Note: I wrote this story in the mid-1980's after doing numerous trips to South Australia to make various films with Rodney Fox, including two Wild Kingdom episodes. At that time, a trip to see these sharks cost $8,000 plus airfare to Australia. In those days sport diving with any species of shark was almost unthinkable and dive magazines considered the word "shark" unprintable. I could not have imagined then that sharks would be the leading attraction for so many dive locations today!
Also, last October I took a trip to Guadalupe Island with Paul Anes, owner of San Diego Shark Diving. We had white sharks every day and sometimes four around the boat at a time. The trip cost less than $2,000 and leaves from San Diego, CA. The trip was absolutely amazing. Check out San Diego Shark Diving at: http://www.sdsharkdiving.com/

Saving the Great White

Chip Matheson photographs a white ©Howard Hall

Howard Hall

On a cool, Autumn afternoon in 1974 Terry Manuel was diving for abalone off Cape Catastrophe, South Australia. The water was turbid and dark. Terry quickly searched through the dense jungle of red and brown algae, deftly prying abalone off the rocks and filling his large mesh bag. On the surface Terry's partner, John Talbot, tended Terry's air hose and followed his movements with their small boat.

Terry was not diving for fun; he was a professional abalone diver. His job was to collect as many abalone as possible before his body absorbed dangerous levels of nitrogen or became hypothermic. So he seldom looked up from the rocks and out across the vista of rocky pinnacles and sand filled canyons. On this day, had he looked, he might have seen an enormous dark shape gliding slowly over the kelp in the murky distance.

His bag full of abalone and his safe bottom time nearly exhausted, Terry began his ascent to the surface. During his ascent he didn't notice the fifteen-foot shark beneath him. He didn't see the shark suddenly change direction and accelerate upward toward him at twenty-five miles per hour. And in that first moment he didn't understand what had struck him with such force that it lifted him entirely out of the water.

John Talbot saw it happen from only a few yards away. He pulled Terry by his air hose until he was beside the boat. Then he got hold of Terry's arms and somehow succeeded in pulling him free of the shark's jaws. But the shark had taken Terry's leg. Moments later Terry was dead.

Terry Manuel's death terrified the sixty remaining commercial abalone divers who were working the coast of South Australia in 1974. Most immediately quit diving and didn't return to work for more than six months. It is no wonder that these men backed away from the water in quiet horror. There is something primordially terrifying about shark attack. The thought of being devoured alive while completely defenseless seems somehow worse than being crushed in an automobile, being crippled by decompression sickness, or drowning.

Rodney Fox is one who knows the horror of a white shark attack from personal experience. The incident occurred in 1963 while he was defending his title in the South Australian Spear fishing Championships. Rodney was thirty feet down on a breath hold dive preparing to spear a fish. Just before he pulled the trigger, he felt something huge strike him in the left side of his chest. The speargun was thrown from his hand and his mask was knocked off. Suddenly he was hurtling through the water faster than he had ever moved through water before. "I was like a bone in a dog's mouth," Rodney recalls.

Rodney used his hands like claws in an attempt to gouge the shark's eyes. Suddenly the shark released him and as he pushed himself away from the predator's mouth he saw his arm disappear inside. When he pulled his arm free he felt the teeth cut through the tendons of his hand and wrist. "I thought the only way to stop the shark from biting me again was to give it a bear hug; to wrap my arms and legs around the outside of its mouth so it couldn't get me inside." Soon, however, lack of air became an even greater threat than the shark. Rodney pushed himself away from the shark's face and struggled to the surface. The shark turned its attention to Rodney's fish stringer. It swallowed the float that supported his speared fish and Rodney found himself being towed through the water by the rope. Finally, the rope broke and Rodney was left alone.

Even before Rodney could yell "Shark!" his friends had pulled along side with a boat. They raced him to shore and on to a hospital just in time to save his life. His injuries included a crushed rib cage, punctured lung, pierced shoulder blade and numerous lacerations and torn tendons. More than four hundred and thirty stitches were required to patch his body back together.

