The Coast of Coral Read online

  Feeling wistfully that I would have liked to see a little more of Australia before consigning myself to the deep, I followed Keith out into the sea. The technique was straightforward, but required careful timing. You had to hurl yourself off the rocks at the moment when an extra high wave came in, then swim like mad to get out of the white water and into the relative safety beyond the breakers. If you missed your cue and leaped into an already retreating wave, you were likely to be dumped on the barnacle-covered rocks.

  Mike had already gone in, and a little later I too made the transition without mishap, joining him and Keith about fifty yards out. We could still see (whenever we happened to be on the crest of a wave) our colleague making his slow but undoubtedly sure way back along the rocky foot of the cliff. Half the time, however, we could see nothing of the shore, being entirely surrounded by small mountains of water which somewhat restricted the view in the horizontal direction.

  Straight down, on the other hand, the view was fine. The water was very clear, and we could see an interestingly rugged vista over which countless small fish, and not a few large ones, were weaving to and fro. Sometimes the sea bed would be thirty feet below us—sometimes, when we were in the trough of a wave, it would be ten feet closer. Even when we dived down to the bottom, we could feel the pressure changing as the weight of water above us con­tinually varied. It was an exhilarating experience, and per­fectly safe as long as we kept away from the angry seas pounding against the shore.

  We made our slow way around the headland and back into Bilgola Bay, where we were glad to see that the fury of the waves had somewhat abated. Mike, who was used to swimming in white water, had gone on ahead, leaving me in Keith’s charge. I was getting rather cold, and a little tired, but there was so much to see that I was in no great hurry to reach land again. The sea bed above which I was switchbacking at the whim of the waves was dotted, with huge boulders and crevassed with innumerable small val­leys. Sometimes I would take a deep breath and dive down into one of these, as often as not disturbing some great fish of a species as strange to me as I was probably strange to it.

  Suddenly there was the unmistakable “spang” of a spear gun—a sound which can be heard through water for a dis­tance of a hundred feet or more by human ears, and doubtless for much farther by the sensitive vibration detectors with which all fish are equipped. Looking up, I saw that Keith’s gun was floating on the surface, while Keith himself was down below wrestling with a fine thirty-pound parrot fish that had been impaled on his spear. Feeling tired and cold as I was, I felt no great enthusiasm to act as Keith’s caddy and carry his gun back to land for him while he dealt with his still-struggling victim. This, however, was a somewhat shortsighted view, for later that day I was one of the twenty people who had a good meal out of this savory titbit—and still left quite a few helpings over.

  We could now no longer avoid the problem of getting back to shore, for it is not advisable to swim in the neigh­borhood of struggling fish if there are sharks about. (And in Australian waters there are always sharks about, whether you can see them or not.) It is not as easy to get out of rough water, onto a rocky shore, as it is to get into it, but the same principles apply. You have to choose a likely looking spot where you can scramble up without being shredded by too many barnacles, then watch the pattern of the waves and seize the right moment to make landfall. This is not a simple thing to do while you are bobbing up and down in a maelstrom of broken water. If you have calculated correctly, you arrive at your chosen rock on the crest of a wave, and cling to it like a limpet when the water recedes. You then have a full five seconds to scramble ashore before the next wave arrives and tries to sweep you away.

  Somewhat to my surprise, I managed to do this without any broken bones or major contusions, and now felt very proud of myself for being a fully qualified “white water man.” I rather wished my Florida friends, accustomed to diving off a coast which is one enormous sandbank, could have seen this combination of mountaineering and aquabatics. At the sometime, I decided that I had had quite enough of this kind of thing for one day.

  I had reckoned without my Australian friends. They clearly imagined that I was disappointed at so uneventful a trip to the seaside, and were determined to do something about it. No sooner had I warmed myself up on the rocks, well back from the spray still being flung up by the brea­kers, than there was a commotion fifty feet out. Reg Kee­gan and his colleagues, who had been off spear fishing on their own, popped up out of the waves and yelled at me, “Hey, Art! We’ve got a wobby for you—a six-footer!”

