by Carl Safina
AT THE MOMENT, we’re starting to feel a little too safe. Brad, into a candy bar, says, “You can wear yourself out, waiting for a shark.” Chris turns the hydrophone all the way around, listening intently. There’s only silence and a slight hiss. Chris stands and scans again, saying, “There’s another ray. More turtles.” The dark shapes of turtles are almost constantly in view and keep us alert, cruising like big green taxis. Any glance at the lagoon usually brings the sight of a big bobbing shell or three, or shadows gliding along like undersea angels. The males jostle for females, the females get swept away in long-lasting couplings.
Brad says, “It’s noon. Perhaps we’ve displeased the spirits.”
Brad and Chris explain the traditional Hawaiian concept of guardian spirits called ‘aumakua. ‘Aumakua are spirits of half-human beings—off-spring of a god and a human—who utter counsel through the lips of a medium, usually in the form of an animal like a bird or gecko, whom they possess temporarily. Because ‘aumakua often appear in the shape of sharks, many native Hawaiians feel particularly close to sharks. Each family has their ‘aumakua. A stillborn child is usually the offspring of an ‘aumakua and the woman. If the ‘aumakua finds the remains, it adopts the child, who becomes another ‘aumakua. (This seems a tender way to instill the child with life.) When the mother goes to bathe in the sea, this ‘aumakua, who is her offspring, may come in the form of a shark—only to her—and jump at her breast as if to suckle, letting her know this is her child. Brad and Chris tell of a recently deceased Hawaiian who said his great-grandmother used to walk into the shallows and breast-feed sharks.
‘Aumakua may appear in the form of a shark or other animal, but they themselves have no substance. In the late 1800s, one Hawaiian explained to an interviewer, “The ‘aumakua has no form. It comes in the shape of a wish into the mother.” ‘Aumakua act as counselors to their kin, who honor their divinity. They also give fishermen luck and protection: they may cure disease, or even avenge an enemy. In current-day belief the ‘aumakua concept often takes the form of a special sense of bond or relationship with a particular kind of animal, like sharks or turtles.
Native Hawaiians’ relationships with sharks were complex, ranging from catching them with nooses to worshiping them as half-human spirit-helpers. Shark gods may be kane (male) or wahine (female). Sharks inhabited by the spirits of relatives will never molest you, and in case of trouble at sea will rescue and carry you safely ashore in their jaws. A shark that was once a man might be rainbow-colored, and might put you under his arm and be like a father to you. Inhabiting specific places were particular patron sharks whose name, history, hideaway, and appearance were well known to all who frequented the area. Their care and worship was the responsibility of a hereditary kahu (keeper), a function handed from parent to child. In order that the ‘aumakua may be strong enough to act as helper, it must receive offerings of prayer, food, and drink, often directly into the sea. An ‘aumakua is faithful to its devotee-keeper; the worship and reciprocal service extends to the devotee’s whole family, passing from generation to generation.
That is why there was such an uproar from native Hawaiians when people wanted to kill Tiger Sharks following the attacks in the early 1990s.
Brad explains that the woman killed in 1991 was the wife of a sugar-plantation magnate, and that afterward some native Hawaiians claimed that the shark had attacked because she was a white woman, in retribution for the massacre of several Hawaiians that had occurred at that site over a century earlier. The racial tensions in Hawaii are surprising. They’re some of the worst I’ve experienced anywhere in the States—and that’s saying a lot, considering that the United States has some of the worst racial tension in the developed world.
A soft drizzle begins, and a Sooty Tern lands on Chris’s head. Another lands on mine—as if they’re just sitting out the rain. Despite their nonchalance, it’s utterly unlikely they’ve ever before used a person as a footstool. In their world, a human head is a very rare thing. As we’re playing statue to their pigeon impersonation, putting them on a pedestal, I gingerly hand Brad my water-resistant camera. Chris and I say, “Sooteee,” and the shutter enshrines us as bird-brains.
We watch the lime-green water for signs of a dark shape. Chris. says it can’t be long now. But it’s starting to seem as if there isn’t a shark for miles.
