Confessions of a Dangler

The Wavescape Eco-Files, September 2008

By Bobby Feat

I’m a dangler. I bob expectant at backline, legs saddling my board expectantly watching the horizon for a sign of an approaching swell. I’ve learnt to read lines begat from some south Atlantic storm prophesied by Spike. If I wait, they will come, my patience and positioning turning into an arch through the bottom-turn, and trimming in the pocket. But I am still a dangler.

My first realisation that I dangled was during a clean 3-4’ autumn swell at North Beach in Durban. I was just out of gromhood and had taken to arriving at the beach before sunrise. I took the early bus – which entailed a 30 minute walk with board under arm to the highway and a reliance on the pity of returning partygoers finding their way to town. My school mates, for some explicable reason, were not as enthusiastic as me in this nocturnal pursuit, so I would end up paddling out in the dark-becoming-twilight and watch the ships lights disappear as a pier-lit wave approached, a shadow lurching toward the shore.  Invariably I would misjudge and end up floundering in the dark currents, not sure which way was up except by the pull of my leash.

I was paddling out towards backline, the rising sun shimmering through the lip as I duck-dived. Surfacing from a push-through I notice the water on my right was shadowed. The area under my board and to my left was eclipsed by a distinctive angular nose and triangulated fin. My consciousness was suddenly drowned in the collective screams of every screening of JAWS. This sparked an adrenal response that propelled me toward the sand in front of the lifeguard hut, leash between my legs. Not wanting to tempt fate, and knowing that the same shark nets cared for by the named Anti-Sharks Measures Board were in place to ensure the safety of bathers, I paddled out on the other side of the pier to surf the Diary Bowl. 

From that moment on I realised that as I waited for a wave I was a dangler. It was not an epiphany just a statement of being – somewhere between paddling prone and riding the wave – that has been affirmed more than a handful of times at several other surf breaks along South Africa’s wave-blessed coastline.

And, I’m not alone in dangling, that I am well aware. All wave-riders share not only the waves but the knowing that we float above shapes that glide below. Occasional interactions sadly leave land dwellers short of limb or life and evokes witch-hunts reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition’s dictum, “if she drowns then she is guilty”. It’s hard to discriminate between a “man-eater” and an inquisitive bite when the terror beneath is so unknowable, especially when it is human fear that feeds the frenzy around shark-lore.

We landlubbers who venture into that wilderness we call the sea have a few explanations for shark encounters. Recent scientific evidence on Great White Sharks in False Bay indicates that these sharks communicate by nipping each other’s pectoral or dorsal fins in a non-aggressive manner. The problem for humans is that this shark-talk usually leaves us at a loss.

As wave-riders, we find ourselves at the frontier of inter-specie interaction. We dangle beyond the breakers in serene denial hoping that if an encounter occurs, it will be at someone else’s expense. We need to be realistic that in our entry into the ocean to ride waves, even if a beach has lifeguards or shark spotters on watch or is netted way beyond backline, we may encounter in a shark a communicative creature both magnificent and terrifying.

Okay you don’t have to hug a shark but perhaps we need to re-think the shark to better understand the need for marine conservation in our coastal waters, or at least, to take cognisance of our place as humans in the greater chain of the marine ecology.

We need to affirm our mortality by contemplating our connectedness to beach-life, the ocean and the sea creatures we impact on through our exploitation of the sea for sporting or leisure purposes. 

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