Shark Page 3

  Every shark attack rapidly clears the water—that is understandable. But when it just as rapidly clears the front page, tragedy becomes morbid fascination. As famed Australian shark attack researcher Victor Coppleson noted, shark attacks are ‘grotesquely spectacular’, and he recognised the impact of grimly descriptive reportage, which he deployed in his account of a 1947 attack at Port Macquarie on the New South Wales coast:

  This 1950s photograph was taken off North Bondi Beach, Australia. In 2009 the first attack at Bondi for 80 years became part of an Australian ‘summer of the shark’ media phenomenon. (From Shark Attack by V.M. Coppleson, Angus & Robertson, 1958)

  The boys were swimming in front of their home at The Hatch, 12 miles from the river’s mouth. Suddenly, Rupert, 13 years, screamed. There was a swirl of water, and he staggered bleeding towards the shore. Almost immediately there was another high-pitched scream from 12-year-old Edwin, who disappeared below the surface. As soon as he reappeared his elder brother Stanley grabbed him and tried to pull him from the grip of a shark. Suddenly he came free. His leg had been taken off at the knee. On the beach young Edwin died in his brother’s arms. In the meantime Rupert had left the water with blood pouring from a gaping wound with the flesh almost completely stripped from above the knee to six inches below the kneecap. Rupert recovered from his severe injuries . . .28

  Individual and community responses to shark attacks take many forms. During the New Jersey panic of 1916, when four people were killed and a fifth badly injured over a ten-day period by what was thought to be a lone juvenile great white shark, men in boats dynamited the waters. In contrast, after Brad Smith’s death in 2004, Western Australian fisheries authorities used a boat and helicopter to try and locate the sharks in order to drive them into deep waters. This was because great white sharks are a protected species—although in this instance the officers were granted authority to kill them—and also because Smith’s brother Stephen reportedly requested that the sharks not be killed in ‘senseless revenge’.29 (The sharks were not seen again.) A witness to the attack at Amity Point ‘ran up and down the beach screaming at people to get out of the water, and was on the mobile to Triple-0 [emergency number] . . . She was pretty hysterical’.30 Eric Nerhus, his goggles crushed and his oxygen regulator knocked out of his mouth, estimated that he spent two minutes in his shark’s mouth, desperately stabbing at it with his abalone knife.

  Not every shark encounter meets with sympathy. In January 2008 The Australian was one of many newspapers to dramatise an incident off the east coast. Its headline, ‘Shark attacks fisherman off Gold Coast’, introduced a vivid lead paragraph in bold print: ‘A shark’s jaws had latched so tightly onto a man’s leg aboard a fishing boat today that its head had to be cut off to free him’. The three-metre shark had bitten the tuna boat fisherman when he accidentally stood on its tail, and he had to be winched into a rescue helicopter in ‘a tricky operation, carried out in three- to five-metre swells . . . the victim was lucky to be alive because the bite narrowly missed major blood vessels and arteries at the back of the knee’.31 Two days later this letter appeared in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper: ‘A man puts a bloody great hook into the mouth of a shark, drags it through the water with every intent of killing it, and hauls it out of the water, probably with an even bigger gaff hook. When the shark has the impertinence to fight back, we have a million news stories about a “shark attack”. I’d call it just deserts.’32

  Practical responses to shark attacks are obvious enough. After the ‘Black December’ of 1957 on South Africa’s Natal coast, when seven Zambezi (bull) shark attacks included five fatalities, and devastated that province’s tourist economy, its authorities formed the Natal Sharks Board and laid over 40 kilometres of nets at 45 beaches.

  The 1945 sinking of the warship USS Indianapolis led to the US Navy embarking on a shark-repellent research program (which ultimately resulted in the establishment of the International Shark Attack File). The cruiser had delivered the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Tinian Island airfield in the Philippine Sea, and was subsequently torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, leaving 900 survivors helpless in the water and undiscovered for four days. Just 316 were rescued. Many had been killed by sharks. According to one survivor: ‘The day wore on and the sharks were around, hundreds of them. You’d hear guys scream, especially late in the afternoon. Seemed like the sharks were the worst late in the afternoon than they were during the day. Then they fed at night too. Everything would be quiet and then you’d hear somebody scream and you knew a shark had got him.’33 As will be described later in this book, the fate of the USS Indianapolis plays a significant role in the movie Jaws.

