Sharks: Massive Attacks and No Joy Division
Miles Masterson asks what we should do about shark attacks on surfers?
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Unfortunately, since I began my article on sharks in the latest HUCK, two attacks have gone down in South Africa.
One guy was attacked at a spot called Stilbaai and got away with minor injuries. Whilst surfing on a sunny morning, at a popular break in the area, Cape Town surfer Paul Buckley was attacked by a great white shark. He was launched up out of the ocean, as the shark tried to have him for breakfast. “It attacked me from underneath as the normally do," said Buckley, who found himself thrown onto the shark’s back, and as he went into survival mode, grabbed onto the shark’s tail and prayed for his safety and then shouted at the shark.
Fortunately, though they thrashed about together for a few seconds, Buckley’s quick thinking action and vocal reaction dissuaded the shark from attacking him further and the great white soon swam away. Though he suffered a bad bite on his upper left thigh that required 150 stitches, he will recover fully from his attack. The incident, which was widely reported on in the surf and mainstream media around the world, once again focused attention on the fact that surfers and other ocean users are as vulnerable as ever to being preyed upon by these fearsome creatures...
Then more recently a guy got attacked and killed at a sharky beach near Mossel Bay just up the coast. Gerhard Van Zyl was bitten just below the knee by a shark of unknown species (though most experts agree it was probably a white shark) and bled to death, despite being airlifted to a nearby hospital.
I feel for both these guys and their families of course. Compiling my article I really got under the thick, scaly skin of sharks. I love them, it must be obvious, though they scare the bejeebers out of me. Maybe it is because my ancestors on Achill Island in Eire were basking shark hunters? But I digress. I don’t know if there is going to be a big reaction to these attacks, especially the latter, like for example a recent spate of attacks in Australia resulted in some mags calling for sharks to be culled.
It seems though, folk in my home country are a little more enlightened and a lot more resigned to this kind of thing. After all, both those areas where the attacks took place are sharky as all hell. I’m fairly rational about sharks and surf in some places where there have been attacks, but those two spots are low on my list. I’ve surfed the spot Stilbaai and went in after four waves as I got totally creeped out. The other spot where the guy died I checked once, and got the creeps sitting in my car, so screw that.
I guess if you are going to surf these places you are running a calculated risk - or is that the wrong attitude? I’m not sure if the family of the surfer who tragically died on that day would agree with me but that’s how I feel. It’s an interesting debate, but I reckon if both those guys were really being preyed on by sharks neither of them would have made it back to the beach. Clearly, it’s a case of mistaken identity? Or is it?
I also think it is ironic. I think if sharks were such a problem there would be far more attacks and most experts agree. Heck, I even went out on a shark diving trip in False Bay early in my research for my article and didn’t see any sharks. Well, we saw a fin. This is at the place where you see all the breaching photos and footage in magazines and Discovery channel documentaries. It was actually frustrating but it just goes to show that even where these beasts congregate they can be elusive. Not that I would have swum in the water.
Some nutter big wave mates of mine went tow surfing at a bommie nearby a few days later, and both reckoned they shat themselves for sharks and would never do that again. But I digress again. I’d be interested to see what the Huck blog readers think about sharks and whether we as surfers, divers and other ocean users should be resigned to being attacked or we should do something about it. Nets don’t work (or they do, too well), the POD hasn’t been perfected and there really is no other effective preventative measure. Is culling the answer like some suggest?
It’s an ongoing conundrum, to be sure.
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Sharks: Massive Attacks and No Joy Division (text) by Miles Masterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (6)
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Aren't the surfer's in their domain after all and the shark is simply doing what it is programmed by nature to do?
Obviously, any deaths are tragic and I feel for those affected by it, but to simply slaughter such a magnificent and ecologically important creature demonstrates an immensely ugly level of arrogance and vengance.
you can't go blaming people for trying to keep surfers safe
I'm a surfer but I understand that if I put myself at risk by riding big waves or swimming in shark infested waters it's my choice, and therefore It's my responsibility to deal with the consequences.
I don't have the answers either, all I can suggest is that people need to be well informed about the risks they are taking, and in the end it's your own decision, just don't get upset if you get your arm bitten off!
I think we have fucked up wildlife enough for our own selfish greed, and we all expect that we should be able to do what we want when we want, and that's what's got this planet into the mess that it's in. Sure it would be great to surf every day, in every place, but we can't, and that's what makes it so special when you do.