A Sharky Perspective

I will never forget the story from my good friend at Rhodes University in the 1980s, Wayne ‘Sparky’ McMillan. He recalled how one of the country’s most infamous shark attacks unravelled before his eyes. His friend Alex Macun was taken by a great white at Ntlonyane on the Wild Coast in June 1982. The shark struck while they were paddling back up the point early one morning after catching an epic wave on a beautiful four- to five-foot day. Sparky was just behind his friend in the line-up when he was hit. He told me how they ran down the point to retrieve their friend’s body from the beach break. Despite frenzied attempts to pull him out of the water, the shark came back. They had only a chewed surfboard to take back to his family.

Having grown up in nearby Coffee Bay I was deeply saddened, but it did not deter us from surfing the area, even during the sardine run. Sparky never recovered from that trauma. We once surfed classic six-foot Mdumbe with the Trow brothers from Coffee Bay, but Sparky was taciturn and reluctant. He was out of the water after 20 minutes. A sad irony is that he died, alone in a hotel room, during a spiritual pilgrimage to India almost 20 years afterwards. His death was due to complications arising from dysentery. Like his friend, he too became a rare statistic.

When it comes to statistics and shark attacks, the famous quote by scholar Alfred Housman springs to mind: ‘Statistics in the hands of an engineer are like a lamppost to a drunk – they’re used more for support than illumination.’

If you visit Thailand frequently, and you always sleep under coconut palms, you are at risk of dying by falling coconut, an overused comparative statistic held up against shark fatalities. But if you don’t sleep under palm trees? Well, then the statistics move on – chances of getting cancer, dying in a car crash or being abducted by aliens. Since avoiding the sea is not an option, the best we can do is reduce the chance of attack when possible.

The debate over why there has been an increase in attacks on surfers in recent years has run hot. Scientists are adamant that chumming is not a factor. They put it down to an increase in surfers, coupled with the rejuvenation of shark stocks due to conservation efforts. hat we know is that humans are not a shark’s natural prey. But if we play in their domain, occasionally we will be bitten.

Sharks have far more to fear from us than we need to fear them. Humans kill more than 100 million sharks every year. Fewer than 25 humans are killed by sharks, at a push. That’s one person for every four million sharks. However, while some surfers may be comforted by the stats, others will refer you to comedian George Canning’s quote: ‘I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.’

Being told that we have a minuscule chance of being attacked is not helpful to surfers who regularly surf breaks that are known for shark activity.

Surfers who are addicted to getting good waves as often as they can run a higher risk of attack. Hardened to the many risks, they sometimes push their luck by surfing near shoals of fish, such as sardines or mullet, or when flood-water from rivers deposits organic material in the sea, making the water brown and murky. This is a frequent occurrence in the Transkei and KwaZulu-Natal, when summer rains swell the rivers.

Some surfers ignore bleeding cuts and continue surfing. The author has been guilty of this when surfing on the Wild Coast. In my youth we would often carry on surfing after seeing a shark. Once a large hammerhead cruised past. On another occasion, we watched fishermen catch a two-metre ragged tooth shark off the East Pier, Port Alfred, but we did not abandon our heat in a university surfing competition.

As surfers, if we were to subscribe to every precaution, we might as well take up golf.

On the whole, surfing is a safe sport. To use the statistics as a leaning post, shark attacks are rare, so don’t get all wussie about going surfing.

{mosimage}SARDINE RUN: Cape gannets dive-bomb massive sardine shoals off the East Coast. {mosimage}KING OF THE HILL: The apex predator of our oceans, the great white shark.