  Shark repellents have become common. A 2004 patent application lodged with the World Intellectual Property Organization is for an ‘electric field shark repellent wetsuit’ which has ‘an electroactive material integrated into the clothing, at least one electrode . . . the electroactive material is adapted to release electrical impulses into the water . . . to generate an electrical field around the clothing’.34

  A company manufacturing various marine products, and which carries the logo ‘Defence Recognised Supplier—Australian Defence Industry’ and has a ‘Nato stock number’ has trademarked a ‘Shark Shield’, about which its says:

  The Shark Shield . . . generates an electrical field . . . The field is projected from electrodes in the tail of the unit that trail behind the diver. This creates an elliptical field that surrounds the user with a shark safe zone that is up to eight metres in diameter . . . [the field] is detected by the shark through its sensory receptors, known as the Ampullae of Lorenzini, found on the snouts of sharks. Once detected by the shark’s sensors, the field causes muscular spasms that result in the shark being deterred from the area . . . there is no lasting detrimental effect to the shark. The unique and unfamiliar pulsing sensation emitted by the Shark Shield does not replicate that given off by a fish or seal and hence it is not recognized by a shark, as a desirable or attractive stimulus. The initial discomfort increases if the sharks approach the transmitter until it becomes intolerable. The sharks then veer away and usually leave the immediate area.35

  Another company has copyrighted and patented a graphic called ‘Shark Camo’, which it claims is used by thousands of surfers worldwide. It was tested at numerous locations including in the ‘ring of death’ waters of South Africa’s Seal Island. Shark Camo is

  . . . a specially designed sticker that is placed on the underside of surfboards (and other water craft) to repel sharks and help prevent mistaken identity shark attacks. Gives peace of mind while you’re in the water for under 50 bucks. The patented, striped ‘fingerprint’ pattern mimics the colouration of a number of fish which are not prey for sharks. These fish include the remora, pilot fish, sea snake and lion fish. Scientists agree that sharks use vision as their primary sense when within striking distance of potential prey and so this sticker, placed on the underneath of surfboards, helps repel them from executing a mistaken identity or ‘bump and bite’ curiosity attack.36

  For those unconvinced of the efficacy of electrically charged wetsuits or stripy decals, there is always the ‘common sense’ approach. Numerous shark do’s and don’t’s can be inferred from the circumstances of the attacks described above and the testimony of eyewitnesses: don’t swim in murky water or river mouths; don’t swim in certain areas late in the afternoon; don’t swim while bleeding; don’t swim near fishermen or feeding seabirds, or near steep drop-offs where shoal fish feed and in turn are fed upon by sharks; be wary of diving near seal colonies. Local knowledge and experience are especially important. To take but one example, the Iranian rivers researchers deduced that sharks became more prevalent ‘from July to September when freshwater flow was at a minimum and tidal penetration of salt water at its highest’.37

  Some activities are reckless. There was a time when Durban surf fishermen paid surfers to hitch their baits to their bathers, paddle out beyond the breakers and drop the baited hook in
to what was, literally, shark-infested water, due to the presence of a whaling station. Invariably, the fisher would have hooked a decent-sized shark before the surfer had caught a wave back to shore.

  Nowadays surfers, sea-kayakers and divers generally have respect for the unpredictable element they love and its inhabitants. Their advice might be punchy, but it’s practical, as this advice for kayakers demonstrates:

  Bull Sharks are just another reason to: learn to roll and not wet exit in the surf zone; paddle offshore instead of harbours, rivers and estuaries. Remember, no one dies from the loss of an arm or leg. They die from blood loss, exposure and drowning. If you get munched, STOP the bleeding as a priority. Direct pressure, compression bandage or tourniquet. Whatever suits you and your training. Me, I’m using the paddle leash. Tourniquet pressure necrosis is not an issue to me if the limb is missing and I am likely to bleed to death at sea.38

  Just as it would be risky to have a picnic in a paddock occupied by a bull, care should be taken in choosing where and when to enter the water. The power and unpredictability of sharks is undeniable—and, as the next chapter shows, those attributes have in the past engendered great respect.

