Shark Attack: and why you probably shouldn’t care

A recent shark attack in the Rockaways not far from where we teach you how to sail drives the point home, close to home.

***IN THAT PIC:*** One video segueing to another from Scott Fairchild’s feed on Insta. That/those are great white sharks in California.

Last Monday evening at 6pm, a woman went in the water off Beach 59th Street in Far Rockaway. She was close to shore, but alone. She screamed, and lifeguards went to help. She’d been bitten by a shark and had a serious wound to her thigh. The New York Post took the sensational route, of course, and also published a lame account of the attack where someone claimed the woman lost approximately 20 pounds of flesh. That would have been her entire thigh and she would have been dead before she could have received treatment. Desapite that being debunked they have not corrected it. They also published close ups of the woman being treated on the beach. Not gory; shows some blood but mostly her being treated and also good samaritans holding her head and hand. Good shot from that perspective, but won’t reprint it here. Go find if you must.

She was brought ashore and a tourniquet was applied. She wound up in Jamaica hospital in serious but stable condition and was expected to not just survive but make a full recovery.

But, that was close! Had she been further out, and/or lifeguards weren’t nearby, she would have had a high risk of dying from loss of blood and shock.

“Yes, but…”

A large, perhaps overwhelming majority, of shark attacks are survived. Most bites are from small sharks and make minor injuries.

It’s scary nonetheless. It was a serious attack. And, there have been a rash of shark bites and all kinds of sightings in Long Island waters in the past year or so. Numbers of sharks seem to be on the rise.

“Yes, but…“

Same diff. Florida is historically the shark attack capital of the world, with a proportionally very large percentage of attacks. Vast majority are minor bites by small sharks feeding on fish.

But but… I don’t WANNA get bit by a shark!

“Yes, but…“

No one does. But the odds against it are insanely in your favor. Compare the number of attacks/bites documented each year to the incalculable number of times people go in the water with the sharks. Total documented attacks? Hovers around 100. (Undocumented attacks probably tip up the number incrementally, but there’s no reason to suspect multiplication is involved).

***IN THAT CLIP:*** surfer paddling directly over a great white shark in Cali.

Also: think about when to get in the water, and when not to, etc…

Don’t swim at night. Dumb and Dumber didn’t even do that.
Don’t swim at dawn or dusk. At least as bad.
Don’t swim in the mid to late afternoon. This is a trigger time for predatory fish to feed, in my lifelong experience as an angler, and it happens to be when many attacks happen (probably more because more people enter the water, but still…)
Don’t swim alone in waters where sharks might be. Okay; they might be ANYWHERE. So, don’t swim alone where sharks have been seen recently, or where there’s any history of attacks and/or dangerous species being seen.
Don’t swim out further than others.
Don’t wear yellow. Divers call it “yum yum yellow.” High-contrast visual trigger.
Don’t swim when small fish are being chased by birds or other fish, or where where gamefish like tuna have been coming close to shore, even if they’re not there when you go in.
Don’t swim when there’s any chance you have a cut of any size that could bleed, or if you’re menstruating.
Don’t swim when the water’s particularly murky.
Don’t splash around frantically. If snorkeling, no need to smash your fins down on the surface with each kick. Super inefficient anyway; keep fins in water to push water!

Can you get through your natural life without being bitten by a shark if you break some or all of these rules? Yes! You probably won’t get attacked if you break them all.

“Yes, but…“

She did. She swam alone, and shortly before dusk. Don’t know if any of the other rules applied. But, it’s the first documented attack in NYC waters since at least the 1950’s. And, the near-ish attacks on Long Island were all minor.

IN THAT PIC: another video montage from Fairchild. Swimmer and surfer basically on top of great white sharks.

I consider the fear of attack to be both irrational and rational. I’ve been fascinated by sharks and shark attacks since I was a boy. My dad took me to the South Street Seaport once and, of course, no visit anywhere ends without a stop at the gift shop. I took home a book: Shark: Unpredictable Killer of the Sea, by Thomas Helm. Lost the original but replaced it on Amazon…

Great book. One man’s perspective on sharks, shark fishing, and attacks, with some personal anecdotes. One of them both reinforces and destroys the subtitle. He was stationed in the Pacific during WWII. Somewhere there was a lagoon encapsulated by a fringing reef. His unit was tasked with disposing of outdated grenades. They decided to fish with them. They went out in a rubber raft and started tossing grenades in to stun fish.

BOOM. Up floated many dead fish. BOOM. Again. he-he.

Eventually, sharks came to pick up the scraps. So, why not blow up the sharks? They started tying grenades to fish, pulling the pin, and tossing them so if a shark went to grab it, head blown off. Nasty; wrong. Dumb. But, the author knew it by the time of writing long after and was admitting, not bragging.

