A Bite of Irony

In recent years, scientists and activists have tried to change the terminology of contact with a shark from “attack” to “encounter”. Some organizations still use the term “attack” to capture the brutality and horror of a run-in with a shark, however, sharks rarely attack in the actual sense of that word, as I hope will be seen and, in an attempt to further the understanding, I try to use the term “encounter” or “bite” as much as possible in the following essay. A polar bear or yellowjacket might attack you, but sharks are almost always just looking to see if you’re a seal, sea lion or whale. 

A few weeks ago, a short video popped up in my social media feed that made the word—feed—feel a little too on the nose. The video was from the perspective of someone standing a few yards from the surf at the beach. This familiar vantage is something almost anyone who has spent hours in the sand “down the shore” will recognize. 

It was a cloudy day, the surf was generally calm and perhaps twenty or thirty people of all ages waded, played, splashed, and otherwise enjoyed the ocean. In the foreground, there is something that catches the eye of the viewer immediately, forcing the other events to become background noise. Protruding from the water feet from the beach is a glossy, curved black blade, perhaps a foot in length, scything through the water.

At one point, a sharp-looking second shape appears just behind the first, sloshing and churning the water. The shape moves left to right very quickly, and the person on the camera (or phone) follows the movement with the acuity of a cinematographer. The viewer’s brain has already logged this situation into the panic computer deep in the cerebral cortex. My toes curled, my heart rate leaped up, my eyes dilated, I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins and I was nowhere near this event now immortalized on the Web. As I watched, one word echoed through my brain.

Shark.

At first, the people in the water seem nonplussed by the appearance of the predatory fish. Then, brains kick in. You can almost hear it happen. Those on the beach begin screaming, someone curses, there are consistent shrieks, a woman in a bathing cap is frantically waving for her family in the water to come to shore and as the big fish swims off to the right, between bathers and dry sand, a general panic takes over in the water before the video ends.

This nightmare scenario (where I assume no one was hurt—this time, at least) has become as familiar to us as breathing. Ever since people started swimming recreationally in the ocean, we have put ourselves blindly into the heart of a prehistoric superpredator's smorgasbord. This is the dangerous equivalent of playing in the tall grass where Bengal tigers hunt. We wouldn’t do it knowingly. Swimming in the ocean is an immense danger at all times and there is plenty of evidence of this and yet we keep right on doing it.

The shark encounter was forever immortalized by Stephen Spielberg's blockbuster cinematic version of Peter Benchley's book, Jaws. The movie did a number on the human psyche, but it also increased punitive hunting of sharks worldwide and has been the source of modern shark vilification which has led to decimated shark populations in every ocean. The Great White Shark portrayed in the film isn’t the only fish to suffer this wrathful and deadly retribution.

Spielberg and Benchley did not intend to vilify sharks, but a movie about a giant killer marine predator can have that effect on humanity. There have always been stories of shark attacks. The book and movie echoed a now immortal tale of shark attacks that occurred in New Jersey in 1916, which was probably a bull shark, known for their brutal encounters with people. Jaws featured a Great White Shark, a particularly big species that rarely attacks humans. There are sharks as big as the one in the movie, but they rarely, if ever, behave the way the shark in the movie did. A shark minding its own business does not a hit movie make. In the meantime, three sequels and countless offshoots and variations on this theme have solidified the shark attack mindset in the general public's collective consciousness. The irony is that we still go into the ocean regularly.

Modernity, with all of its audiovisual convenience, has helped us to be a little more aware of these oceanic dangers. Awareness doesn't necessarily equal caution. Drone footage consistently reveals sharks near swimmers at the beach, raising imminent safety concerns. One bit of footage taken in 2018 of a tiger shark gliding north, just a few meters off the coast of North Carolina, was enough to make me pause when the water lapped against my knees and rethink my dip later that year. Calm waters near our family vacation spot made floating in neck-deep water seem like a good idea. My brother was out there bobbing with the gentle waves. Okay, I thought, as I mentally prepared for a real-life scene out of a shark horror film, keep watching him and surveying the water. He was fine, but I was not easy in my mind until he came out of the water.

