Author who demonised the shark now on a worldwide campaign to save it

Carl MULLER

...The woman threw her head back and screamed a guttural cry of terror. The fish had moved away. It swallowed the woman’s limb without chewing. Bones and meat passed down the massive gullet in a single spasm... This time the fish attacked from below. It hurtled up under the woman, jaws agape. The great conical head struck her like a locomotive, knocking her up out of the water. The jaws snapped around her torso, crushing bones and flesh and organs into a jelly... The corpse fell apart... The water was laced with blood and shreds of flesh...

WHITE DEATH: The above is an extract from Part One of Peter Benchley’s spine-chilling bestseller, “Jaws”. It was his first novel, and in it he demonised the Great White Shark, creating a monster of ferocious proportions. Stephen Spielberg made the story into a film and Benchley made a fortune out of his book.

But Benchley realised, too late, than in creating a sensational story, he had presented a picture of a giant killer shark that posed the question, “Is it safe to go back in the water?” He did not realise, when he wrote “Jaws,” the immense damage he had done.

Trophy hunters around the world flocked to slaughter the Great White (Carcharodon carcharias) and in 1975, when the film was released, the body or skeleton of a Great White was worth very little. Benchley’s book changed all that. Today, a good set of jaws of the Great White is sold for US $ 20,000!

Benchley realised how wrong he had been. He publicly declared, “Actually, the public slaughter of sharks that attack people has been so intense that it is very likely now that it is the shark that is not safe to go around in the water!”

He has launched a global campaign to protect sharks and adds, “I will always have this on my conscience - the “Jaws” hysteria I created. People even called the killer shark of my book the White Death!” He says that sharks are being slaughtered in the millions for the Far Eastern markets where shark-fin soup is in great demand.

“In Southeast Asia, shark-fin soup is seen as a status symbol. The soup is served at wedding and business lunches, and in Hong Kong restaurants, a bowl of shark-fin soup can cost up to US$ 60.”

Despite Benchley’s efforts, sharks are declining rapidly, for they are now being brought into closer contact with man - and this is not such a good thing either. I made inquiries, spoke to some people who know a lot about these creatures. The Internet posts the names of tourist companies in Australia and Florida that actually advertise guided “shark feeding tours.”

Tourists are taken out in boats beyond the surf line to where the big sharks tend to hunt and buckets of dead fish are then dropped into the water to attract the sharks. In July 2001, there was a TV shot of “shark tourists” in Australia who had actually clambered out of their boat and stood on the body of a rotting whale just to watch sharks in a feeding frenzy!

Closer to shore

One result of this is that sharks now tend to come into areas closer to shore. Also, surfing has become so popular that a lot more people are going into the water and even go beyond the surf to areas where the big sharks are.

“This could be very dangerous,” a friend told me. “Sharks often mistake surfers in their wet suits for seals and attack. Their moves are swift. One upward blow to pitch the surfer into the water, and one powerful bite. You’ll be surprised to know that sharks are cautious and don’t like to fight.

Getting close to their prey could be unsettling. A man, striking out in terror, can damage a shark’s eyes or nose and ruin its hunting days for good. This is why that first bite must be so large that the victim bleeds to death, while the shark retires to watch from a safe distance.”

In Colombo’s Natural History Museum, I was told that although sharks are very powerful, they are also very delicate creatures. I learned a lot there - that from records of shark attacks across the world, only 12.7 per cent so attacked are killed; that sharks attack with the mistaken idea that swimming or surfing humans are sea creatures, and that they really don’t like the taste of human flesh and often spit it out after the first bite.

And yet, sharks always seem to inspire terror. Benchley wrote his book after dipping into the records of the 1916 rampage where a Great White attacked sea bathers off the coast of New Jersey, killing four and tearing both legs off one victim. Down the years there have been more attacks, and yet, the number of sharks has been declining rapidly.

In the fifth century BC, Herodotus wrote of sharks as man-eaters that terrified seamen. In those times, burial at sea simply meant a feed for sharks... but right up to the turn of the 19th century there was the conviction that sharks were harmless.

A US millionaire, Hermann Oelricks, actually offered $ 500 to anyone who could prove that a shark had actually attacked a human being.

In 1915, the “New York Times” printed an Editorial titled “Let Us Do Justice to the Sharks” in which it claimed that sharks were timid, that their bites were feeble and that they could never sever a human limb.

Today, Florida is known as the Shark Capital of the world and its coasts attract up to 500 different species including the Great Whites. But despite the attacks (and usually because people ignore the cautions of life savers and beach guards) it is still maintained that the chances of being killed by a shark are 30 times less that being killed by lightning!

Persistent attackers

Let me tell you of what I learned at the Natural History Museum. Most shark attacks come from the Tiger Shark, the Bull Shark and the Great White. Of these, the Tigers are very persistent attackers. They bite and keep biting until their victims are chewed up.

The Bull Shark does not grow very large but among all living creatures, it has the highest level of testosterone. It is the only shark that is known to prowl in very shallow water and even enter rivers.

The Great White, with its 3,000 teeth, is the most fearsome and most lethal and is known to grow up to 21 feet. It has a refined sensory system, able to detect movements, sounds and electrical fields in water. It can live up to 40 years and, after a large kill, can go without food for months.

What Benchley did was create a monster, and it had all the desired reader effect he had hoped for. Take this last extract from his book, where Quint and Brady succeed in inflicting a Great White with a death wound:

The fish broke water right beside the boat with a great rushing whoosh of a noise. It rose vertically, and in an instant of horror, Brady gasped at the size of the body towering overhead. It blocked out the light. The pectoral fins hovered like wings, stiff and straight, and, as the fish fell forward, they seemed to reach out for Brady.

The fish landed on the stern of the boat with a shattering crash, driving the boat beneath the waves... The boat was sinking. The stern was completely submerged and the bow was rising.. The fish slid off the stern and slid beneath the waves... It was only a few feet away, and Brady could see the conical snout. He screamed an ejaculation of hopelessness and closed his eyes, waiting for an agony he could not imagine... Nothing happened. He opened his eyes. The fish was nearly touching him, only a foot or two away, but it had stopped... the steel-grey body began to recede downward into the gloom... an apparition evanescing into darkness.. The Great White was dead.

We kill plenty of shark in Sri Lanka. Shark meat is sold in fish markets and supermarkets and is much favoured by some who like the white flesh with no bones except for the soft central bone in every slice.

Also, shark meat is very much cheaper than other fish. I know that shark meat is boiled, shredded and used in the production of “Mixed Noodles” in many eateries. I cannot say that shark meat is also used in the marketing of pre-cooked packs of cutlets and fish balls that are on sale but then, trade can be quite a sleazy thing.

You will recall that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond told how octopus flesh is stripped, disguised in hot sauce and preservative, then tinned and sold as squid all over the Caribbean. You’ll find this in Fleming’s book “Octopussy.”

Also, sharks have been hunted down for the medicinal value of the oil extracted from their livers. Shark Liver Oil is touted as being of much better effect in human gland lubrication that Cod Liver Oil.

Now, so many more sharks - far from the monstrous sea-murderer that Benchley wrote of - are also being hunted down and killed because of his novel, and the film-makers have added to the spice by giving us “Jaws II.” Benchley is trying to put it all right, but somehow, I doubt if his worldwide campaign will bring him peace.

We are too far gone in our ways to let anything that is a supposed threat stop us. Everything has become the Great Whites today - even the people that we relentlessly destroy because we fear the 3,000 teeth of the venom we imagine they carry!