Then, they started tossing the fish in immediately after pulling the pin. One shark took the bait and swam toward the raft. Ooopsieee…..

BOOOOOOMMMMM!

Raft flipped and tossed them all in the water – with that much more fish blood in the water.

They all swam back to shore unscathed. So, the sharks didn’t see them as potential prey, despite what must have been some frantic flopping about and plenty of blood in the water already. Should have been… shark bait.

“Yes, but…“ No bites.

Unpredictable. Except, maybe, they’re not unpredictable, indiscriminate killers? Maybe they bite when they’ve rarely mistaken us for normal prey, or in more rare cases, when they’re simply desperate to feed or otherwise thrown off their games?

My own experiences with sharks…

Seen a few while snorkeling. First was in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef. White tip reef shark. It was lying on the bottom breathing from the current without swimming. The snorkeling guide swam down toward it to spook it into moving. It grudgingly did so, and lazily went in a great circle while no one but I saw it plop down in the same exact spot to resume minding its own biz. Everyone else had swum away. My treat.
Another time, found a decent sized lemon shark minding its own biz in the Tobago Cays of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Video’d it with underwater camera (point n shoot in a good case). It spooked and swam further away quickly, then resumed a lazy swim. I got good zoomed in footage. It’s up on our YouTube right now! What I DIDN’T see at the time was the other shark that was what spooked the lemon. THAT scared me! Different species. Never found out what.
Saw others snorkeling in the BVI. One time, a guy was sitting on the bottom minding its own business. Wasn’t a nurse shark; didn’t match another species I could think of. Started approaching to ID it. Then, I thought better and went away.
On our most recent BVI trip in spring of 2023, clients were snorkeling off the boat in an anchorage. They got my attention: wanted a ride back in the dinghy. They’d seen a relatively large shark and didn’t want to fool around and find out. At least one of them didn’t. The other, when advised and asked, wanted to stay in and try to see it. Only problem is it had seemingly spooked when the first guy saw it and disappeared. How large? Around the size of the dinghy. 10-11 feet.

Drones are the new rage, and they reveal how often we’re actually swimming or surfing with dangerous sharks swimming amongst us. Enter Scott Fairchild, whose Insta account is so revealing. And, they’re being used to look for sharks by beach and park patrols to make swimming even safer.

And now for a few words and images from someone other than me!

Great montage in Scott Fairchild’s Instagram account…

https://www.instagram.com/p/CsbfJ5Pucnf/

Article in NY Times about the Rockaway attack with good perspective and info about drone patrols…

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/nyregion/rockaway-beach-shark-bite.html

“Cape Shark! Or, you’re gonna need a bigger drone…”

More about the spate of attacks at Cape Cod and other New England spots over the last decade. No, no sailing or cruising or yacht or such involved here. It’s just something we predicted awhile ago.

A student of ours from quite awhile ago, Tyler Hicks, did the still photography for the article we link to here, coincidentally. We hope he’s kept up with his sailing!

Why am I writing about shark attacks on a Sailing Club/School site? Because I can. This is our Blog Rant section and I do what I want. But, there’s relevance and it’s more than the fact that one of our students took some photos. Everywhere we travel for our destination Sailing Vacation courses, we snorkel and/or swim. And, anywhere people choose to swim, there can be sharks.

***IN THAT PIC***: The cover of a recent Sunday NY Times Magazine. Excellent pic, poorly re-captured by yours truly. The article title & sub title differ from the online version, which you can link to below.

First thing to know: it’s safe! True, every year around the world there are a number of shark attacks and a few fatalities. But compared to the number of times humans enter the water each year, it’s a ridiculously rare occurrence for anyone to be bitten, far less killed. Even in the places that statistically have more attacks than others, it’s extremely rare. That’s why people continue to go surfing, snorkeling and diving in those areas. In fact, most people who survive shark attacks (the overwhelming majority do) get back on the horse, so to speak. They go back in the water.

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…”
the crap they used to hype JAWS 2

Another reason I choose to write about it here is it’s something I know something about. I’ve been fascinated with sharks since I was a little boy. One day, my father took me to the South Street Seaport. When we were done exploring the waterfront and vessels, we ducked into the gift shop. I wound up walkIng out with a book called “Shark: Unpredictable Killer of the Sea.” Author: Thomas Helm. I read it. I watched documentaries. I read other books and articles. I read statistics via the International Shark Attack File. I went fishing… sometimes for sharks. I snorkeled a lot. On rare occasions, I would see a shark.

