Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks & the Sea

by Peter Benchley

  In my judgment, he did exactly the correct thing.

  I, meanwhile, continued. I was oblivious to everything except the phantom jewels undoubtedly nestled in the next pocket of sand between cannons, or certainly the one after that. My eyes riveted on the bottom, I had no reason to look up.

  I reached the end of the pile of cannons, the point of the almond. Then I did look up, to orient myself, and at that very moment the great white reached the same spot.

  We saw each other. Our eyes locked for perhaps a nanosecond. It was just long enough for my brain to register and recognize what my eyes were seeing. I guess its brain registered shock and surprise.

  I was paralyzed. The shark wasn't. It braked with its pectoral fins, like a plane with its flaps down for landing. Then it spun completely around in its own length and vanished in a billowy cloud of brown, which had exploded from its bowel.

  I was alone, kneeling on the bottom, stunned and breathless. And within a few seconds, I was covered by a cloud of great-white-shark crap.

  11

  You Say You Want to Dive with Sharks?

  Well, you'd better be with an experienced scuba diver.

  And you'd better be guided by a veteran dive master who knows the local waters and its inhabitants very well indeed. Because the sharks of one area may behave completely differently from sharks of the same exact species that inhabit another area.

  And you'd better be prepared to expect the unexpected and act accordingly.

  And you'd better be extremely lucky, unless you are in areas where feeding stations have been established and the sharks are used to having humans in the water with them. In those places sharks have come to associate humans with (not as) food. Everywhere else, sharks have no interest at all in hanging out with humans. In fact, sharks go out of their way to avoid us—especially scuba divers.

  Scuba divers appear to a shark to be large, strange (they look like no other animal it knows), alien (they emit blasts of bubbles), noisy (those bubbles are loud), possibly threatening, and definitely unappetizing.

  More and more these days, at dive sites, hotels, and resorts around the world, divers want to see, be in the presence of, and photograph sharks. They're prepared to travel vast distances and pay big money to dive with sharks of all kinds, from great whites to whale sharks, blue sharks, hammer-heads, duskies, and silkies.

  Every year millions of sharks are killed for their fins. Crusaders who want to save sharks have worked hard to come up with a statistic proving that a live shark is worth much more to a community than a dead one. The following statistic may not be reliable, but it makes the point: every shark killed for its fins brings a fisherman and his community somewhere between five and fifty dollars. But every shark that is left alive to become an attraction for diving tourists generates fifty thousand dollars a year in income for the community.

  While that statistic isn't provable, there is an underlying truth to it: tourism is the fastest-growing industry in the world. Tourism can help save ailing, inefficient economies. Since diving is an important part of tourism, and divers want to see sharks, that makes sharks a lot more valuable alive than dead.

  Conclusion: preserve your local sharks and you'll attract tourist dollars. Those dollars ripple out into the rest of the island (or seaside or port or coastline) economy. They support restaurants, hotels, car-rental franchises, shops, video-rental stores, and so on.

  For the most part, intentional diving with sharks is reasonably safe, because it is chaperoned and supervised by experts. Even the many shark-feeding enterprises that are springing up all over the world (especially in the Bahamas) are, as a rule, conducted so that the paying customers are kept safe.

  Shark feeding, however, is increasingly controversial. Scientists worry that behavioral patterns are changed in sharks that become used to being fed by humans. Natural behavior becomes unnatural when it is interfered with. Sharks lose part of their “sharkness.”

  Surfers, abalone divers, chambers of commerce, and seaside merchants are worried about a different possible problem—and a more practical one. If certain sharks learn to associate humans with food, how will they react to humans who don't come bearing food? To counter that concern, operators of shark-feeding programs point out that the sharks conditioned to eat at feeding stations tend to remain in those areas. If you make your living hunting for food and you find a place where food is given to you, why move? The sharks that occasionally maul people in the surf off beaches aren't reacting to conditioning; they're chasing food.