Brad chugs a big mouthful of peanuts straight out of the bottle. Cheeks bulging like a chipmunk, he suddenly stands up, pointing. It sounds like he’s trying to say “Shark.”
It’s a turtle.
Time and tide wait for no one, but the sharks are at their leisure; they’ve got time to kill. We decide to travel along the reef, listening for chirps from the cooler.
The cooler keeps quiet. Chris says, “Suddenly the atoll seems very big. Our shark could be anywhere here. It could be at the pinnacle, it could be at Disappearing Island, down at the Gins, Tern Island, Trig—”
Brad interrupts. “About the only place it can’t be is Shark Island. They tell me they never see sharks there.”
We go back at anchor, practicing the virtue of patience. In its overhead journey the sun becomes less a companion than a circling opponent. The tops of Brad’s thighs are getting red in the sun. Chris now has a blue windbreaker spread over his legs. I’ve worn my rain jacket this whole sizzling day, to keep the sun off my arms. In an all-day affair here, the sun kisses with hot lips. Even for a Mediterranean olive like myself, the sunshine here can be brutal. Despite the sunblock, my arms have turned mahogany-toned, and today my legs are getting burned. I tuck my knees up under my loose jacket.
While the sun burns upon us at this spot, shower curtains are slithering in the distant sky, the clouds trailing rain like jellyfish trail their tentacles. Soon dark streaks of rain envelops us, blotting out the horizon. The squall’s gusting wind and rain motivate the island’s young albatrosses into a burst of activity. They revel in weather we usually revile. All along the berm you can see them flapping their big dark wings. Today a lot more of the huge chicks are down on the beach. One of them gets up in the air repeatedly. On each flapping leap it is spending longer in the air, getting more lift, more hang time in the wind. So fast is it learning that we’re actually watching it getting better and better. Another albatross gets up and a gust of wind blows it over backward. It thrashes upside down in the sand for a good minute, wings splayed, unable to right itself. It sprays sand around until finally it rolls over. Almost immediately it jumps up into the air again.
The National Geographic Television crew arrives at a little past noon. With them is Shiway, who is using her day off in hopes of seeing a Tiger Shark. Bill Mills gets into our boat with his camera gear. Unfortunately, so does the basket of all-too-familiar bird carcasses, with which they are only too happy to part.
“Couldn’t you get anything that’s slightly less dead?”
“We looked; couldn’t find any.”
The smell from dead albatrosses that have been in the sun for days overtakes our boat. The stench is truly sickening. They’re unbelievably putrid. But putrefaction in itself is interesting; the question is, Why do bacteria putrefy a carcass instead of just eating it up without ruining it first? It might be the bacteria’s adaptation, whereby bacteria lay claim to the whole thing so other animals don’t devour it—and them. Alternative hypothesis: the smell of bacteria-occupied meat is something we perceive as revolting so we won’t eat it; it’s our own adaptation for avoiding eating something containing potentially dangerous microbes.
Counteracting the stink, a rainbow emerges, growing vivid across the sky. One sense recoils, the other delights. Could any possible sky on any possible planet under any other heaven ever feel more like home? Could any hell smell as bad? Brad puts the bird basket over the side, which helps.
Soon two smallish Gray Reef Sharks, about four and a half feet long, come darting around the basket.
Shiway puts on her mask and leans over the side of the boat with just her head in the water. She ha
s a little waterproof camera.
Chris calls over, saying, “You can slip into the water. It’s O.K.; they won’t bother you.”
Shiway is reluctant.
Chris says again, “Go ahead and get some pictures; they won’t hurt you.” She leans very far over, until her feet are way up in the air, but she can’t bring herself to take that final plunge.
Brad slides over the side of our boat wearing a mask. He begins following the sharks as they swim between our boats.
I too slip into the water. Following our example, Shiway enters the sea. The two Gray Reef Sharks are orbiting below, staying near the bottom. We swim above them, admiring their grace and glide. We know we have nothing to fear—probably.
Chris calls, “Don’t pester them too much. Watch out for posturing. If you see the pectoral fins drop, the back arch, and they start swimming in exaggerated S-curves, they’re saying you’re too close. Then you’ve got about five seconds to back off. That happened to a friend of ours. One bite and a chunk of his forearm was missing.”
