Below is an excerpt from my creative nonfiction folio, written last year as part of my Master’s degree.
Whenever I’m swimming out of my depth and tread water for a moment, I’m aware of my legs dangling down as potential bait for a phantom predator.
I’m a child of the ‘80s, born a few years after JAWS’s theatrical release but I clearly remember watching it on TV when I was about 10 years old. The regular interruption of ad breaks did not detract from the trauma of viewing all the grisly death scenes with the screams, the thrashing, and the crimson water. But the scariest part of JAWS for me wasn’t the (mechanical) shark, it was hearing the threatening theme music and knowing it was the cue for someone’s imminent death.
Horrors witnessed in childhood, even manufactured ones, stay with you. I hear that music in the sea and even in the damn pool, sometimes. The movie’s ominous tagline, ‘You’ll never go in the water again’, haunts me too.
In a magazine piece he wrote for Harper’s Weekly, the late American writer David Foster Wallace confessed his disturbing obsession with shark stories. I can certainly relate to his perception of the ocean as seemingly endless and full of slow-motion menace:
I’ve always felt the intuition of the sea as a primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling, tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls.
For better or worse, sharks are considered to be ‘charismatic megafauna’. They’re like an animal celebrity, famous in every household as the big fish with pointed teeth and a dorsal fin that, if you see it approaching you in the water, might be the end of your life story. Sometimes they’re comical figures in pop culture, such as Bruce in Finding Nemo who has turned vegetarian but really struggles with that life choice. But mostly, they’re menacing – especially the ones we read about in media ‘attack’ reports.
But is my shark paranoia in the water justified? Am I really the centre of every shark’s attention? I googled ‘shark attacks Wellington’ for some answers and discovered the only fatal shark attack recorded in Wellington was on January 22, 1852. Johnny Balmer was a 19-year-old musician in the 65th Regiment and his band had performed that morning as part of Wellington Anniversary celebrations. It was a hot day and many people were swimming at Oriental Bay, but Johnny swam out further than everyone else. A man in a boat witnessed the attack by a 4.5 metre long shark. He rowed across to Johnny and pulled him out, but it was too late; Johnny died of his injuries on the way back to shore. It was suspected that two whaling ships in the harbour had attracted the shark with their smelly offal offloads. The next day, the Independent described it as a “melancholly accident” [sic]. It was the first recorded shark attack in New Zealand.
More than 170 years after Johnny’s death I contacted Melissa Marquez, a shark biologist who lives in Florida. A few years ago Melissa was studying marine biology in Wellington, so I asked her which sharks frequent the coastlines and what advice she had for people like me, who hear the JAWS theme when they swim.
Melissa acknowledged my fears, which I found comforting and validating. “You have every right to be scared – it's a scary possible scenario! All I can do is try to make you a bit more comfortable with my knowledge and some stats.”
She then told me there are 66 types of sharks (mangō, in Māori) found in New Zealand waters, ranging in size from the tiny pygmy shark (27cm) to basking and whale sharks (10m+). Between 1852 and 2020 there were 15 fatal shark attacks in New Zealand, according to the the Department of Conservation.
Rig sharks are a popular one to spot around Wellington in the summer. I haven’t yet encountered a rig shark, but I’ve seen photos of them at Oriental Bay. Also known as dogfish or lemonfish, they’re small and narrow with flattened teeth, circling in the shallows to find crabs. They don’t normally attack people and their bites wouldn’t do much damage anyway, but it’s still not a good idea to provoke them.
I did once get close to a shark, about 20 years ago while I was on holiday in Fiji. It was a reef shark, about a metre long, and as I snorkelled on the surface of that perfectly clear turquoise water, so different from Wellington’s choppy grey, I spotted it below me, circling among the rocks and small fish and coral close to the sea floor. It wasn’t looking at me, and if it had seen me it wasn’t interested. Still, I turned 180° and swam straight back to shore. Every few seconds I turned my head, certain its pointed face would be inches from mine, but it wasn’t.
Overall, the chances of being bitten by a shark (worldwide) are very low – one in 3.7 million, according to National Geographic – but Melissa gave me a few tips to reduce my odds even further: swim with a buddy in case someone needs to raise the alarm, don’t swim near people who are fishing, and always follow beach signs and lifeguard instructions.
DOC has described the number of “interactions” between people and sharks as increasing in particular areas, such as Bay of Plenty, but it’s not known yet whether this is because of a rising numbers of sharks or if something else, such as climate change, is causing changing patterns of behaviour – perhaps warmer waters are widening sharks’ habitats. The official advice is: if you don’t know what you’re looking at when you’re in the water, or if you do see a shark, get out quietly and calmly.
But what if we flipped the coin from how sharks treat us, to how we treat sharks? While listening to an episode of DOC’s Sounds of Science podcast with shark expert Clinton Duffy, I learned that 100 million sharks are caught annually by fisheries around the world. Sharks are also threatened by habitat destruction. The basking shark, which is the world’s second largest shark, and the great white, which inspired our friend JAWS, are both classified as endangered in New Zealand. They are protected species.
Steven Spielberg, who directed JAWS, admitted in a 2022 episode of Desert Island Discs that he felt very guilty that the film (and book) had resulted in so much loathing and persecution of sharks.
My perspective is slowly changing. Humans are the predators, not the sharks.
On the DOC podcast, Clinton Duffy said something that intrigued me further: “The more you find out about sharks, the less of a monster [they become] and the less mystifying they are. They’re absolutely beautiful animals.”
I may never consider a shark to be “beautiful”, but my fist-clenching terror has abated somewhat. Sharks still cross my mind sometimes when I’m swimming, but the JAWS tagline was wrong: I get back in the water, every time.
I feel the same fear. I sympathise. But those stats are amazingly reassuring.
I swam yesterday down from our house where in January, a chap was bitten by a Port Jackson shark in water that wasn't that deep, but he was perhaps unwise.
We had seriously stirred up water that week from a big swell. The PJ sharks feed on the stingrays and skates along the beach and it is assumed that this chap swam in the unclear water and stepped on a juvenile shark who was scouting the shallows for rays. It arched back in defence when he trod down and he ended up with some pretty nasty teethmarks through his ankle and had to go to hospital.
But when I swam, it was as clear as glass and not a sign of ray, skate or shark.
One picks one's times and I didn't tempt fate.
PS: the water has chilled quite a lot in the last two weeks...