  I can't speak with authority to the scientists’ concern, though it sounds logical and serious. But I am intimately familiar with the more practical problem. I was part of a shark “experiment” long ago. The memory of it, seen with the benefit of hindsight over many years of acquired knowledge and experience, does disturb me.

  Shark feeding as a resort attraction was fairly new in the mid-1970s. Scuba diving itself was still a relatively young and exotic sport. I was asked to do a TV show on Long Island in the Bahamas. A dive master there had conditioned local sharks to assemble at a certain sand hole in a reef at a certain time of day. The sharks expected and accepted food skewered on a spear stuck in the sand. Sometimes they ate directly from his hands.

  The routine called for paying customers to gather in a circle in the sand hole, surrounding the dive master, who would lure the sharks to the food. The sharks would arrive, swooping over and between the divers, and would then fight over the food. After ten or fifteen minutes, the food would be gone and the sharks would leave. The sharks would also eyeball the divers and pass near enough to give them a thrill and a chance to take a good close-up with their underwater cameras.

  Not for us. Not exciting enough. We were pros. We had to go where other divers dared not go. We had to test the limits. So somebody cooked up the idea of measuring the bite dynamics of the sharks. We wanted to measure how many pounds of pressure per square inch a shark—in this case, a variety of bull shark—could exert with its jaws.

  We built a gnathodynamometer—a seventeen-letter word for a bite meter. It was nothing more than a sandwich of two dead fish tied to a slab of pressure-sensitive plastic. The idea was that the “talent”—a photogenic young Ph. D. candidate named Clarisse and I—would hand-feed the sandwich to as many sharks as possible. Then we would measure, from the depth of the tooth marks, the pressure the sharks’ jaws had exerted.

  The first gnathodynamometer was an instant casualty. No one had paused to consider what would happen if two, three, or more sharks went for it at once. Clarisse and I held it out to a single shark. The shark swam between us, opened its mouth, seized the sandwich, and was instantly dive-bombed by three other sharks. Knocked aside, we watched helplessly as the sharks swarmed in a ball of fury, tore the fish to shreds, and swam away with the plastic.

  We tried again, this time while a dive master distracted most of the sharks with their usual food. One shark detached from the group, cruised over the bottom toward us, and lunged upward for the gnathodynamometer. But its tail disturbed so much sand, which billowed in a cloud around us, that it couldn't see where it was going. Instead of biting the sandwich, it grabbed a yellow steel-cased strobe light and gnawed away until it was convinced that the light wasn't appetizing. Then it gave up and swam off.

  It took several days of trial and error for us to get the shots we wanted. But we succeeded at last, without losing any fingers or limbs. My eleven-year-old son, Clayton, had watched the action through a face mask at the surface. When the shooting was over, he asked his mother and me to take him down to see a shark—if any were still around.

  Without thinking, Wendy and I said, “Sure.” Clayton had been diving for three years. He was careful and knowledgeable, and he obeyed instructions. We knew that most of the sharks had gone. We were confident that between us we could shepherd him safely to and from the bottom.

  We checked his gear, refreshed him on all the precautions, and went overboard off the stern. I went first and sank st
raight to the bottom; Clayton came next; Wendy followed.

  We three knelt on the sand and looked around at the empty blue, hoping to see a single shark swimming calmly in the distance.

  We never saw the first shark arrive. It bore down on us from above, passed quickly before us, and began to circle ten, perhaps fifteen, feet away.

  Two more sharks arrived and joined the circle. Wendy and I closed in on Clayton and looked into each other's eyes. We knew at once the terrible mistake we had just made. By jumping into the water and going down into the same sand hole where the feeding ritual took place every day, we had given cues to conditioned animals. And they had responded.

  Three more sharks swam in from the gloom. Other gray shadows began to appear in the distance.

  Soon there were thirteen sharks circling us, expecting a meal but calm … at least for the time being.