Brad comes back into the boat about three minutes later.
Chris says, “Did they display at all?”
Brad says, “One of them started to drop its fins and turn on its side until I stopped following it.”
Greg calls, “Were you harassing those poor sharks?”
When one shark approaches, Shiway huddles next to the boat. I can hear her giggling nervously through her snorkel. Chris, grinning, says, “That’s something she’ll write home about.”
AFTER ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES the Gray Reef Sharks have vanished. Chris, rolling up his jacket under his head, reclines on the rear bench. Birget calls, “We could shoot a sequence showing the boredom.”
Intending to doze for a minute in the bottom of the boat, I fall into the kind of dense sleep from which you awake with no sense of how much time has elapsed. I wake because I hear Brad say, “Here she comes.” A Gray Reefer is back around the boat and we watch it awhile.
Then very suddenly the dark shape of a big Tiger Shark appears about fifty yards off our stern. How could such a large, dangerous animal sneak up on all of us so closely? Its capacity for stealth alone makes it dangerous. The receiver’s silence informs us that this is a new animal.
Chris says, “Wow—that’s a big one.”
It looks twelve feet. Our mingled tingles of fear, riveted attention, and awed curiosity of large animals can hardly have changed much since before the dawn of human time.
Brad puts a transmitter into a bird and floats it out about fifty yards. Everyone watches expectantly. Shiway, excited, has her little camera ready.
Silent as a cloud shadow, the shark makes one pass about twenty feet behind the bird on the line, then circles out about a hundred yards against the light green flats. It comes with unbelievable slowness, yet inexorably, it does come. The Tiger takes fully five minutes to work its way back up toward the bait. About ten yards behind the bird it turns, slowly going on another wide foray. Even though the underwater visibility is only about twenty-five feet for us, the shark seems somehow to know exactly where the quietly bobbing carcass is from distances of one hundred yards or so. It approaches the tethered bait in unerring straight lines. Again it comes, then turns away. Like a slow-motion dream, the Tiger seems almost to be drifting along, taking minutes to complete each circle.
Chris says, “Most people think Tiger Sharks are always mean and very aggressive. But they’re usually quite shy.”
This one certainly seems so. It has not come near the boat, hasn’t attempted to bite the bait. The closest it comes on the next pass is about thirty yards behind the bait.
On the next approach the somnambulant Tiger comes straight up behind the carcass. Its fin shears the surface and the big square head emerges. And that mouth opens.
Brad pulls the bird. The idea is to draw the shy shark close enough for Bill to get some underwater footage. But it seems reluctant to come nearer. Rather than follow the bird it swings out about forty yards, taking more minutes to come around for another pass, then circles out again.
The waiting is excruciating.
Chris says, “If she comes back, we probably have one last chance for giving her the transmitter.”
Approaching at the speed of a drifting log, the shark comes back and bites down firmly on the dead albatross. It shakes its head once, throwing white water. It releases the bird. The surface of the water is now speckled with feathers. Chris says, “She shouldn’t be this finicky. Something’s bothering her. She’s disturbed.”
I point out that our bait is rotten.
Now another big shark approaches. Our receiver informs us that this is Shark One, newly arrived. Chris observes, “She’s where she was yesterday at this same time.” The chirping on the machine intensifies, like the ticking of Captain Hook’s clock-eating crocodile. Shark One also shadows the bait and then turns off.
Another large nontransmittered shark appears in the lagoon, headed very slowly in our direction in a zigzagging course.
Chris says enthusiastically, “This is an important finding. It shows that this area is used repeatedly and routinely, and that Tiger Sharks’ activity space can be shared, rather than exclusively defended.”
Shared, yes; but we sense competition. The last-arrived Tiger takes the bait, swallowing the transmitter. We begin following this shark along the reef. For a while, Shark One joins it, and both sharks move into very shallow water on the north end of the island. With bellies brushing the bottom and fins out into the air, they’re investigating a dead turtle on the beach. When Shark One leaves, Shark Two continues prowling the shoreline. She catches the scent of a dead bird that is rolling in the wash, being pushed up on the sand by the lapping waves. Our big shark can’t get in shallow enough to make the grab. As she circles back out into deeper water and goes out of sight we continue following the chirps from the transmitter.