The last time I was out that far, I broke my boogie board in half in rough surf at Carolina Beach. Micki and I and our middle son were enjoying the ample hydraulic propulsion provided by the rolling waves and alternately ditching or getting flipped ass over teakettle by the tidal breakers. After my foam board was halved, I decided that I was done and went back to our chairs for a bit. Later, Ethan and I tossed a football back and forth in knee-deep surf. In one of those moments that imprint on the memory with perfect clarity for the rest of one’s life, I took a step back to hurl a long throw at Eth and stepped on something large, sandpapery, muscular and wriggling. Snapping my head around, I saw with unforgettable terror something grey-black flash away into the shallows. I leaped out of the water. I didn’t go back in that day. Later that week, though, I did.

Human behavior defies reason, sometimes. In June of 2019, seventeen-year-old Paige Winters was bitten off the coast of North Carolina while standing in waist-deep water. The “very large shark” bit her left leg and took two fingers. She was rescued quickly by her father and survived the attack thanks to his quick thinking, but she had to have the leg amputated at the thigh. This unprovoked bite (the word ‘unprovoked’ here assumes that sharks, like hornets or grizzlies, respond to invasions of territory) nearly cost her her life. Sharks are curious and will tentatively bite at something to see if it is food. Even this nibble can be deadly because of the shark’s multiple rows of large, serrated teeth which saw into flesh and bone like soft cheese. 

According to the poorly named International Shark Attack File (ISAF), since 1935, when an unsuspecting swimmer was having a cool dip near Brown’s Inlet and was bitten and killed by a bull shark, there have been 77 ‘unprovoked’ shark encounters in The Old North State. I’m not sure how many provoked attacks there were, nor am I able to imagine anyone provoking a shark intentionally. Regardless, in the nearly ninety years since records have been kept, North Carolina has proven to be a fairly unlikely place to encounter a shark. Florida retains the title of the shark bite capital of the nation, and averages about 19 bites per year. Volusia County, on the eastern coast of the state, has had 351 shark encounters since 1926, making it the one place where going into the ocean could be quite bad for you. Most of these encounters (or bites) are non-fatal, and occur predominantly to ‘surface recreationists’. The ISAF website doesn’t define this activity, but it is far more common than having a run-in while entering or exiting the water, swimming, wading or diving.

As a resident of North Carolina who, with my family, regularly vacations at the lovely beaches of our state, I feel no better about the odds of wading in and meeting a big toothy fish being higher in Florida. I never intend to go to Florida and sharks are just the last reason on the list of reasons why that state is a no-go zone for me. This fact notwithstanding, the raw annual probability of being attacked at my state’s beaches is about 85.56%, but that number is determined by several factors, such as the frequency of going into the water, the location of my dunk and my behavior while in the drink. Surfing and swimming in shark-prone areas will obviously affect the odds.  Even a basic understanding of statistics will show that all things considered, the more one goes in for a dip, the more likely one will encounter a sleek and bitey denizen of the deep. 

For all that, people come from all over to enjoy the beaches of North Carolina every week from April to October. Even in the off-season, crowds of people who are specifically there to swim line the sand. The beaches are lovely, the weather (if a little hot) is ideal and the views of the sea and sky are spectacular. We love going to the beach and we like going into the water (just up to the knees) to cool off when the intense heat begins to dry us out. During our most recent family vacation, our sons—all avid fishermen—consistently pulled up sand sharks, whether they were angling from the surf or off the local pier. While we were on the pier, a man who was king fishing at the very end of the rickety wooden structure caught a shark that was at least 5 feet long. It eventually broke the line and zoomed away at a speed that made it clear that, no matter how much you practice, not even an Olympic swimmer could get away from a shark coming in for a snack. It swam toward the shore, which was crowded with bathers. On several occasions from our high vantage over the water, we could see dark shapes moving in and out of the shadows, perhaps interested in all the bait fish.

All of this ought to keep people out of the water, at least in a way that will draw the attention of a shark. They’re out there, even if we cannot see them. They come in to see if the surf has their normal prey. They cannot see well, so they tentatively bite whatever they encounter. All of that has been proven without a shadow of a doubt and the frequency of East Coast encounters and bites is, if nothing else, rising. It seems like every summer news of an encounter with a shark reaches our ears before the summer beach season even really gets going. We’re skipping a family beach week, this year—not because of sharks—but next year when all the kids come home we will drive down to the ocean for a week for fishing and sunning, and all of us will be susceptible to encountering a shark when we’re in the water. For that reason, any swimming I do will be in the pool at the condo and not in the ocean.