  We had no food to give them. We couldn't hold up our end of the bargain.

  How long would it take the first shark to understand that it had been betrayed, that the rules had been broken? How would it react?

  Were they all well fed? Had one or two perhaps not gotten their share during the feeding?

  All I knew for certain was that we had no time to wait for answers. Already a couple of the sharks were showing signs of … not agitation, not excitement … the only word that came to me was impatience.

  One shark shivered visibly; a ripple traveled the length of its hard, sleek, steel gray body. Another began to swim in spurts, speeding up and slowing down.

  I couldn't tell what Clayton was feeling. He knelt motionless, now and then turning his head to watch a particular shark. Mostly he let the parade pass before his eyes. Wendy and I had a hand on each of his arms, as one of us always did in any remotely scary circumstance. We wanted to be sure that he wouldn't, in panic, suddenly rush for the surface, forgetting his training. Then he would risk becoming a victim of any one of several unhappy accidents.

  I looked up at the boat, which was clearly visible some thirty feet directly overhead. Then I made eye contact with Wendy and told her (as best I could) that I had come to a decision and that she should do exactly as I did. She seemed to—and indeed, she did—understand.

  I tapped Clayton to get his attention. He looked up at me, obviously excited, obviously afraid. His eyes, seen through the distortion of mask and water, were the size of extra-large eggs. I made the “okay” sign to him—a circle formed by thumb and forefinger—then touched his mask and mine. I was saying, Watch me, do as I do. He shot me the “okay” sign.

  Together, we three rose from our knees and stood on the sand.

  The sharks noticed our movement. Though they didn't change their pace, they closed ranks just a bit, shrinking the circle.

  Wendy and I faced each other and flanked Clayton. My right hand held her left. With my left hand, I mimed counting down from three to zero. She closed her eyes for a second, then nodded.

  I counted down. At zero we filled our lungs with compressed air, pressed the purge valves on our regulator mouthpieces, and kicked off the bottom.

  A thick, noisy column of bubbles filled the space between us. We shielded Clayton with our bodies as we rose toward the boat. We exhaled slowly, fighting the urge to hurry, staying always beneath the last of our bubbles, to prevent any rogue air bubble from being trapped in some tiny space in our lungs. If that happens, the air bubble can burst free and travel to your heart or brain, where it might kill you.

  My tactic was simple and by no means guaranteed to succeed. In general, sharks don't like bubbles. In general, they stay away from loud, erratic bursts of bubbles. Engineers have built bubble “curtains” in attempts to protect beaches, but they've proven to be unreliable.

  My hope was that by huddling together and blasting bubbles from our regulators, we would look to the sharks like a horrible machine. I hoped we would not even rate a close inspection, let alone an exploratory bite.

  Not once did I look down. But Clayton did, and later he told me that the circle of sharks had broken apart as soon as we left and that individual sharks had begun to follow us upward.

  We broke through the surface, and in a single motion Wendy and I propelled Clayton up onto the swim step. Next Wendy hauled herself onto the little platform. I hung off, prepared to kick at any shark that made a run at her legs.

  One shark had followed us nearly to the surface. Now it circled tightly just below my feet. I couldn't turn away to climb aboard the boat. I had to keep watching it, in case it should lunge for me.

  I hoped that hands would reach down from above and haul me aboard, and Wendy did, in fact, grab the neck of my tank to keep me from drifting away. But she didn't have the strength to lift me and my tank and weights and wet suit clear of the water.

  After perhaps a minute, the shark turned away and swam off, and I shucked my tank and pulled myself into the boat. Wendy and I looked at our son. He had taken off his tank and was shedding his wet suit. He was trembling, and his lips were blue from cold or fear.

  We had no words for each other. We had almost lost … We could have lost … We were both guilty of … How could we have … ?

  “Wow!” Clayton shouted. “I've never been so scared in my life.”

  “I know,” I began. “I—”

  “Can I go again? Can I? Please?” We said no.

