VCR had been slowed to Frame Advance.

  The noise was loud, but each sound was distinct and surprising. There was the hollow, metallic whang of the cage slamming against the hull of the boat; the whoosh as a ton of shark flesh lashed wildly through the water; the bubbles blasting both from me and from the rippling gill slits of the huge frightened animal. And, so far in the distance that they might have been imaginary, the shrill sounds of human voices.

  The cage began to move, scraping along the bottom of the boat. Now there was light enough for me to see that we—the shark, the cage, and I—were somehow still connected to the boat above. With a thrust of its tail, the giant body lunged upward and forward.

  What's this? Now it wants to board the boat? Suddenly, with swiftness and grace and in complete silence, the shark slid backward and down. It turned and swam away. The rope had disappeared from its mouth. I had a final glimpse of its tail, and then the shark was gone, absorbed into the misty blue sea.

  The cage righted itself, but because one of its floating tanks had been punctured, it hung askew. Someone above pulled on the rope, and I felt myself moving up toward the light. Through the moving glassy plane of the surface I saw faces, grotesquely distorted, staring down at me from the boat. In their center was the round black eye of the ABC Sports camera lens.

  Once on board, I described my ordeal for the camera, nearly weeping with relief.

  Rodney, who had been through infinitely worse experiences, was full of compliments like “You're mad!”

  Stan, who had a way with words, said, “Tell me, sir, is it true that you don't know the very meaning of fear?”

  Then I described what I thought had gone wrong and asked what had, in fact, happened. There was an awkward pause. Most of
the crew seemed unaware that anything had gone wrong. Those few who did know did not seem eager to discuss the matter.

  I looked up at the flying bridge, where my wife, Wendy, was leaning on the railing and watching us with wry amusement. From her expression I could tell immediately that she knew everything, from exactly what had gone wrong to who and what had been involved in correcting it. I was sure that whatever had happened, she had played a role in its satisfactory outcome.

  As indeed she had.

  In 1974 it was rare for a wife to accompany her husband on an expedition like ours, living in close quarters on small boats. Wendy found herself treated with profound awkwardness, though not with disrespect. When I climbed into the cage and the white shark appeared, Wendy was banished from the action, exiled up to the flying bridge.

  She didn't argue, and almost immediately she discovered that she had the best position on the boat. She could see everything that was going on. She watched the giant shark lunging at the baits, bumping and biting the two cages— mine and Stan's. She saw the surface cameramen struggling to keep up with fast-moving figures, shifting light, and splashes of blood and oil and water.

  She saw the rope attached to my cage slip into the shark's mouth. She saw it catch between the teeth. She saw the shark growing desperate to rid itself of the cage, thrashing and gnashing and pummeling both cages.

  She also saw that nobody else had noticed any of it. They were all too focused on their own tasks. Cameramen were trying for close-ups. Assistants were holding on to the cameramen's belts to keep them from tumbling overboard. Some crewmen were busy ladling more chum into the water. Others could do nothing but stare, openmouthed, as a fish the size of a Buick went berserk behind the boat.

  Wendy knew what would happen if the shark couldn't shake loose of the rope. And it soon became obvious that it couldn't.

  She slid quickly down the ladder from the flying bridge, marched aft, and pushed aside one chummer and one idle gaper. She took hold of the rope a foot or two behind the cleat to which it was tied on the stern. She leaned over, trying to see the head of the shark and locate the spot where the rope entered its mouth.

  Just then the shark raised its head and lunged upward, and Wendy found herself nose to nose with—perhaps twenty-four inches away from—the most notorious, hideous, frightening face in nature. The snout was smeared with red. Bits of flesh clung to its jaws, and blood drooled from the sides of its mouth. The upper jaw was down, in bite position, and gnashing as if trying to climb the rope. The eyes, as big as baseballs, were rolled backward in their sockets—great whites do not have nictitating membranes. As the great body shook, it forced air through its gill slits, making a noise like a grunting pig.

  All this Wendy recalled in detail. She also recalled shaking the rope and yelling at the shark. She cursed and called it names she wasn't aware she knew, and demanded that it let go of the rope. The shark grunted at her and twisted its head, showing her one of its ghastly black eyeballs, and the rope sprang free.

  The great white slid backward off the stern and away from the boat. When it was fully in the water, it rolled onto its side and, like a fighter plane peeling away from a formation, glided down and away into the darkness.

  II

  5

  Shark Attacks

  A Summer of Hype

  Every once in a while, shark attacks grip the public imagination. That was what happened in the summer of 2001. Shark attacks dominated the news. Everywhere—on TV, the radio, the Internet—there were stories about “killer” sharks. Early the next year I contacted George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, and requested the figures for 2001.

  Worldwide, the number of shark attacks recorded in 2001 was seventy-six, down from eighty-five the year before.

  In the United States, fifty-five people were attacked by sharks in 2001, exactly one more than in 2000. As for fatalities, five people in the world died from shark bites in 2001, twelve in 2000.

