Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks & the Sea

by Peter Benchley

  They live all over the western Pacific, in freshwater rivers and brackish swamps as well as in the sea. They eat just about anything they can catch, and they stalk and catch almost anything. They will go after birds, monkeys, turtles, fish, crabs, buffaloes, and—as documented many times—human beings. They're known to grow to be at least twenty-three feet long (In Encyclopedia of the Sea, Richard Ellis says they're the largest of all the living reptiles). They regularly swim hundreds of miles out into the open ocean.

  A friend of mine was once thinking about a trip around the Pacific in a collapsible kayak. One part of his journey would take him across the Torres Strait, which separates northern Australia from New Guinea. He asked me about the chances of his encountering aggressive sharks. I told him I wouldn't be half so afraid of sharks as of the “salties.” These crocodiles have been known to attack and destroy boats much more substantial than collapsible kayaks.

  Other sea creatures have completely surprised me when, over the years, I've discovered they can be dangerous. But in every case I've come to realize that it's the human that has gotten in harm's way, not the animal that's suddenly turned mean.

  I'm speaking here specifically of groupers, bluefish, and, believe it or not, certain species of dolphins.

  The one dicey moment I've witnessed with a grouper happened in Turks and Caicos Islands, a small group of islands south of the Bahamas. A woman in our crew had decided to go for a swim during the heat of the day. She dove off the boat without giving a thought to the fact that she was in a very active phase of her menstrual cycle.

  She had surfaced from her dive and wiped her hair back from her face when she felt something bump her, very hard, in the thigh, and then bite her.

  She shouted and lashed out with her feet, trying to back away. She wasn't wearing a mask or fins, so she couldn't see what had bitten her. She couldn't escape quickly, either. It pursued her, bit her again, and kept coming. Again she shouted.

  Those of us on board heard her shout, ran to the side, and looked overboard. Through the clear water we could see everything. A small (eight- or ten-pound) Nassau grouper had, we assumed, scented blood in the water and, following its instinct, attacked the source. It didn't matter that the animal it was attacking was more than ten times its size. That animal was bleeding, and blood meant injury, weakness, and vulnerability.

  It took us a few seconds to realize that what we were watching was not funny. Then two of us jumped overboard, one right behind the swimmer, one right on top of the grouper. The grouper was startled to find that the sky had fallen on its head, and shot away to the safety of the reef below.

  We escorted the woman to the back of the boat and helped her up onto the dive step at the stern. We were astonished at the damage caused by the small, young, normally placid fish. The inside of one of her thighs had been torn, and blood was flowing from ruptured veins. Fortunately, the fish had not bitten deep enough to slash through the femoral artery. That could have caused serious, even mortal, damage.

  In January 2002 a report came in from Australia about two divers being harassed by a six-foot-long, several-hundred-pound grouper. It seemed intent on trying, at least, to eat them. It sneaked up on one diver and took his entire head in its mouth. Only quick, aggressive action by his buddy saved the diver from serious injury or worse.

  I grew up knowing how violent and voracious bluefish could be during a feeding frenzy. Every summer I fished for them off Nantucket. When birds were working on a school of baitfish, and bluefish were attacking from below, the carnage was amazing. The blues would roll and leap and dive, snapping at everything with their scalpel-sharp triangular teeth.

  From the safety of the boat, I never gave a thought to what would happen to a person who found himself in the water amid the feeding bluefish.

  A lifeguard in Florida found out. He was sitting on a surfboard in calm water less than a hundred yards offshore. First, flocks of gulls and terns drove a huge mass of baitfish toward him. Then he saw—he could tell from the sudden, roiling chop in the glass-calm sea and the glint of sunlight off the scales of rolling fish—that a school of blues was assaulting the baitfish.

  He watched, spellbound, as the feeding frenzy came closer. He didn't move, didn't paddle away, just sat there with his feet dangling over the sides of the surfboard.

  The bluefish struck so fast and their teeth were so sharp that two of the lifeguard's toes were gone before he could yank his feet out of the water.

  In the newspaper account I read, the lifeguard didn't talk about the pain he felt. He didn't talk about what he had done to slow the flow of blood from his mangled foot while he paddled ashore. All that seemed to be on his mind was the terror he felt at the thought of a dozen frenzied bluefish flinging themselves onto his surfboard and continuing to chomp on him. Or the ultimate horror of what would happen if, through panic or clumsiness, he capsized his surfboard, fell into the water, and was eaten to death by a thousand ravenous fish.

  Nature has spent millennia creating balanced ecosystems all over the world. On one island, there are just the right kind and number of snakes to keep the bird and rodent populations in check. On another, the proper plants nourish the resident animals, and the appropriate insects pollinate the plants.

  Huge, isolated landmasses such as Australia contain several different kinds of environments—jungles, deserts, mountains, forests, and coastlines that vary from straight and sandy to cold and rocky to warm and swampy. In each environment different natural balances have evolved. Animals, plants, and insects live well together, feeding and sustaining one another.