  12

  Some Shark Facts and a Story

  Whether you are fascinated by sharks or dinosaurs, you have to admit that sharks have one particular advantage over dinosaurs: they still exist. They're still visible in the wild, still around to be photographed, filmed, and videotaped. The Discovery Channel's Shark Week has become a popular and successful institution. Most broadcast and cable TV channels have access to a huge archive of shark footage. Digital technology nowadays is so good that as soon as discoveries of any kind are made—whether of new species or new behaviors—they're recorded and broadcast to large audiences. The movie Jaws appears on television somewhere in the world nearly every day of the year, and it continues to draw audiences.

  Still, it's possible that some readers of this book don't know much about sharks. So for them, and for their parents and teachers, here is a brief primer on sharks. These are “true facts,” without hype, gore, or sensation:

  + Sharks are fish, but they're not like other fish, because they have no bones. Sharks and the other members of the elasmobranch family of sea creatures, including skates and rays, have skeletons made of cartilage. Cartilage is the same stuff we have in our knees and other joints and in our noses and ears.

  + Sharks are some of the oldest animals on earth. They've been around much longer than man or any other mammal—probably close to four hundred million years. And they haven't changed very much in at least the last thirty million years because they haven't had to: they've always efficiently performed the functions nature programmed them to do: eat, swim, and reproduce.

  + There are hundreds of different kinds of sharks. Nobody knows exactly how many because (1) new species are being discovered all the time, and (2) we have explored very little of the ocean, which covers 70 percent of our planet's surface. We really have no notion of the true nature and variety of all that lives down there.

  + Sharks range over all extremes of size, appearance, and appetite. They include the whale shark, the biggest fish in the sea. Whale sharks can grow to fifty feet long and weigh many tons, but they are completely harmless to people and eat only the tiniest of sea creatures. They also include the cookie-cutter shark, which grows to only about a foot and a half. But cookie-cutter sharks inflict terrible wounds on much bigger animals, like other sharks and dolphins, by using their razor-sharp teeth to remove large chunks of flesh.

  + Sharks include the largest meat-eating fish in the sea—the great white, which has attacked and eaten human beings. Some of the smallest meat eaters are sharks, too, like the so-called cigar shark, which fits in the palm of your hand, and the dwarf shark, which only grows to ten inches long.


  + Sharks include some of the weirdest-looking fish in the sea. The horn shark, which grows to roughly three feet long, has a face that resembles a pig's and flat teeth—not pointed—that it uses to crush the animals it eats. The wobbegong shark is camouflaged to be invisible against a coral reef. It never bothers people … unless people bother it. A friend of mine was bitten by a wobbegong when she put her finger on it to show me how well it was hidden.

  + Sharks are very important to maintaining the balance of nature in the sea. As apex predators, they keep other animals healthy and in check, culling populations of the old, the weak, and the sick.

  + Scientists suspect that sharks perform several other important functions in the sea. But they don't know exactly what those functions are because they've had so little time and money with which to study sharks. Unlike whales, sharks do not breathe air, do not nurse their young, do not communicate with one another in an audible “language,” and do not interrelate with humans at all. Consequently, people can't easily identify with sharks, and there has not been much popular effort to get to know them.

  + Since the first human ventured onto the sea thousands of years ago, sharks have always been perceived as dangerous, sometimes even evil. So there hasn't been much pressure on governments to spend money to study them. Most people believe that the best way to deal with sharks is to stay away from them. Some even believe that the only good shark is a dead shark, a belief that springs from a combination of fear and ignorance.

  + Unfortunately, sharks have turned out to be very vulnerable to destruction, and possibly even extinction, at the hands of humans. Sharks are prized for their fins (for soup), their meat (especially makos), their skins (for leather), their teeth (for jewelry), and their organs and cartilage (for medicines). Sharks have in recent years been so heavily over-fished that some species may never recover.