A few days ago I met an old acquaint­ance of mine. We hadn’t seen each other in years, so nat­ur­ally we chat­ted about what happened to us dur­ing those years. Even­tu­ally we got to me teach­ing diving in South­east Asia. This always seems to fas­cin­ate people and one of the first ques­tions is usu­ally if I’ve seen any sharks. After more than a thou­sand dives the answer is obvi­ously a yes, with a huge grin on my face. I love sharks, I think they are great anim­als and it shows. My old friend didn’t under­stand me. After all, sharks don’t have the cuddly appear­ance of dol­phins and judging from their repu­ta­tion with the pub­lic, they are more like the mass mur­der­ers of the ocean.

We tend to human­ize anim­als. We give them traits. A dol­phin is friendly, con­stantly smil­ing at us. A dog is our trus­ted com­pan­ion, always loyal. A chim­pan­zee is almost human, if a little clumsy and not as intel­li­gent, but all the more like­able because of it. And a shark… Well, a shark is just evil. A beast with huge sharp teeth. sharks rouse ancient fears in us and movies like ‘jaws’ or ‘the deep blue’ have just been aggrav­at­ing the mat­ter. So let’s have a look at the sharks, shall we?

Shark Facts

• Sharks belong to the super­or­der ‘Selachi­morpha’, which is part of the sub­class ‘Elas­mo­branchii’ which in turn belongs to the class ‘Chondrichthyes’.
• In total there are about 370 known shark spe­cies liv­ing in our oceans.
• They are to be found any­where from the sur­face down to 3700m ( like the Por­tuguese Dog­fish or Centro­scym­nus Coelolepis).
• Sharks range in size from around 20cm (like the Pygmy Rib­bon­tail Cat­shark or Eridac­nis Rad­clif­fei) to prob­ably more than 12m (the largest fish in the ocean, the Whale Shark or Rhin­codon Typus).
• Sharks don’t have any table man­ners. They don’t chew their food, but just swal­low it.
• All sharks are car­tilagin­ous, which means that sharks have an internal skel­eton made up entirely of car­til­age. This is more flex­ible and lighter than bone. Also car­tilagin­ous fish usu­ally don’t have a swim blad­der, so they sink to the bot­tom if they stop swimming.
• Sharks have 5–7 pairs of gills.
• The old­est found shark fossil dates from about 400 mil­lion years ago, so sharks are older than the dinosaurs.
• The brain to body weight ratio is com­par­able to that of some mam­mals, so it can be inferred that sharks are not mind­less, instinct driven eat­ing machines, but as intel­li­gent as other animals.
• Sharks don’t go to dent­ists. They have an almost end­less sup­ply of new teeth, which nor­mally get replaced every eight days.
• Most fish lay eggs, which then get fer­til­ized by the male. Sharks almost have ‘nor­mal’ sex. The males have claspers, which are not used to hold onto some­thing, but to deposit the sperm inside the female.
• There are up to 12 pups born at one time, with the pups being small, but fully developed ver­sions of their parents.

Are Sharks Dangerous?

Well, there is no doubt that sharks are dan­ger­ous anim­als, as are many other wild anim­als. But you are more likely to die in a car acci­dent or die from a snake bite than from a shark bite. Quite often attacks are a case of mis­taken iden­tity. The attacked per­son is simply taken for a seal or other type of prey. Most attacks hap­pen on the sur­face, so swim­mers, snorkel­ers and surfers are more at risk than divers. The five most dan­ger­ous sharks are con­sidered to be the White Shark, the Tiger Shark, the Bull Shark, the Short Fin Mako Shark and the Oceanic White­tip Shark. Of these sharks, only the Bull Shark is a true coastal spe­cies. The oth­ers may ven­ture close to shore but are more often found off­shore. So encoun­ters are very rare. If you should ever encounter a big shark, then it is best not to move around too much, sink down to the bot­tom (if you’re a diver) to blend into the sur­round­ings and then to move slowly out of the sharks ter­rit­ory. Chances are it’s just passing through.