  2

  THE WAY OF THE SHARK ROADS

  Sharks and Indigenous Societies

  Now, at this time Moroa [creator] still held Lembe the shark between his thumb and forefinger at the base of the tail. Shark was tired of listening to Moroa’s words but the creator had not finished giving his instructions. Moroa had not told Lembe the shark about the day-old bait fish which man would use to lure him to the side of the canoe. The shark did not want to listen so he jumped out of Moroa’s hand and into the sea. Moroa was so angry at the shark who did not want to listen to his warning that he bent and picked up a handful of white sand and threw it at the shark. The sand stuck to his wet skin for the rest of time.1

  Dead sharks vanish. The unique physiology of sharks has left a fossil record that is patchy and inconclusive. This is because cartilage decomposes quickly. Unlike the teleosts, whose external scales and bony internal skeletons are major components of the marine fossil record, shark hard parts such as teeth, spines, calcified vertebral centra and small-to-tiny dermal denticles have had to tell much of the shark story. It is because of this that only recently has the economic—as opposed to the cultural—significance of elasmobranchs to indigenous societies become apparent.

  Pre-industrial coastal societies across the Americas, Africa and the Indo-Pacific were familiar with sharks, skates and rays. They were generally reliable sources of food, while their skins, teeth and vertebrae could be put to a variety of practical and ornamental uses. Many indigenous societies also wove them into the social, cultural, spiritual and political fabrics of their lives. While those ancient traditions are not yet lost entirely, five centuries of European global exploration, conquest and economic and religious domination have either destroyed or greatly marginalised them. This chapter looks at the important role of sharks in indigenous societies from these three perspectives.

  Food

  It is tempting to speculate that the presence of sharks, rays and skates played a significant role in the establishment of coastal civilisations. The social groups who developed the first fixed pre-agricultural settlements chose sites where food, fresh water and shelter were readily obtainable. Favoured coastal locations were protected bays and estuaries—ideal elasmobranch habitats. Culturally complex societies began to develop at such sites, although archaeological studies of faunal remains found in coastal middens show little evidence of elasmobranchs, in comparison with teleosts, shellfish, mammals and birds. Given the skeletal nature of the elasmobranchs, however, this is not surprising. A seminal 2002 study carried out by Californian and Oregon researchers was the first to point out that academic publications ‘focused on the methods of reconstructing the economic significance of elasmobranchs . . . are virtually non-existent’.2

  From about the mid-1970s scientists began in earnest to try to quantify the importance of marine resources to the world’s prehistoric societies. The primary analysis methods of midden sites include species identification, number of individual specimens present, raw weight of remains, and bone-to-meat ratios (meat yield from a particular species). Results showed a minimal presence of elasmobranchs but were, in all likelihood, a reflection of an unintentionally skewed methodology which was mostly reliant on skeletal remains.

  Only six types of [elasmobranch] elements—centra, teeth, dermal denticles, fin ray spines, tail spines, and rostral cartilage—are found in archaeological sites, and some of these are either too small to recover or are not present in all species of elasmobranch. In contrast . . . 26 elements from bony fish [are] commonly encountered in archaeological sites.3

  Despite the scarcity of physical evidence, when the Californian and Oregon researchers began to consider the relative meat yields of the species they could identify, they found that elasmobranchs would have been an important target of prehistoric fisheries. Sharks, skates and rays have a comparatively high ratio of ‘total weight and edible meat weight to the weight of their bones and teeth’.4 A ‘top-ten’ (in descending order) Pacific coast table of species analysed reveals just four teleosts:

  bat ray

  spiny dogfish

  brown smoothhound

  shovelnose guitarfish

  herring (teleost)

  salmon (teleost)

  thornback

  California halibut (teleost)

  angel shark

  white croaker (teleost)5

  It is therefore likely that prehistoric coastal societies would have fully appreciated the nutritional value of elasmobranchs. Indeed, in parts of coastal Australia, traditional Aboriginal clans continue to place a high value on stingrays, and some shark species, as food items.