  The sudden introduction of new species—almost always by humans, intentionally or not—can, and usually does, disrupt those natural balances. Sometimes the disruptions are catastrophic to local populations. In the Galápagos Islands, for example, the introduction long ago of pigs and goats (from passing ships) destroyed populations of birds and reptiles that laid their eggs in the ground. And nowadays, tourist cruise boats inadvertently transport colonies of insects from one island to another. This creates chaos among resident plant and insect populations that have no defenses against the newcomers.

  Some of the Hawaiian Islands have lost almost all their native birds to an invasion of voracious snakes from Guam. Scientists believe these snakes were stowaways in ships’ cargoes and sometimes in the wheel wells of passenger jetliners across the Pacific.

  The so-called killer bees from Africa were brought over to South America by scientists trying to create a productive new strain of bees. Inevitably, some of the bees escaped. Over the past several years they have gradually made their way north up the American continent. They have overpowered and crossbred with native species, creating ferociously aggressive new strains of ill-tempered bees.

  Kudzu, an Asian plant, was imported into the American South. Because it has no natural predators there, it has overrun enormous areas of several states. Gypsy moths were imported into the American North by a well-meaning but wrongheaded scientist, and they've become a plague upon our trees.

  Another instance of man attempting to manipulate nature put me and my family into one of the weirdest encounters of my life.

  Wendy, Christopher, and I were in Moorea, the island forty minutes by fast boat across the Sea of the Moon from Tahiti. Christopher was ten, and this was the second year we had taken him with us to explore the waters of Polynesia while I did a story for a magazine. He was already an accomplished diver. Over the next couple of years he would become more experienced as he joined us on two voyages to explore the underwater world of the Galápagos.

  Our hotel in Moorea featured a swim-with-the-dolphins attraction. I'm aware of the controversy surrounding human contact with captive marine animals, especially captive dolphins and whales. With a few specific exceptions, I'm against holding large marine animals in captivity.

  Still, we decided to try this program. Christopher had never been in the water with a dolphin. Besides, the facility in Moorea was not a normal captive-inter
action program. It seemed to me to be particularly enlightened. For one thing, the two trained dolphins were not captives. They had access to the open ocean and were free to come and go as they pleased. They had been conditioned only to return to the tank at the hotel twice each day. Then they would be fed and permitted—the trainer swore that they didn't have to be coaxed—to interact with a few humans.

  Before we entered the tank, the trainer explained to us that the two dolphins were of an especially intelligent branch of the family Delphinidae. They were rough-toothed dolphins, a male and a female, each approximately eight feet long. They were not trained to do tricks. They would simply come to us when and as they chose and swim among us. We could extend our hands and feel the hard, slick skin as the dolphins passed, but we were not to grab a dorsal fin and hitch a ride or to try to hold the dolphins in any way.

  The tank was approximately four feet deep and a hundred feet in diameter. When we were all in the water, the trainer signaled to his assistant, who opened the gate between the tank and an exterior holding pen.

  Immediately the two dolphins swam into the tank. For a moment they paused together on the far side. I imagined they were like two performers facing a small audience and discussing how best to wow them. And then … well, first I'd better explain something:

  At the moment when what happened was happening, I hadn't a clue as to what was really going on, or why. It took several days of talking to people who knew a great deal more about dolphins than I do before I understood how and why a macho-mad dolphin had threatened my life.

  When the trainer told us that rough-toothed dolphins were smarter than most, he forgot to add that they're also temperamental and difficult. Other dolphin experts used words such as cranky, aggressive, and darn well dangerous.

  While the male and female paused on the opposite side of the tank from where we were, they were studying us. Literally. Using their phenomenal sonar, they scanned our bodies, inside and out, and were able to determine our genders and our ages. Here's what they perceived: our party consisted of one male child (Christopher), one adult female (Wendy), and one adult male (me). To the male dolphin, Christopher was no threat. Wendy was a potential possession. I was—very definitely—a potential rival for its position as alpha male. I was to be gotten rid of, one way or another.

  The dolphin's great intelligence was both the cause of my peril and my salvation. If its brain had been smaller, more primitive and less developed, it wouldn't have had the ability to perform such a detailed analysis of humans in its presence. It also wouldn't have had the intelligence to choose between issuing a warning and launching an outright attack.

  Why, I will never know—perhaps it took pity on me— but it decided to warn me, not kill me.

  All I did know was this. From a dead stop, in what seemed like a fraction of a second, the bigger of the two dolphins crossed the tank. It passed between Christopher and Wendy without touching them. With a final, powerful thrust of its broad tail—which did wallop Wendy and leave her with a permanent dent in her thigh—it rammed me, at full speed, precisely between my legs.

  It knew exactly what it was doing, what it was aiming to hit and what it was aiming to miss. It didn't want to injure, maim, or kill me. It certainly could have. (Dolphins can and do butt sharks to death frequently, and once in a great while they kill humans who tease or otherwise mess with them.) It wanted to warn me. It was saying, This is my turf, bub, and all females herein are mine, so scram!

  The four- or five-hundred-pound dolphin was too big to pass between my legs. So when it struck me it lifted me high into the air, out of the water, and thrust me several feet away. I recall a weird sensation of having been hit by a torpedo, so hard and slick was its skin.