My Shark Stories

As I said before, I love sharks!! I haven’t had a single dan­ger­ous moment with sharks and I have never felt unsafe when in the com­pany of sharks. Most of the times it’s the poor shark that gets scared. You would too, if you had 10 divers swim­ming furi­ously at high speed after you to take your pic­ture, when all you want to do is get a quick snack of some tasty Parrotfish.

Manta Point, Gili Trawangan

I had just become man­ager of Dive Indone­sia. It was an excit­ing time for me. The weather was great, the ocean flat as a mir­ror every single day. The days were relaxed with a morn­ing dive to a deeper site and a chilled out shal­lower dive in the after­noon. At this par­tic­u­lar day I had four friends book a morn­ing dive with me. They wanted to see sharks, so I decided to go to Manta Point. Funny name that. I don’t think anyone’s ever seen a manta there, but there are sharks. White and black tip reef sharks. I did a cur­rent check and because there was none we dropped straight over where the sharks usu­ally hung out. 22 m straight down. At first I couldn’t see any. I told my divers to stay put on the sand, while I had a look under some over­hangs and surely there was one rest­ing on the bot­tom. It seemed a bit startled and star­ted circ­ling around us. The cam­eras star­ted to take pic­ture after pic­ture. Then another white-tip appeared and shortly after that another three. It was mes­mer­iz­ing. They came extremely close, as if to pose for a photo, then swam away to give the other sharks a go. Even­tu­ally we had to ascend a bit and two of the sharks fol­lowed us for a few minutes. A bit later we saw a black-tip shoot past us a couple of times. All in all an abso­lutely amaz­ing exper­i­ence. I have never since had so many sharks come so close to me.

My First And Only Whale Shark

I was liv­ing and work­ing at the time on Koh Samui, Thai­l­and. There had been rumours going round the diving com­munity that there is a teen­age whale shark lurk­ing around Sail Rock, a dive site just off the north-eastern tip of Koh Pha-Ngan. I was hav­ing a scuba diver course and hav­ing a very hard time. My stu­dent was extremely nervous and I was dread­ing the next day, with two dives on the agenda. When we arrived at Sail Rock the next day, the ocean was calm and the sun was burn­ing down. We geared up and went for our first dive. Everything went unevent­ful and smoothly, my stu­dent hav­ing for­got­ten all his nervous­ness. And all the time I had half an eye out for my little friend, the whale shark. The second dive went exactly the same as the first. On the way back to our boat we passed another dive boat. The people there were scream­ing at us that they had just seen the whale shark below their boat. But my stu­dent only had about 50 bar left, so it was back to the boat for us. But when my stu­dent was safely on the boat, one of the boat boys told me he’d look after him. I took the chance, dumped my air and went down with Laurent, a friend of mine. We found the shark at about 20 meters. He was just beau­ti­ful. About 4,5 meters long and swim­ming calmly through the water. A few remoras and some suck­er­fish in its wake. At that point we were the only divers in the water. Laurent swam to the sharks right and I stayed on its left. I was so close to him I could have touched the little fella. I moved for­ward a little bit and looked him straight in the eye and I still think that he was look­ing straight back at me, try­ing to fig­ure me out. It was just magical. We swam with him for another 20 minutes, then we were almost out of air and had to ascent and he dis­ap­peared below. Here’s a video of the little fella:

So, What Do I Think?

Acci­dents and attacks will con­tinue to hap­pen as long as we ven­ture into the ocean. We shouldn’t blame the sharks for that, after all it’s their ter­rit­ory. We should treat them with respect, know what they could do to you and remem­ber that they are wild anim­als. They are the kings of the ocean and they keep the bal­ance in the seas. No sharks in the ocean could have a neg­at­ive effect on the food chain in the seas. They are truly amaz­ing anim­als and we know hardly any­thing about them com­pared to some land-based anim­als. Sharks are def­in­itely worth sav­ing. They shouldn’t end up in shark fins soup or as handbags.

Here are some links, which might be of interest:

• Shark­trust
• Wiki­pe­dia entry on sharks
• Shark Research Institute
• Global Shark Attack File