  The wobbegong shark (Oreotolobus maculates) has al­ready been mentioned. It is a normally inoffensive beast, which spends most of its time on the bottom, where it is quite hard to see owing to its excellent camouflage. But all six-foot sharks should be treated with caution—particularly when spears have been poked into them. I remembered a recent incident in which a diver got embroiled with a wobby and ended up, as he put it ruefully, looking as if he had a fight with a sewing machine. Until then, spearmen had tended to regard this shark as a joke, but now they took it more seriously. Though wobbegongs’ teeth are not very big, they are extremely sharp, and there are an awful lot of them.

  I looked out across the still-seething water, thought, “Save me from my friends!” and climbed reluctantly back into my flippers. When I had fought my way out through the boiling surf, I found Reg and his pals swimming around the punctured wobbegong, which looked much more than six feet. It was a broad, ugly beast, with a peculiarly re­pulsive fringe of tendrils dangling from its mouth, and it was weaving to and fro over the bottom apparently not much inconvenienced by the spear stuck in its left side. The spear, however, gave its hunters some control over its movements, for as long as the line held it was tethered to the gun which had shot it. The owner of the gun could “play” the shark just as an angler plays a fish, though with considerably less safety. Perhaps the shark could not get away from its captor, but it looked as if the reverse was also true.

  I had just arrived on the scene, and was watching the tableau from a respectful distance, when another spear was planted in the shark—this time from the right. It at once turned over on its back, and for a moment seemed com­pletely stunned. Then it recovered itself, but was obviously in no position to put up any further resistance. With lines now securely attached to it on either side, it could be steered in any direction, as effectively as if it had been fitted with bridle and reins.

  When the shark was finally landed on the beach, it cre­ated a considerable sensation, for it was still very much alive and wriggled violently from time to time. Just to be on the safe side, we wedged a block of wood between its needlelike teeth, but some halfhearted attempts to finish it off with a knife came to nothing. It was impossible to get the point through the beast’s skin, which was like very flexible chain mail. The knife merely formed a dimple in it, and skittered harmlessly around.

  We eventually gave the shark—all six feet of him—to a small boy who seemed to think it might make a good pet. By this time it was in a somewhat moribund condition, so I doubt if this project ever got very much further.

  As an introduction to Australian sharks, the wobbegong was hardly awe-inspiring. Perhaps it was not a fair example, but it certainly supported the general opinion that, to the underwater hunter or explorer, sharks were not a serious menace. This view was to be dramatically and tragically challenged, almost on our doorstep, just over two weeks later.

  IV

  Death of a Spearman

  On the afternoon of January 17, 1955, a thirteen-year-old boy named John Willis was spear fishing off Balmoral Beach, at the exact spot described in the previous chapter. The water was not very clear, and he was swimming alone, but he was so close to a familiar shore that it probably never occurred to him that he might be in any danger. A few minutes earlier, another spearman had told him that a large shark had been seen in the neighborhood, but John had ignored the warning.

  He was about twenty-five yard
s from the shore when the spectators heard him scream for help and saw him throw up his arms. He swam desperately toward the rocks, while his blood incarnadined the water around him. Slash­ing through the reddening waves was the dorsal fin of a large shark, which attacked three times while the boy was trying to reach safety.

  He managed to get into the shallow water, then col­lapsed a few feet from shore. Some bystanders waded out and carried him to the rocks, but it was too late. He was still breathing, but had ceased to bleed, because he had no blood left. There were gaping wounds on both legs, and it must have taken great determination and endurance for him to reach the shore at all. He died within seconds from shock and loss of blood, while the shark was still circling in the shallows only a few yards out. Soon afterward it was joined by two others, no doubt attracted by the blood staining the water. Local fishermen set out in boats to shoot the intruders, but by the time they arrived the sharks had left. All that could be done then was to set out baited hooks and hope that the murderer would return to the scene of the crime.