Rodney Fox has become the world's most famous shark attack victim. One of the reasons Rodney's exceptional story is so renowned is because it is so rare. Despite the sensational nature of shark attacks, a look at the actual statistics suggests that the shark menace is vastly overblown. Shark attack is a very rare cause of mortality worldwide, and extremely rare in the United States. According to the U.S. Navy Shark Attack File, a world-wide annual average of only twenty-eight shark attacks have occurred since 1940. Less than thirty-five percent of these were fatal. In the United States the average annual fatality rate is less than two. In contrast, during 1985, bee stings and lightning strikes in this nation alone killed 385 people. Statistically, there is a much greater likelihood of being struck to death by lightning if you go out on the golf course than being eaten by a shark when you go to the beach for a swim or a SCUBA dive.

Despite the statistics, many people remain terrified of sharks. In 1974 this terror was exacerbated by the unparalleled success of the Peter Benchley novel "Jaws" and the motion picture that followed.

The effect "Jaws mania" had on white sharks was devastating, especially in South Australia and the United States. Sport and commercial fishermen began hunting white sharks with a vengeance. Sport fishermen chartered sport-fishing boats for expeditions dedicated to the destruction of whites. Some marine parks paid commercial fishermen up to $5,000 for the bodies of white sharks, which were frozen and put on display. One such display at Sea World San Diego increased park attendance by nearly thirty percent. In South Australia white shark jaws could be sold for up to $5,000 and individual teeth for $200 each.

But in recent years a new attitude toward sharks seems to have dawned and a consensus for preserving these predators is growing. In fact, it seems that attitudes toward sharks may be changing in much the same way that attitudes have changed toward big cats. Once hunted indiscriminately, there now exist powerful and almost universally supported movements to protect the great cats in most parts of the world, despite the fact that these animals kill hundreds of people every year.

Ironically, both Peter Benchley and Rodney Fox have become leaders in cultivating the growing admiration of sharks. Despite his injuries, Rodney has actually become fond of the great white. "They're really quite beautiful, in an ugly sort of way," he says, smiling, as he pours a mixture of tuna blood and entrails over the side of the vessel, Nenad, at Dangerous Reef. During the last twenty years, Rodney has led hundreds of tourist divers and filmmakers to the waters near Cape Catastrophe, South Australia to see and photograph great white sharks in the wild. In that time his attitude toward these animals has changed from hatred to concern. Finding sharks has become progressively more difficult each year and Rodney is convinced that sport fishing and commercial gill net fishing is causing a decline in this population of white sharks. Because huge increases in the sport fishing industry are projected for South Australia, Rodney feels that this magnificent predator may soon vanish from South Australian waters.

Rodney has begun a campaign to protect white sharks in South Australia. He has approached members of the legislature and the fish and game commission with his concern. He has also encouraged dozens of naturalists, scientists, and sport divers to write letters to his government. Certainly, Rodney's effort to see this legislation written has met with some resistance by people who are convinced that "Jaws" was more a documentary than a fantasy. But protection for sharks is not without precedent. Filmmakers, Ron and Valerie Taylor, succeeded in their search for legislation to protect the gray nurse shark in Australia which was nearly wiped out by trophy hunting spear fishermen.

Even some abalone divers have come to accept the presence of the great white shark. During the six months following Terry Manuel's death, a device was conceived which would allow divers to return to the water without fear of shark attack. The device was a small, one man, mobile shark cage. It was hydraulically powered, and had adjustable buoyancy tanks. The mobile cage could carry more abalone than a diver could, and it was equipped with a source of hot water that the diver could pump into his suit to keep warm. But most importantly, the mobile cage protected the diver from the great white.

Herb Illic has been a commercial abalone diver since 1973. During one of his early dives he looked up to see an enormous shark coming straight toward him. "It was so big and so close that it completely filled my field of vision. It had to be nearly seventeen feet long," Herb said. The great white shark circled Herb a few times and then swam away. "It scared the pants off me and I said, `That's it, I want every white shark in Australia dead before I go diving again.'"

The purchase of the $12,000 mobile cage provided welcome peace of mind for Herb. Not only was he protected from the great white, but he could carry a heavier load of abalone and enjoy the rush of hot water being pumped into his suit. Today, seventy percent of South Australia's abalone divers own a mobile cage.

Last year Herb Illic had the opportunity to join Rodney Fox at Dangerous Reef for a filming expedition. After three weeks of diving with the great predators, Herb came to appreciate the beauty and magnificence of an animal that once terrified him. "It's hard to stay afraid of them after you've had a chance to watch one underwater for a while", Herb says. "I'm not sure I want to see great whites protected yet, but I don't want to see them wiped out either".