Below the surface: Shark attacks
Below the Surface is a Stuff series by Hamish McNeilly about five shark attacks in the 1960s and early ’70s off the coast of Dunedin. Three men were killed and two more seriously injured, devastating families, traumatising survivors, and sparking hysteria
The large shark circles the diver twice, before disappearing into the water off the Aramoana Mole. Suddenly diver Graeme Hitt – with his head and shoulders above water – yells out.
‘‘Help me, get me ashore.’’
The three divers swim to rescue their now unconscious friend, who is surrounded by a thick cloud of blood.
Suddenly the 4.5-metre shark reappears and circles one of the divers, before disappearing towards the end of the Mole.
‘‘I did not see it again,’’ the diver later told authorities.
A FAMILY’S SHOCK
Errol Hitt remembers the day a young smiling policeman visited his family home.
The 21-year-old teacher returned to Dunedin for the weekend, and had been listening to the radio with his parents.
‘‘But we just turned it off. ‘‘What was the point of listening to horse racing?’’
That meant the family missed the news bulletin telling of a fatal shark attack off the Aramoana Mole, the place his brother had headed for in the morning of September 15, 1968.
Instead Errol Hitt was outside when he saw the young policeman walk towards him and ask, ‘‘Do you know where the Hitt family live?’’
‘‘I went in and things didn’t seem quite right, he had just told the news to mum and dad.
‘‘The death knocked the wind out of the sails.’’
He likened the death to a road crash fatality.
‘‘It was unexpected, so out of the blue. To die suddenly, instantly, it is so hard.’’
MEMORIES
Graeme Hitt was a 23-year-old who loved the outdoors.
Since leaving King’s High School he had worked as a technical officer with the Geological Survey Department, and was also attending Otago University part-time.
Errol Hitt said his brother once found native copper in a previously unknown location.
‘‘For many years we had this big lump of copper sitting at home.’’
His brother’s name still exists on a map.
Keen on diving, he was a Southern Sea Divers Club member and had competed at national level.
A CLOUD OF BLOOD
On that morning Hitt left for Aramoana with four other members of the club.
One of those men, Bruce Skinner, said in his witness statement that he was spearfishing with Hitt when he saw ‘‘a flurry of foaming water’’, several metres away.
‘‘About this time I saw a grey dorsal fin break the water.’’
As he got out of the water at the nearby Mole, he heard Hitt yell, ‘‘Help me, get me ashore.’’
He saw his friend without his snorkel or mask on, and his head and shoulders above water and ‘‘surrounded by a thick cloud of blood’’.
Skinner re-entered the water as fellow diver John Kirkman and then Colin Wilson, rushed to his aid.
Kirkman’s statement said he saw that Hitt had severe thigh wounds, and with the help of Skinner hauled him onto nearby rocks.
‘‘We could see he had suffered from severe wounds from the upper legs.
‘‘At no stage had I seen a shark, nor did I see how Graeme suffered his injuries.’’
SHARK CIRCLED
But Colin Wilson had seen the shark.
Shortly before the attack, Wilson saw some divers heading back to shore.
‘‘Looking back into the water behind me I noticed a very large shark swimming in from the sea and between myself and the Mole.’’
The large shark came within several metres of Wilson, and circled the upright diver, twice.
‘‘It made a wide sweep away from me and went out of my range of visibility towards the north end of the Mole.’’ Hearing a cry from Hitt, he realised ‘‘the shark had gone for him’’.
The shark then reappeared and circled him once more and, ‘‘I did not see it again’’.
Undeterred, Wilson swam towards the now unconscious Hitt, and helped Skinner and Kirkman.
‘‘Visibility was nil because of blood some distance around us.’’
Hitt was now on the rocks.
But Wilson reported his friend had stopped bleeding and had died beside him.
‘‘The shark appeared to me to be a white pointer.
‘‘It was similar to one we had netted last year . . . That is about 14 feet, six inches in length,’’ Wilson told the coroner.
Just four days after the death, Coroner Thomas Ross found Graeme Hitt had bled to death after his arteries in his left leg ‘‘were severed in an attack by a white shark’’.
TRAGIC SET OF CIRCUMSTANCES
Wilson and Skinner have since died. Kirkman told he was reluctant to talk about the tragedy, half a century ago.
‘‘From a mature perspective I am mindful of what it was: it was a fatal interaction between a human being and a primeval predator, in what people don’t realise is a primeval aquatic environment.
‘‘From the perspective of a young man of 18 at the time, it was relatively traumatic . . . of course it was.
‘‘I was just dazed that someone could die like that.’’
Kirkman, who is semi-retired but who still works in fisheries research, said he often thought about what had happened.
But he disliked television shows or news items sensationalising great white shark encounters.
‘‘That is a misrepresentation of the true facts of the situation.’’
Sharks were a primary predator and played a crucial role in keeping balance in the marine food chain.
‘‘I’ve done zillions of dives since then and I am always mindful that they are there in the water.’’
But he never went spear fishing again, believing the blood may have possibly attributed to attracting the shark on that day, he said.
‘‘It is illogical any shark would be imprinted to target human beings.
‘‘It was just a tragic set of circumstances.
‘‘There is no doubt in my mind that the fatalities should not be attributed to one shark.
‘‘I imagine each of the fatalities would be a case of mistaken identity.’’
FAMILIES CONNECTED BY TRAGEDY
Headlines of the day included
Dunedin swimmer killed by shark,
with reports noting a similar sized shark drowned in nets the year before.
‘‘It showed signs of being attacked by another shark.’’
Errol Hitt said before his brother’s death, shark attacks were very much on the minds of Dunedinites.
‘‘I can remember being on a tram and people were talking about it, and I thought ‘it has got nothing to do with you’.’’
He knew personally the toll they could take on a family. One of his best friends was Maurice, the brother of Les Jordan, who was killed by a shark at St Clair in 1964.
‘‘We were in the same class at school, and we used to hang out.’’
Maurice, known to his friends as ‘‘Mo’’, later died of leukaemia.
Both boys shared a bond over the tragic death of their brothers. ‘‘We talked about it at times.’’ After his brother’s death he found out a fishing company was regularly dumping fish waste into the sea near where the incident unfolded. ‘‘That attracted the shark.’’ He believed the Dunedin attacks was the work of one shark.
‘‘He has his pattern, his own wee circuit that he goes to around the world, and that would be one of the places he would call in because there was free food there.’’
Errol Hitt was there when a plaque was unveiled to the memory of those taken in shark attacks off Dunedin’s coast.
Survivor Barry Watkins arranged the plaque, with the family of Les Jordan and Bill Black also attending.
The Dunedin attacks curtailed previous interest in swimming in the sea as ‘‘I’m silly, not stupid’’.
‘‘I couldn’t trust the sea.’’ With the passing years that had changed, ‘‘it doesn’t really worry me.’’
‘‘But I’m old enough not to go swimming in sea.’’
‘‘It is illogical any shark would be imprinted to target human beings.’’
John Kirkman