  The death of John Willis provided the main headlines in next morning’s Sydney papers. For a few days, there was a hurried check of the shark nets which guard many of the bathing pools, following complaints that some of these protective barriers were pierced with underwater holes several feet across. Balmoral Beach was deserted, ex­cept by morbid-minded spectators wandering over the rocks and looking at the two buoys from which the baited hooks were hanging.

  Yet, within a week, Balmoral Beach was back in busi­ness. A few cautious mothers, amid much wailing and lam­entation, had disposed of their offsprings’ spear guns, but the setback to the rapidly expanding sport of underwater hunting was only temporary. Nevertheless, this tragic in­cident made many underwater explorers—including Mike and myself—have second thoughts about the dangers of the realm they were invading.

  The Australians have a curiously ambiguous attitude toward their sharks. They are quite proud of them, and fiercely resent any suggestion that they are not the most dangerous in the world. Many of the splendid beaches have shark-proof enclosures, but far more people will be found outside the nets than within them. The swimmers know perfectly well that there are sharks around, but do not re­gard them as a hazard which affects them, personally. This is perhaps a reasonable point of view, since around the entire Australian continent only two people are killed by sharks every year. The same number of road fatalities occur each day in the state of New South Wales alone.

  Two days after the attack on John Willis, Mike and I went down to Balmoral Beach again, carrying our underwater cameras and Aqualungs. The reason why we used breathing gear in such shallow water was simple. If the killer was still around, we wanted to be able to stay on the bottom, so that he would not mistake us for swimmers or snorkling spearmen.

  Mike was carrying the Robot camera in its large metal case; I had the Leica, with flash attachment, in an almost equally massive container. A punch on the nose with a camera case is one of the approved methods of dealing with inquisitive sharks; the larger and stronger the case, the happier you feel behind it. I was also carrying my spear, and had a string bag full of spare flash bulbs tethered to any waist like a captive balloon. With all this equipment, it was some time before I was satisfactorily submerged, and as I wound my way through the clammy tentacles of the help I felt much more like the White Knight from Through The Looking Glass than a daring underwater adventurer.

  Visibility was poor, and I was hard pressed to keep up with Mike—a better and less encumbered swimmer. Needless to say, I kept looking in all directions, wondering if at any moment I would see that gray, superbly streamlined shape slide out of the gloom. My general mood could be defined as alertness rather than apprehension; if the hark did appear, I was chiefly anxious to get him in the game picture as Mike, so that I could obtain a good photographic composition.

  I was quite startled when, fifty feet ahead, I saw a weird white object hanging in midwater. For a moment I could not identify it; it was something so out of its normal context that it was meaningless. Then I realized that I was looking at a joint of meat, impaled on a hook just as it night have been in a butcher’s shop. It was a horrible, pallid white as it turned slowly in the haze; a few tiny fish were nibbling around it, but it had obviously been untouched by anything of real size.

  With some reluctance, I grasped this rather repulsive object while Mike took some shots of me; then I photographed him doing the same thing. The water was so dirty that we had little hope of getting worthwhile pictures, but it seemed a pity to have come thus far without using the cameras.

  There was a second buoy about a hundred yards away, in rather clearer water. The hook here had been baited with two lumps of liver, but with equal lack of success. Either the sharks had left the area, or the tangle of wires and ropes around the bait made it too obvious a trap.

  Mike and I spent some twenty minutes swimming through the gloomy waters in which John Willis had died two days before. We did not feel particularly brave, nor did we consider that our action was foolhardy. From the shark’s point of view, we were a pair of unusually large fish, quite at home in the water and obviously well able to look after ourselves. Perhaps it was there all the time, keep­ing just out of range and waiting until we had gone away. Even without the vibrations of the Aqualung exhaust valves, its sensing apparatus would have told it of our pres­ence. Sharks, like all fish, have extremely poor eyesight, and rely on vision only when they are very close to their target. It seems more than probable that many of the attacks made on human beings may have been due to mis­taken identity, though that is poor consolation to the victim.