  “2001 was an average year by U.S. standards, and below average internationally,” said Mr. Burgess. “Most important, serious attacks were way down.”

  Why, then, the shark hysteria?

  First of all, human beings look at sharks with both fear and fascination. I think that fascination accounts for the long life Jaws has enjoyed as a movie. Aside from the many merits of the Steven Spielberg film, the story apparently touches a deep nerve in a great many people.

  There was also the fact that in the summer of 2001, the United States and the world were in a relatively slow news cycle. Not much was going on that was newsworthy.

  Then, at dusk on July 6, eight-year-old Jesse Arbogast was attacked by a bull shark in shallow water off Pensacola, Florida. The attack was particularly gruesome and sensational. Somehow, his uncle wrestled the seven-foot shark to shore. He and a park ranger retrieved Jesse's severed arm from the mouth of the shark and rushed it to a hospital, where it was reattached to Jesse. Miraculously, the boy survived.

  After that incident, the antennae of the media and the public were set to receive reports of other shark attacks as soon as they happened. And happen they did—the few normal encounters between bathers or surfers and sharks that occur off beaches from New Jersey to Florida.

  Each incident was treated as a new sensation. Very soon a trend was declared, and the world was gripped by shark fever.

  The fever took hold so strongly partly because of the major changes over the past few years in the way news is broadcast around the world. With the Internet, cable television, cell phones, and satellites, we learn about everything that happens anywhere almost instantly. We also learn about everything that is rumored to have happened anywhere— whether it is true or not.

  Here's an example of how quickly rumors can spread and how stories can get exaggerated. On August 14, 2001, a school of sharks was sighted close to shore near St. Petersburg, Florida. No one knew how many sharks there were. The first reports—by telephone and e-mail—described them as “a bunch.” Soon there were “dozens,” then “hundreds.” By the time a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times was assigned to cover the story, the number of sharks was “in the thousands.”

  The suspicious reporter chartered a small plane and flew out over the scene. He didn't know what to expect. Surely there would be too many sharks to count, but would they be moving toward the beaches or away from them? Were the sharks chasing food or hunting for food? Was this mass gathering a breeding event … or a killing event?

  I spoke to the reporter on the phone after he returned.

  “The water was murky,” he said, “but I could still count the sharks 'cause it was calm and they were all on or near the surface. There were forty sharks. Exactly forty. Even I could see what they were—blacktips—and they were following a school of baitfish, which happens every day. There were more fishing boats out there than sharks, all intent on killing the ‘killers.’ It was ridiculous.”

  By the end of July 2001, shark attacks were being reported almost daily—in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, all up and down the coast. Most of the “attacks” were incidents that, in a normal year, would not have been reported beyond the local press. But this was not a normal year. The season had been called the Summer of the Shark by Time magazine.

  The actual number of incidents that summer was not abnormal. There had not, as of that August, been a single shark-attack fatality in U.S. waters. But it seemed to the public that the world (or at least the ocean) had gone crazy.

  So-called experts popped up everywhere to offer explanations. Here are some of the reasons they gave for a rise in shark attacks that didn't really exist:

  + The general decline in fish stocks had left sharks desperate for food; consequently, they were attacking humans. There's no evidence at all to support this theory.

  + Restrictions imposed by the federal government on shark fishing had created an overabundance of sharks, which were now preying on helpless swimmers. In fact, all the accep
ted evidence points to a drastic decline in the numbers of nearly every species of shark.

  + By targeting certain species and ignoring others, commercial fishermen had encouraged a population explosion among bull sharks, which were the villains in several serious attacks. There is simply no evidence of an increase in the bull shark population.

  + Shark-feeding enterprises, which abound in Florida and elsewhere as tourist attractions, had conditioned sharks to associate the presence of humans with the promise of food. When those sharks encountered people who didn't feed them—for example, swimmers and surfers—they went after the people. This theory is completely unsupported by reliable data.

  The “shark summer” of 2001, which had begun on July 6 with the attack on Jesse Arbogast, ended on Labor Day weekend with two fatal attacks—the only two of the summer in the United States.

  On Saturday, September 1, ten-year-old David Peltier bled to death after being bitten on the leg while surfing in the waters off Virginia Beach. Two days later Sergei Zaloukaev, twenty-seven, was killed by a shark while he and his wife, Natalia, were wading in the surf off Avon, North Carolina. Natalia was bitten, too, and lost a foot, but she survived.

  The summer ended. Then came the horror of September 11. People had a real crisis to worry about, and shark attacks disappeared from the news. In fact, nothing really crazy happened in the oceans that summer. It happened in the media, where a hunger for news stories created a feeding frenzy and a summer of hype.

  6

  Sharks

  How Little We Know

  There are a great many sharks, and a great many kinds of sharks, in the sea. Very few—a tiny, insignificant number— will ever have contact with a human being, let alone bother one … let alone eat one. As a general rule, being attacked by a shark is not something you should worry about—unless you're a person who worries about being struck by lightning or attacked by killer bees, both of which are more likely to happen to you than a shark attack.