Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo, Mike Capuzzo Page B
Authors: Michael Capuzzo, Mike Capuzzo
Tags: History
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shark-infested waters with a dog greatly enhances his odds of being attacked by a shark nearby, according to ichthyologist George Burgess, who directs the International Shark Attack File, a compilation of well-known shark attacks. “The irregular swimming actions of animals are extremely attractive to sharks. The front paws doggy-paddling, creating a maximum splash, the rear legs bicycle-pedaling, four rapidly moving legs making a blending motion at the surface couldn't be a whole lot more attractive.” In 1987, off Panama City, Florida, a man jumped from his boat to go swimming. His girlfriend lowered his poodle into the water, and within moments a large bull shark removed much of the man's leg, killing him instantly. The Shark Attack File is filled with accounts of sharks drawn to human victims by the erratic thrashing of a paddling dog. That afternoon in 1916, sound waves from the seventy-five-pound dog drummed on the great fish's head with feral intensity, a jagged, broken signal of distress.
The shark swam nearer, preparing to launch its signature attack—sudden, surprising, relentless. Charles stroked smoothly and happily, unaware he was being profiled. The great white was closing in.
A small crowd on the beach watched as Vansant, a strong swimmer, stroked out beyond the breakers. They were as a group in that moment, standing on the edge of time in 1916, wise in ways moderns are not, educated in the classics and myths, more in touch with the sea. Sperm whales were the oil fields of their time, the ocean the highway. But these people lived before modern oceanography, before radio and television, and were no more prepared to witness the first man-eating shark in American history rise from the waves than to see Captain Nemo's
Nautilus
surface from the abyss.
Who could blame them if they saw a “sea monster”?
There were other ghosts of antiquity the Edwardians saw along the beach that evening, visions that enchanted them in the pleasing form of a young man and dog at play in the simple theater of the sea. The virile young athlete was an Edwardian icon. Dorian Gray,
The Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan,
and the Boy Scouts revealed the cultural worship of Pan, who “is not dead,” Robert Louis Stevenson declared. In reaction to industrialism and Victorian repression, the young man who never grows old led “the whole earth in choral harmony.” Charles was eager to prove his vitality, and there was no finer place to do so than at the beach, his form and vigor on display in society as they were nowhere else. “The surf,” according to beach historians Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker, “emerged as an area in which the strong were separated from the weak, where young males played out the drama of natural selection before the eyes of discriminating females.”
In the late afternoon of July the first, Charles was swimming the Atlantic to see how far he could go. Long-distance swimming was an adventure that enthralled the public. Charles did not slow his stroke when he and the Chesapeake retriever had passed all the swimmers in the water. This earned a small cheer from shore. Unknown to Charles, he had entered a wilderness, and his desire to set himself apart led him to violate a fundamental rule of nature: Stay with the group. A lone mammal, exposed and vulnerable, invites a predator. In a study of great white shark behavior by George Burgess and Matthew Callahan using data from the International Shark Attack File, no other humans were within ten feet of the victim in 85 percent of the attacks. As Charles was being feted and admired from the beach and boardwalk, he was being observed, as well, underwater.
Fifty feet away, in deeper water, the great white was mulling whether to attack. Far from our image of a mindless killer that overwhelms its victims, the great white takes no chances when challenging prey. Once a great white decides the odds favor it, the decision is beyond appeal, the attack relentless.
As the crowd
The shark swam nearer, preparing to launch its signature attack—sudden, surprising, relentless. Charles stroked smoothly and happily, unaware he was being profiled. The great white was closing in.
A small crowd on the beach watched as Vansant, a strong swimmer, stroked out beyond the breakers. They were as a group in that moment, standing on the edge of time in 1916, wise in ways moderns are not, educated in the classics and myths, more in touch with the sea. Sperm whales were the oil fields of their time, the ocean the highway. But these people lived before modern oceanography, before radio and television, and were no more prepared to witness the first man-eating shark in American history rise from the waves than to see Captain Nemo's
Nautilus
surface from the abyss.
Who could blame them if they saw a “sea monster”?
There were other ghosts of antiquity the Edwardians saw along the beach that evening, visions that enchanted them in the pleasing form of a young man and dog at play in the simple theater of the sea. The virile young athlete was an Edwardian icon. Dorian Gray,
The Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan,
and the Boy Scouts revealed the cultural worship of Pan, who “is not dead,” Robert Louis Stevenson declared. In reaction to industrialism and Victorian repression, the young man who never grows old led “the whole earth in choral harmony.” Charles was eager to prove his vitality, and there was no finer place to do so than at the beach, his form and vigor on display in society as they were nowhere else. “The surf,” according to beach historians Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker, “emerged as an area in which the strong were separated from the weak, where young males played out the drama of natural selection before the eyes of discriminating females.”
In the late afternoon of July the first, Charles was swimming the Atlantic to see how far he could go. Long-distance swimming was an adventure that enthralled the public. Charles did not slow his stroke when he and the Chesapeake retriever had passed all the swimmers in the water. This earned a small cheer from shore. Unknown to Charles, he had entered a wilderness, and his desire to set himself apart led him to violate a fundamental rule of nature: Stay with the group. A lone mammal, exposed and vulnerable, invites a predator. In a study of great white shark behavior by George Burgess and Matthew Callahan using data from the International Shark Attack File, no other humans were within ten feet of the victim in 85 percent of the attacks. As Charles was being feted and admired from the beach and boardwalk, he was being observed, as well, underwater.
Fifty feet away, in deeper water, the great white was mulling whether to attack. Far from our image of a mindless killer that overwhelms its victims, the great white takes no chances when challenging prey. Once a great white decides the odds favor it, the decision is beyond appeal, the attack relentless.
As the crowd
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