And, yes – I saw sharks on our trips! They weren’t “man-eaters” on the prowl to eat anything they saw, or tear up hapless swimmers for sport and then spit them out so they could chomp more chumps. They were minding their own business, and had no business with us.

IN THAT CLIP: the author films a lemon shark while snorkeling on one of our trips.

Now, about those great whites on Cape Cod…

They’ve been there for awhile. They started showing up near shore and even in the surf. As the article discusses, the sharks were almost certainly responding to increased stocks of gray seals that were migrating seasonally to the Cape. Fish follow food, as do marine mammals. All this was a sign of a healthy ecosystem that had been recovering from overfishing and pollution. Well before there was any discussion of great white sharks near swimmers and surfers on the Cape, light tackle sport fishing enthusiasts (another hat I’ve worn on and off most of my life) became aware of striped bass and bluefish coming in closer to shore more consistently in the summer and fall on the flats of the Cape, and sight-feeding. One photo in the article shows a great white with a striped bass in its mouth.

When the sharks become public knowledge, and attacks began, a cottage industry sprung up with shark paraphernalia and such. Also, the parks department put someone in charge of trying to ensure some balance of public safety awareness and preparedness on the one hand, and allowing people to continue getting in the water on the other. That’s been evolving, especially after something that I’d predicted for years finally happened: someone was killed by a shark in the Cape Cod surf.

As people were continuing to swim and surf, and the sharks were arriving in more numbers, as well as slowly growing as they returned season after season, it was inevitable. If nothing changes, then inevitably there will be the occasional attack and possibly a fatality. But, what would change? Can’t kill the sharks. Can’t kill their food supply. Can’t stop the sharks from swimming where they will. Can we stop people from going in the water? Cue up the scene from the original Jaws, which became a popular meme during the pandemic:

Some residents in Cape Cod think that locals should be able to decide if and how much to cull the seal and shark population to protect those who play in the water and therefore the economy. Others think that’s ‘playing god.’ My takeaway? I’ve never been attacked by a shark, nor known anyone who has. However, those who survive attacks – and those who survive those taken from us by shark attacks – mostly, if not vastly, side with the sharks. They believe that we’re entering sharks’ territory, at our own slight risk, and that sharks are just doing their thing: going about their simple lives surviving. Therefore, leave them alone.

I happen to agree.

“We’re dressing up like their food, and swimming among their food, and we still hardly ever fool them. People will drive down to the beach while they are texting and then they worry about getting bit by a shark?”
Chris Fischer, founder of the non-profit research organization OCEARCH.

So, what happened on the Cape? I’ll let you read the article as it’s a good one. It covers attacks on the Cape, as well as one along the coast in the Bay and one up in Maine in 2020. Two out of the five encounters were fatal. Strangely, despite referencing “Jaws” appropriately on several occasions, the article doesn’t point out that the book by Peter Benchley and the subsequent movie (and sequels) were inspired by real events. What were they?

“12 Days of Terror,” according to one author. In the summer of 1916, there were five shark attacks in New Jersey in the span of 12 days. All but one were fatal. Three of them happened basically back to back in the same one small body of water, Raritan Creek. The other two, which preceded these, were separate attacks at different beaches along the NJ coast. There’s been a lot of conjecture over the century since those attacks about what happened. However, one fact remains: a juvenile great white shark of around 7.5 feet was caught in Raritan Bay shortly after the last attack, and it had human remains in it’s digestive tract, including some positively identified as belonging to one of the attack victims.

After it was caught, the attacks stopped.

Two of those attacks were likely survivable had proper 1st aid been administered and if infrastructure and logistics existed for rapid transport to a trauma facility. Two were not. The fifth and final attack was when a group of kids swimming were warned that there had been an attack further down the creek, and they all scrambled out. The last boy climbing out was struck on the leg by a shark and badly wounded. It’s not clear whether his leg was amputated to save his life; reports conflict. But, he survived.

What about drones?

Obviously, the cover shot for the Times piece is spectacular and the work of a drone. As the piece discusses, drones might be the future of preventative measures along beaches. My takeaway? We’re seeing more and more images like this, where people are in the water blissfully unaware that sharks are quite close by. In many if not most cases, this peaceful coexistence had always been the case. Now, drones are letting us see it for ourselves. That’s not the case on the Cape, where the increase in shark numbers is well documented. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if we keep seeing pics and clips from drones that show how often people are in close proximity to “man-eating” great whites that clearly know the people are there – and clearly don’t care. Until they do, of course, but the drones might very well get people out of the water in advance and reduce the already very slight risk that a shark might bite someone in the water.

And, finally… here’s a link to the entire and very worthwhile article!..

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/20/magazine/sharks-cape-cod.html