Hammerheads and Swiveltails
Myth and Maneater. By David Kenyon Webster. (Peter Davies, 25s.) ONCE at Manly—it was in 1944, 1 think—we missed one of our friends as we were leaving the surf. He had been taken by a shark—so quickly that no one had noticed it. Shortly after- wards lifeguards found a few scraps of his clothing in the water; nothing more. Mr. Web- ster's book recalls our stupefaction, and our terror. And he elaborates his subject with a battery of photographs and voluminous infor- mation about all kinds of sharks—hammerhead, grey nurse, tiger, the whale-shark (he calls this `the prettiest of the lot,' and I think he means it!) and many less familiar varieties. We are told how to eat the shark, how to skin it by using compressed air, and how to revive it by walking around in a pool and steering it by its dorsal fin—an occupation known as 'shark-walking,' though one could suggest other names. The shark's place in literature, mythology and paint- ing is touched on, and for those whose imagina- tion leads them that way there are numerous accounts of its savaging of humans—and a few escapes.
The classical question of what stimulates sharks is examined closely, but Mr. Webster is most tentative in his conclusions. They do not smell blood at a distance, it seems; but if their curiosity is excited by irregular movements in the water—a wounded fish, or a maladroit swimmer—and there is also blood about, they can be roused to a vicious fury.
No rigid rules are offered for repelling sharks; some have gone away when swimmers have re- mained motionless; and once, a bather, followed by a whole school of them, swam evenly and strongly back to shore and not one of them struck. Elsewhere they have killed still and moving victims, the frantically thrashing and the prayerful; divers who blew bubbles, and men washing in water barely a foot deep miles from the open sea. And they've even leapt into fishing skiffs to get at their quarry. In short, sharks are dangerous and unpredictable and the lesson would seem to be: keep out of water where there could be sharks—but Mr. Webster seems too engrossed with his subject to give such simple advice.
Inter alia there is some information here which may be of use to marine biologists and to those who find themselves in shark waters through no fault of their own. The shark-baiter —the lone swimmer a quarter-mile from the beach—and the skin-diver don't need it as they've already debated the question and chosen the risk. So, in all, this is a curious book and it is difficult to see its raison d'i4re. There is no unity except the rather dubious one generated bx the author's fascination with his subject, and the writing is for the most part very scrappy. Worse than that a photograph of a man, shockingly pallid, dying on a Californian beach after being mauled, is In very poor taste. What is the point? If it's to warn, the rest of the book makes the warning seem factitious, for there is something strange about Mr. Webster's fascination with sharks. Especially when one considers that he himself died while shark-fishing—in away which seems inexplicable for an experienced boatman. In the introduction, his widow—in what is surely the most inept of obituaries—says this:
Finally a fishing-boat found the Tusitala awash five miles offshore. One oar and the tiller were missing, and so was Dave.
Was Mr. Webster himself a shark-baiter of a rather sophisticated kind? A disturbing question. None the less, there will be some, I suppose, on this tamed island who will experience vicariously from Mr. Webster's book the occasional terror of those whose coasts face 'the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise'—and the maneater. Perhaps this was his purpose.
KEITH HARRISON
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