What I think about when I think about sharks

I was speaking to a mate a while back about Murakami’s What I talk about when I talk about running and how it had a big impact on him when he first read it. And when he revisited it more recently, it fell a bit flat and didn’t spark the same flames as last time. But it got me thinking and so a new series is born.

I’ve been surfing since I was thirteen. Until I got my probationary license, I had to rely on the generosity of others to drive me from Melbourne down the coast, which at the time took closer to three hours than two. Some years, I only surfed two or three times. In a whole year. It was agony. Since then, all sorts of new bypasses and highways dragged Melbourne much closer to the coasts east and west. Better yet, I dragged myself closer to the coast (and 19 hours north) so now I sometimes surf two or three times a day.

In twenty years of surfing, I’ve seen a shark three times. Not the same one, I don’t think. Probably not. The first time was in Mexico. The second in South Australia while checking the surf from the safety of land (we decided not to surf, the wind was a bit too offshore…), and one closer to home. I was camping on the beach in front of a dreamy left-hand pointbreak in Mexico’s Michocán state. I was used to getting up super early for waves and crowds were basically non-existent so I was the only one in the water just after first light. The water was so calm it looked oily. A set approached and I paddled slowly to adjust my position. A violent thrash, ten metres to my right snapped my neck. Another thrash. A single heartbeat. I saw the huge raking tail first, then the dorsal fin.

Rising and bursting urgently, a ‘fuck’ popped out of me like a fart in the bath. Adrenaline thumped in my ears. I sat up and spun around to paddle for the first wave of the set, and away from the shark. I got the wave and missed the shark. When I kicked out of the wave, I saw a shape in the water. Another surfer. I’m bad with maths but even I knew my chances of survival doubled, maybe more if I was the faster paddler.

The tail and fin were too close together for the shark to be a people eater but it was enough to shiver my timbers. It was more of a people nibbler. Probably a little reef shark I reasoned and kept surfing. People love saying you’re more likely to be hit by a car or struck by lightning (much more likely to die of skin cancer too) than be attacked by a shark. And they’re right. Similarly, the likelihood a shark has seen us in the ocean and left us alone is far greater than our fear of being attacked by one. And yes, I’m fully aware of how scared of sharks we are. Remember, there are millions of hungry sharks chasing food close to shore where the waves are good and I’m still bad at maths but come on. Crunch the numbers.

The way sharks move through the water elicits the same puckering fear response as a running spider. Spiders have two speeds – erratic, nightmarish running and sinister creeping. In the course of a recent unusually hyperactive spell of huntsman spider catch and release, I noticed something curious. Their erratic run eventually gives way to the sinister creeping. It’s almost as if they’re afraid that a giant of unimaginable proportions is chasing them. No such fear with sharks. And while both are benign beasts, they must know the effect their movement has on us. Sharks move with such effortless power, one laconic flick of their tail and they shoot through the water like it’s not there.

I’d been surfing for about half an hour late in the afternoon on a grey day in big lumpy waves with a mate. We were both paddling back out after catching waves as another set approached. A wave reared up twenty meters away and clear as an Imax movie, a flash of colour popped into the face of the wave, careening towards us so fast it looked unreal. Just as it was about to burst out the front of the wave into the brown cloudy water around us, it took a left and disappeared in a wink.

‘Shark!’ We sat up on our boards and looked back at shore. It was too far away to be of any comfort. Just a thin line of trees shrinking behind the backs of waves.

‘Yeah, only a little one though.’

‘True. Should be fine.’

‘Maybe. How fast was that thing.’

‘Pfffff.’

It was maybe five foot long, but a lot of that was tail, and I’ve never seen any living thing move faster. It moved so fast through the water it looked like bad CGI, it blurred, which made me think for the first time about the damage a shark could do just by running into you. Forget the chompy teeth, just blunt force trauma. Worry about the teeth later. Did you know their skin’s sharp too? Evolution perfection. Well, not sharp – abrasive. So if your fear of sharks has been based solely on getting chomped, consider having your legs broken, your skin flensed or at least sand-papered off, and then being chomped.

Give a jump start and a shriek if your fear of sharks is built on a foundation of JAWS. Keep screaming if it’s been fed by shark stories here and there you can’t seem to forget and haunting video footage, tense orchestral accompaniment and terrifying facts presented calmly by Attenborough. So that when we go swimming, errant shadows and overactive imaginations stoke our fear and, as everyone knows, they can smell that like a drop of blood in an Olympic swimming pool. But there’s one last revelation I find more chilling. 

JAWS lied to you. Sharks are rarely if ever accompanied by a full-scale orchestra. Sharks are silent. Like, even if you happened to be looking in the direction a shark was approaching you, and adrenalin wasn’t thumping in your ears like orchestra drums, it would be silent. It sounds obvious but every other month, I remember and the consequences send a ripple through me. Even if its dorsal fin breaches the surface, and it usually doesn’t when it’s checking things out, it’s silent. Also, did you know humans have a field of view of about 135 degrees? That leaves 225 degrees behind you for sharks to silently approach. 

So, what do I expect you to do with this information? A burden shared in a burden halved, right? Or does it just multiply the burden? Either way, next time you’re in the sea, swimming, surfing, even standing in the shallows, and the shark fear starts rising, remember these three things:

1. Sharks are silent so you may as well sing a song to drown out the fear

2. For every shark you’ve seen, ten saw you and swam away

3. Everyone dies, it’s just a matter of when. So you may as well enjoy your swim, it may be your last.

Sometimes, that is what I think about when I think about sharks.