Chris, fascinated with the sharks’ activities, says, “A lot of people think sharks are stupid. They’re not stupid.”
Brad winks. “Don’t believe him.”
Chris persists. “Sharks are like people. They go to enormous lengths to get something they want, and if they find it but can’t get it, they keep searching for what they need.” He pauses a moment and adds, “It’s a shame people don’t understand that we’re not so different from other animals.”
I wonder about the similarity between sharks and us. We name things based on differences, and sometimes similarities go unseen. There is a bird in the stomach of the shark we are following. Soon, the molecules that miraculously made a bird will recombine as shark muscle that will hunt birds. So what is an individual? Who are we? What are we? At times the everyday incomprehensibility of it seems utterly dumbfounding. Embedded in mystery within miracle, how is it that daily life ever seems short of sheer magic?
The native Hawaiians certainly have felt close to sharks. I wonder if, in their veneration of sharks as guardians, they saw things in them we’re missing—and vice versa; in our fascination with sharks as animals, we certainly see things that ancients overlooked. But how similar can humans and sharks be in our experience of the world? With no parental care, no bonding, their emotional lives must differ considerably. Do sharks feel love or compassion? Almost certainly not. But consider the range of loves people have. We use the same word, love, to say “I love my child”—an emotion sharks can’t feel—and to say “I love food”—an emotion sharks almost certainly share in the sheer physical satisfaction of eating. A strange and confused concept we have of love, using one word to cover such a multitude of needs, wants, desires, indulgences, preferences, pleasures, passions, compassions, and ideals. You’d expect we’d have at least as many words for love as Eskimos supposedly have for snow. But we don’t. So while there is a lot that sharks are missing about love, it seems that perhaps people have a long way to go yet, too.
Often when confronted with otherness, we assign a name and assume that’s all we need to know; we make our summary jud
gment and apply this typecast to a whole race of beings. And in doing so we overlook almost everything there is. Perhaps if we instead look further and deeper, and be patient, the world will begin revealing itself, at a rate matching our openness and willingness to receive.
In this contemplative tone, we the people follow our thoughts, while letting the beeps from the unseen entity called “shark”—whatever that truly means—take us where they lead. Are sharks, as Chris says, “like people”? We are here because we are curious about these sharks. For Chris to be right, sharks would have to be curious about us.
Suddenly the signal cuts out. Then as unexpectedly, the signal comes in so strong that Chris can’t determine the direction it’s coming from. He says, “Wow, this shark must be very close.”
I’m sitting on the cooler facing the rear of the boat when a huge dark shadow comes up almost to the engine, moving quickly and seeming agitated. It abruptly veers off, making a deep boil on the surface. Brad says, “Whoooa! I’ve never seen one do that before!” The sea’s disguise conveys a perfect ability to startle; to ambush with delight or amazement or terror.
Suddenly there’s a big square snout traveling just behind the engine’s prop wash. And a big fin following us.
The trackers have become the tracked.
HOME AMONG NOMADS
SOON AFTER SUNDOWN, when only the brightest stars have come onstage, the first Green Turtle appears in the surf wash. In Hawaiian she is called Honu. She moves in the solemn slowness of her own time. She has been doing this for 150 million years.
It seems fitting that someone so old should now claim her piece of the future. But she appears reluctant to leave home, even for a few hours. A female Green Turtle will swim the seas for twenty-five years before her first breeding. How alien and laborious it must feel, after all that duration and endurance, to emerge as never before onto dry land, and experience for the first time the weight of your own body, and struggle up the beach, where every movement is full of friction and heaviness and pressure, these things you’ve never felt before. Even an experienced turtle remains in the sea for several years between nesting attempts. Our Honu is hesitating to make that momentous transition from the fluid float of water to the stranding alienation of land. She turns away, and the waves cover her tracks in the sea.