  In a wink the dolphin zipped away, circled, and started back again. The trainer, who had watched the assault dumbstruck, came to life. He blew his whistle, waved his hands at the dolphin, and stepped between the dolphin and me.

  The dolphin stopped so suddenly that it would have left rubber, had it had wheels.

  “Get out!” the trainer shouted to us, over his shoulder.

  “Get out of the pool!”

  We three waded to the edge of the tank and hoisted ourselves out of the water. Only then did Wendy feel the pain in her leg and see the deep purple crease in her thigh.

  Christopher hadn't understood any of what had just happened. He was laughing himself silly. He thought the dolphin had been playing.

  Me? I felt confused and slightly sick.

  The trainer covered his embarrassment and surprise by sending the dolphin away with angry hand signals. He told us that nothing like this had ever happened before. Ever, ever, ever. He promised. And it would never happen again. He would teach the dolphin a lesson by punishing it. It wouldn't be allowed to play with any more humans for the rest of the day.

  He said he hoped that I wouldn't need to mention the incident in the story I was writing. For—truly—never in all his years had anything like this happened before.

  I said I saw no reason to publicize the episode. After all, no one had been seriously hurt, and this was a fluke.

  The next day David Doubilet, who had been taking pictures on another island, arrived on Moorea. Without contacting us, he visited the same “dolphinarium.”

  The same dolphin did the same thing to him, driving him from the tank before he could snap a single picture.

  It was tempting to lay all the blame on the operators of the facility. But I knew that, really, I had only myself to blame. I hadn't been savvy enough about this particular species of dolphin. And I had violated one of the fundamental rules of venturing into the sea. I had made my wife, young child, and myself vulnerable to the instincts of a large, strong, and—above all— wild oceanic predator.

  We can be so eager to humanize all the world's animals that we forget to respect the most precious element in an animal's life: its wildness.

  15

  Okay, So What Can We Do?

  On a beautiful autumn day in late March 1999, I knelt inside the belly cavity of a gargantuan great white shark and helped a scientist hunt for its heart.

  In life, she had been nearly eighteen feet long—longer than all but the biggest SUVs—and had weighed nearly two tons. By now, after a year of being frozen, she had shrunk by a foot and had lost a few hundred pounds of water weight.

  Still, the two of us fit easily within her. When the National Geographic cameraman approached for a closeup, there was plenty of room for him as well.

  This huge beast had died, or been killed, or had killed herself by rolling up in a coastal longline set to catch big Australian snappers. She became trapped and finally asphyxiated. Like all sharks of her kind, she stayed alive only by constantly moving forward and flushing oxygen-rich water over her gills. Once trapped, she died from a lack of oxygen.

  The fisherman who found her had towed her to shore and notified the authorities. Though it was illegal to kill a great white shark in the state of South Australia, this death had obviously been accidental, and no charges were lodged. In fact, the police were grateful to the fisherman. He could easily have cut the shark away from his line and let it sink to the bottom. When he asked for permission to keep the jaw, however, his request was denied. A great-white-shark jaw this huge might fetch ten thousand Australian dollars from a collector. News of such a sale might encourage other fishermen to discover other “accidental” catches.

  The scientific community regretted that the enormous predator had died. But individual scientists were delighted to have the opportunity—very rare, indeed—to study a fully mature, intact, and undamaged female great white shark.

  First, though, they had to find a freezer large enough to hold her until they could decide exactly what to do with her and how and where to do it. They located a gigantic cold box a few miles outside Adelaide. There they stowed this special specimen—until now.

  I had been working for months on a story for National Geographic magazine and a television specia
l for NGTV about great white sharks. The story was going to be published (and broadcast) in the spring of 2000, as close as possible to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of the movie version of Jaws. David Doubilet and I had proposed the story. It was David's job to gather photographs the likes of which had never before been taken. It was my job to collect all the new information about great whites that had accumulated in the quarter century since the film had burst upon the public consciousness.

  John Bredar, the gifted producer/director of the television film, told me that the gigantic shark was about to be brought in from the cold, thawed, and studied. I quickly volunteered to return to the other side of the planet, where we had been diving with great whites only a couple of months earlier.

  Thawing the shark took several days—well, hey, do you have a microwave capable of defrosting a thirty-five-hundred-pound fish? On the first day she was displayed, on a trailer bed at the South Australia Research and Development Institute (SARDI) outside the town of Glenelg, twelve thousand people showed up. They waited in line for hours, in a driving rain, for the chance to see, touch, feel, and smell the most formidable predator any of them had ever seen—or, probably, ever imagined.

  She was magnificent even in death. Her length, her breadth, her sheer bulk struck spectators of every age dumb. They ran their fingers over the serrated sides of each of her inch-and-a-half-long upper teeth. Nobody said much, and those who did speak kept their voices low. I heard not one smart-mouth crack, not one lame joke. I knew that if someone had made even a mildly cynical remark, the crowd would have turned on him and shamed him into silence.

  The folks were fascinated, yes, and awed. But as the hours passed and the crowd kept shuffling through, the sentiment I felt most strongly was reverence. What they were seeing was not merely a legend come true. It was tangible evidence of the power of nature.