Waters off idyllic islands hold hidden dangers
Our fear of the ocean predators is based on wondering what lies below and knowing we are out of our depth
“This black cloud appeared. “In terms of getting out of the way of it, it wasn’t happening. “It was like hitting a wall.” Only it wasn’t a wall. It was a big tiger shark, estimated at 10 to 12 feet, and as 58-yearold Kansas doctor Ken Grasing retold the tale to the Honolulu Star Advertiser newspaper from his hospital bed in Honolulu, it was the reality that every Hawaiian tourist never wants to hear about.
Grasing had been attacked by a shark.
“I had just seen something on TV that said something like: ‘Unless you’re doing something silly, you needn’t worry about a shark attack.’ I wasn’t doing anything silly.”
Instead, like millions of other visitors who annually flock to Hawaii on spring break, Grasing was snorkelling with his two teenage sons on March 18 in about five feet of water, 100 yards from shore at Hapuna Beach on the big island of Hawaii.
The tiger shark, as they are wont to do, came out of nowhere and took a bite out of Grasing’s left arm before spitting him out and moving along, clearly not liking the taste of the good physician.
There, then, is the thing that no one openly talks about while on vacation in paradise. Hawaii is sharkey. Its warm tropical waters, like those off the coasts of Florida, South Africa, California and Australia, are full of sharks. Great whites. Tigers. Hammerheads. And many more shark species — there are more than 500 worldwide — that can do serious damage to anyone who gets in their way.
And, not surprisingly, when we venture out into their surf, sometimes they bite us. Sometimes fatally. Not because they’re malevolent maneaters, but because, in their wild kingdom, everything is a potential meal.
And, with this, we are perpetually fascinated.
So much so that we watch scary movies like Jaws and campy Sharknado and chilling Open Water. We marvel at the current Sea Monsters exhibit at the Vancouver Aquarium and are held rapt by the tiger and hammerheads cruising the tanks at the Maui Ocean Centre. We cage dive with great whites and breathlessly set our PVRs for the bloodiest that is Shark Week every summer.
And if we have become more knowledgeable about sharks because of that universal interest, we have also learned to respect their power and survival instinct, their stealth and beauty, their cold-eyed stare and their ability to keep us awake at night because they can eat us alive.
Despite Dr. Grasing’s ordeal — his mangled arm is expected to heal — the actual threat, of course, is less scary: According to the International Shark Attack File, there have been about 500 fatal, unprovoked shark attacks since records have been kept over the past few hundred years, with Australia leading the way at 184, the latest occurring last month.
Less trackable are provoked attacks, or humans lost at sea or unreported attacks in isolated locations. And even though more and more of us are invading the shark’s territory, the odds are still more likely you’ll meet your salty maker by drinking too many Mai Tais and falling off a catamaran.
The truth is that more people are killed by toasters every year.
As for Hawaii, where millions of us head every year to escape the continental cold, there are only a handful of shark attacks every year, with the last fatal one in 2013.
And humans, lest we forget, kill millions of sharks every year.
But our fear of sharks isn’t about logic or pop culture influences. It’s about something more primal.
It’s about wondering, and fearing, what lies below, about knowing that we humans are literally out of our depth in the ocean, that we are small fish in a big sea, at the mercy of an environment where we have no choice but to cede control.
Which means there isn’t a single person — tourist or native — wading into Hawaii’s waters who doesn’t imagine a shark lurking about, who doesn’t on occasion get that sharkey feeling.
And yet, it doesn’t stop us from snorkelling and surfing, diving and paddle boarding, or from bobbing for hours in the waves near the bountiful reefs where turtles mosey and predators prowl.
Because there’s something thrilling about the unknown, and it may well be why we can’t stay out of the water.