  This may have been the case with John Willis, since otherwise it is difficult to account for this attack in an area where hundreds of other spear fishers had operated for years. Another plausible theory was that John had speared a fish or lobster, and it was that which had attracted the shark. There have been many cases of sharks stealing the catch from a spearman—sometimes when he had already tied it to his waist!—without doing more than nudge the hunter. In such circumstances a shark might well attack if the spearman lost his head and tried to swim away.

  By the time Mike and I left the water, a small crowd had collected to watch our activities, and a press photog­rapher was waiting for us when we emerged. It was at this point that I made an unfortunate mistake that I have never ceased to regret—I handed over our exposed films to the press. I had not realized that the subtleties of fine grain 35 millimeter processing are unknown in newspaper darkrooms, where films are apparently boiled in concentrated quicklime in order to produce results in two minutes. When the negatives came back from the darkroom, they were completely ruined—the images had been burned out, and only a couple of shots were even recognizable. It was a bitter lesson; thereafter we let no one else process our films.

  John Willis has the sad distinction of being the first spearman definitely known to have been killed by a shark. Two weeks later, a twenty-six-year-old German immigrant was taken at a spot about two miles from Balmoral Beach. The injuries in both cases were almost identical—severe lacerations of the lower limbs, causing death in a few sec­onds through shock and loss of blood. The second victim, however, was not diving, but was merely swimming on the surface. The distinction may seem trivial, but is actually quite fundamental. A swimmer without face mask is blind, and does not know what is happening—or approaching— below him. A shark probably classifies surface swimmers, drowning men, and injured fish in the same category—but will be much more cautious in tackling an underwater ex­plorer making his calm and confident way through an el­ement no longer alien to him.

  These two deaths, coming so close together, were hardly calculated to encourage us as we prepared to leave for the Reef. I have often wondered if the shark I met in Balmoral was the one responsible for the later killing. There is no evidence, of course, that John Willis and the young German were killed by the same animal, but statistics in­dicate strongly that shark fat
alities occur in pairs in a given area, as if one particular shark acquires the taste for human flesh.

  A single brief encounter was hardly enough to qualify me as an expert on sharks, but it was reasonably certain that I would meet a good many more on the Reef. Meanwhile, I no longer regretted scaring away the one that had circled me in Balmoral Bay. If I had not, this book might have ended abruptly at Chapter I.

  Australian spear fishing received a distinct setback from this second tragedy, and it was not helped by the release, a week or so later, of a sensational film showing huge sharks being hooked off Bondi, the most famous of Syd­ney’s beaches. Mike and I had already had some memorable experiences here, thanks to Don Linklater, the hospitable and energetic secretary of the Underwater Explorers’ Club.

  Don and his wife Lois form an underwater team which will doubtless be joined in due course by their daughter Margaret. They live on the cliff overlooking Bondi, and their back garden is usually full of the diving equipment which Don develops and sells through his company, Un­dersee Products. Our first trip out into the well-populated waters of Bondi Bay took place in one of Don’s inventions, a large catamaran constructed from three flying-boat floats bolted to a framework of aluminum girders.

  It was a boisterous day, but the catamaran was assem­bled and launched without much trouble from a sheltered cove near the headland which looks across the mile-wide bay. No less than six fully equipped hunters then climbed aboard and pushed out to sea, sitting uncomfortably on piles of air cylinders, underwater cameras, and spear guns. I was not among them; I had stayed ashore to film the launching. According to theory, the catamaran would come back and collect me when I had shot my movie sequence.

  Unfortunately, as soon as the Linklater family yacht set out to sea the waves became so rough that it was impos­sible for it to turn back and pick me up. Those aboard waved to me to come and join them, but Mahomet was not only reluctant to go to the mountain—he was by no means sure that he could get there. My face mask and flippers were out in the catamaran, separated from me by the boiling surf. It never occurred to my Australian friends, who had been amphibious since childhood, that I couldn’t swim. So I stood uncertainly with the spray breaking around me, while the catamaran circled a hundred yards out, its oc­cupants wanting to know what the blankety blank I was waiting for. It was impossible to turn and slink away, pretending an urgent prior engagement, for I was now hemmed in by the large crowd which always gathers when any diving is in progress.