Face to face with great white shark

IN An Enemy of the People, a village doctor discovers that the waters of the health spa are contaminated.

If he goes public, the tourist trade will be ruined. If he doesn’t, people may die.

In Stephen Spielberg’s 1975 reworking of the Ibsen theme, a great white shark threatens a seaside resort. The fish in the Jaws film was made of rubber; great whites are no film-stars and stunt men wouldn’t swim with them but is the ferocious maneater as bad as is made out?

Last week I had an encounter, up close and personal, with the great beast, from the safety of a cage in the cold Antarctic waters which bathe the southern tip of Africa.

Dyer Island is a few kilometres off Danger Point where, in February 1854, HMS Birkenhead struck a barely visible rock and sank. The soldiers, famously, stood back while women and children embarked in the few lifeboats; the Birkenhead Drill would become famous with the Titanic disaster 58 years later. The death toll that day at Danger Point was 445. Many of the victims, it is said, were eaten by sharks.

Cold waters are oxygen-rich and phyto-plankton thrives, attracting fish on which seals and jackass penguins feed. These, in turn, are eaten by great whites. The colonies at Dyer and its sister island hold 50,000 to 70,000 seals and nearby Shark Alley, it is claimed, has more big sharks than anywhere.

Conditions last week were not ideal; it’s winter right now in South Africa. The half-decker left for the Alley on a cold overcast morning with a breeze and a steady swell; people were seasick. With anchor dropped in the channel between huge kelp forests, the shark-cage was slung out and lowered into the water. A smelly mixture of fish offal and anchovy oil was poured into the sea and the head of a large tuna, tied to a rope, drifted downwind of the boat.

We struggled into wet suits, donned our masks and climbed into the five-man cage. The bubbles from aqua- lungs discourage sharks, so snorkels are preferred. It took about half an hour for the first giant to appear; it passed in front of the cage and departed. Sharks, I was told, have individual personalities. Of the five which approached during the three-hour session, only one stayed around, swimming repeatedly up to the bars, inspecting us head-on and passing close enough to touch. There was no sense that it wanted to attack us. Criticism that shark-diving makes dangerous predators associate people with food appears unfounded. The great whites tore at the tuna head but didn’t eat it.

According to the marine biologist on board, they are motivated by curiosity not hunger. Nor do the same individuals return day after day. These are migrant fish; one was found 3,800km away two months after being tagged. Sharks arrive at Dyer, eat a seal pup or two, enough to sustain them for weeks, and move on. It’s unlikely that the individuals we encountered will see a shark cage again.

As Peter Mooney remarked on RTÉ’s Mooney Show, the waters of Shark Alley are colder than those around Ireland, so great whites could visit our waters. Should we be concerned? They are in the Bay of Biscay. The French name ‘requin’ derives from ‘requiem’ but great whites rarely attack people. Patrice Héraud of the Biarritz Aquarium, says there are about 50 attacks globally each year, of which six, on average, are fatal. However, the number of people electrocuted by their toasters exceeds 700. More than 1,200 die from bee and wasp stings.

A quarter of a million sharks are slaughtered each day. Most belong to smaller species, caught on lines or in nets. Their fins are cut off to make soup. Spielberg’s film, seen by tens of millions of people all over the world, did immense damage.

The resulting mass psychosis spawned a shark massacre. Nets, off beaches, kill great whites. Teeth and jawbones are sold to tourists.

Seeing great whites from a cage is an exhilarating experience which changes heart and mind.