Who’s Afraid of the Massive Dangerous Shark?

For Shiffman, our incapability to conceptualize relative danger is each an ecological and aesthetic tragedy, undermining conservation efforts whereas stopping us from exulting within the glory of sharks — with their dermal denticles, their whole lack of bones and their means to listen to an injured fish from a mile away. The syllogism he implies is reassuring: Solely idiots are afraid of sharks; you aren’t an fool; subsequently you aren’t afraid of sharks.

The plain speak stands in distinction to a best-selling ebook from 2005, Susan Casey’s “The Satan’s Tooth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Amongst America’s Nice White Sharks.” That one is engineered for goose bumps. When two researchers in Casey’s ebook hop on a ship to look at shark exercise, it isn’t lengthy earlier than “the dorsal fin of fable and nightmare rose from under and got here tunneling towards them like a German U-boat, creating a large wake.” The ebook’s title performs on our fears too, with a chunk of sunshine misdirection; the “satan’s tooth” refers to not sharks however to the craggy Farallon Islands in California the place they cluster.

The dominant shark iconography of my youth (18 miles from the Farallon Islands, by the way) took the type of a bumper sticker from a close-by surf store. The sticker was all over the place. It seemed like a no-smoking signal, with a purple circle bisected by a slash — however as a substitute of a cigarette, the circle contained a picture of a shark. Like every respectable piece of lore, this was not what it seemed to be. The concept of banning sharks the way in which you’d ban cigarettes or double parking was a cosmic joke. The surfers who bore the sticker had been on the identical web page: Disguising your self as prey and paddling right into a shark habitat was equal to signing a launch of legal responsibility waiver.

I go to Marconi much less typically now, however extra from inaptitude than concern. The author and naturalist Henry Beston described the realm in 1928: “The peninsula stands farther out to sea than some other portion of the Atlantic coast of the US; it’s the outermost of outer shores.” Beston, who retreated to the dunes after his experiences in World Struggle I, likened the sound of an incoming tide to “the fury of battle.” The sandbars alongside the coast shift on what looks like an hourly foundation, leading to waves that repel makes an attempt at coercion. Calculating the coordinates the place swell, wind, present and tide harmonize requires a granular information that’s reserved, accurately, for locals.

An app referred to as Sharktivity tracks sightings within the space, with the concept to “cut back encounters and promote security.” Each time a white shark sighting is confirmed close to a public seaside, app customers obtain a purple alert. A number of the tagged sharks have been named. (Agnes, Massive Papi, Turbo, Sean.) Sometimes I monitor the app to see the place the gang is convening, although Sharktivity warns that “THE ONLY WAY TO COMPLETELY RULE OUT A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH A SHARK IS TO STAY ON SHORE.”

From Shiffman’s ebook I’ve realized that demise by Carcharodon carcharias and mates is much much less seemingly than most shark media would have us imagine. The haunting powers of the bar graph at Marconi have diminished. However possibly it’s because demise by shark not strikes me because the worst technique to perish, in contrast with the options. Many occasions since studying “Why Sharks Matter,” I’ve performed out the situation in my head. Floating in salty bliss, I sense an aberrant shift in water molecules. Alongside comes a statistically anomalous nice white. Probably it’s Agnes. I’m hit, I am going into shock and I bleed out beneath an enormous and uncaring sky, dying precisely as I lived: unsuspecting and engulfed.