  Australia’s indigenous peoples arrived in the continent as long as 75 000 years ago and have been described as ‘the world’s largest and most successful group of hunter–gatherers’ and ‘preagriculturalist[s] who had adapted extraordinarily well to life in a variety of habitats ranging from tropical forests, coastal and riverine environments, savannah woodlands, and grasslands to harsh, hot, and very arid deserts’.6 A notable Australian indigenous seafood preparation combines the meat and liver of a stingray. The meat is first roasted or boiled, shredded when cooked and soaked in fresh water, then rinsed in seawater and squeezed dry. This removes any of the residual ammonia from the flesh. The nutritionally valuable liver, cooked or raw depending on local preference, is then kneaded into the shredded meat. The resulting mixture ‘which tastes like succulent buttered crabmeat, is then separated into small round cakes and shared with relatives. This recipe is remarkably consistent throughout societies along the northern coastlines . . . Aboriginal groups separate the sharks and rays from bony fishes based on this unusual cooking technique’.7

  Across the Tasman Sea, sharks once formed an important part of the diet of coastal Māori tribes of New Zealand. A mid-nineteenth-century account of shark fishing, as practised by the northern Te Rarawa tribe at Rangaunu Harbour, northern New Zealand, comes from the diaries of naturalist R.H. Matthews. Over just two nights in January each year (a strictly enforced rule), a fleet of about 50 canoes would take about 3500 dogfish sharks. Once all the sharks had been landed on the shore, the fins and tails were notched for owner identification and processing began:

  The pane (heads) were first removed; then a strip was cut following the curve of the belly. This strip, called the whauaro, was considered a great delicacy. The bodies were hung by the tails to a tarawa (a tall scaffolding), or thrown across a top rail, belly side up. There they remained until thoroughly dried by the sun and wind. The heads and tapiki (entrails) were generally left on the scene of operations. In a day or two the stench would be intolerable. The livers were thrown into a large funnel, made of green flax-leaves with a lining of soft fern-leaves, and suspended in a rough framework of tea-tree. Large stones were then heated and placed on them, and the oil was
caught in calabashes. Surplus livers were put into the stomachs of the sharks, and hung up in the sun until the oil exuded from them . . . The dried sharks were stacked in food-houses, or whatas, just like so much firewood. Narrow strips were cut and cooked on hot stones, and beaten with a paoi (pestle for pounding fern-root) to soften the flesh. Sometimes the cooking was done in a hangi, or steam-oven. In this case the flesh was cut in chunks, and not pounded.8

  Inventive preparation techniques meant that almost all of the shark could be consumed. Drying, dehydrating, bleaching, salting, smoking and boiling rendered shark skin, stomach, cartilage, heart and fins edible. Some of these traditions continue—shark stomach is eaten in the Solomon Islands, Uruguay and some other countries, nikigori (gelatinous skin) is eaten in Japan, ‘fish lips’ (soft skin) in Singapore and Malaysia, and fin cartilage in Asian soups. (The controversial practice of finning, for soup, will be addressed in Chapter 7.) Gulper shark eggs are eaten in the Maldives, and salmon shark heart ‘is prepared as sashimi in Kesennuma, Japan’.9 Some societies considered that those who ate sharks’ flesh would assume the animals’ power and ferocity. Hawaiian chiefs reputedly ate the eyes of man-eating shark species, believing that this enabled them to foretell future events. And not surprisingly sharks were a particularly important food resource for island peoples, especially on the thousands of inhabited Pacific Ocean islands and atolls, many of which had limited natural land food resources such as edible plants or indigenous wildlife.