Table of Contents:

Home
Acknowledgements
Bill Roorbach Dedication
Submission Info

Archive:

Volume 1 Spring 2002

Volume 2 Spring 2003

Volume 2 Spring 2004

Volume 2 Spring 2005

Volume 5
Spring 2006:

Contest Winners

Editor's Prize

Tumbling Dice
- Steven Shattuck-

Honorable Mentions


My Peripeteia
- Tara Sumrall-

A Charming Red Stiletto Is Dangling From A Cloud
- Allison Davis-

Ryan NcNeill
Assumption College

A Dangerous Reputation
         
          On July 6, 2001, 8 year old Jesse Arbogast waded into the warm knee-deep surf of the Gulf Stream. As the sun began its panoramic dip into the Atlantic Ocean, Dan Dillon and his grandson fished a couple hundred yards away from Jesse. Nesting sea turtles lurked offshore waiting for dark and the opportunity to follow their million year old instinct to lay and bury eggs. Jesse played amidst an aquatic buffet, consisting of bait fish, sluggish sea turtles, and hosts of other edible marine life riding the nutrient rich currents of the Gulf Stream.
          Carcharinus leucas, more commonly referred to as the bull shark, is nondescript as far as sharks go. At 7 feet long it fails to inspire the awe and terror of the Great White. Bull sharks are usually dull gray to brown, and lack distinctive markings, unlike the striped patterns of the tiger shark, or the bony eye protuberances of the hammer head. They rank low on sport fisherman’s radar and have been compared to reeling in “heavy loads of laundry,” when hooked on a fishing rod. For years the only honorable mentions the bull shark received, was in its exceptional ability to survive in fresh water.
          Vance Flosenzier, Jesse’s uncle sat on the beach enjoying the warm evening breeze. Unbeknownst to him, or Jessie, a 6 foot bull shark was cruising the shallows. Possibly lured into the area by schools of bait fish, sea turtles, or smaller sharks, the animal instead, surged toward Jesse and ambushed the youth in less then two feet of water.  The vicious attack lasted only seconds due to the heroic efforts of Jesse’s uncle, who, grabbing the shark by the tail pulled the thrashing fish out of the water and onto the beach. The damage however, had already been done. One of Jesse’s arms had been bitten off and large pieces of flesh near his thigh had been sheared from the bone. Bleeding profusely and slipping into shock, both shark and Jesse, fought for life on blood stained sand.
          Shark attacks are glorified in every facet of media. Films like Jaws, television mini-series like Red Water, and national best-sellers like MEG, are examples of the fear and fascination people demonstrate toward sharks. Each of the preceding examples all follow the same basic plot: blood thirsty killer shark shows up, tears unsuspecting victims to pieces, and is finally disposed by the story’s hero in a completely unrealistic albeit entertaining manner. Man triumphs over nature and at least until the next sequel, it is once again safe to go back into the water.
          The 25 foot fictional great white shark in Jaws dramatically explodes in a torrent of blood and guts, the human hero cheering joyfully at having vanquished the formidable monster. The bull shark that nearly killed Jesse Arbogast, after literally being wrestled on to dry land by Jesse’s uncle, was killed by a shot gun blast from a park ranger. Neither hero cheered as they watched a child’s life slowly slip away; nor did the shark inspire the same sense of malevolent evil as the great white in Jaws. Instead, the animal lay dead on a beach, skinny, clearly malnourished; nothing more then a large, dead, fish.
          The late novelist Peter Benchley wrote the novel Jaws in 1974:
          “The new knowledge we’ve gained since the mid-1970’s has convinced me that while almost all of the great white shark behavior I described does in fact happen in real life, almost none of them happened for the reasons I described, we knew so little back then, and have learned so much since, I couldn’t possibly write the same story today” (Benchley 20).
          Benchley’s enlightenment was the result of years spent researching and diving with sharks. He encountered the three deadliest species, including accidentally stumbling upon a great white outside the confines of an anti-shark cage. Benchley also experienced a frightening encounter with a bull shark. The man who almost single handedly cemented the image of the blood thirsty human eating machine, has spent the remainder of his life debunking the myths he wrote about thirty years ago, and as a conservationist, fought to protectsharks from the far deadlier enemy of man.
Why do sharks fascinate people? Take a trip to the New England Aquarium; a place where I worked for several months, and watch the throngs of kids who follow the 5 foot long sandbar sharks around their 200,000 gallon fish tank. Sand tigers have been known to attack aquarium handlers, but to my knowledge an attack has never occurred at the New England Aquarium. The creatures demand, and receive, the respect of the feeders, which let the sharks devour whole mackerel right out of their nylon clad hands.
As an employee of the Aquarium I would often stop and watch these graceful animals glide by the windows, their snaggle toothed stiletto maws opening and closing rhythmically. The eyes of the sand tiger shark are unsettling. They are not black like the “lifeless doll’s eyes,” of the shark in Jaws. Instead they have a sickening yellow tallow like tint, and an ink dark iris, so utterly alien and inhuman it is impossible not to let the combination of eyes and teeth send an uncomfortable sensation down the back of your spine.
I witnessed first-hand the terror these animals are capable of producing in human beings. While responding to a call on my walkie-talkie about an abandoned carriage on the top floor of the viewing tank, I heard a high pitched shriek. The piercing cry did not come from somebody playing around or acting, the fear inherent in the howl was shockingly sincere. The scene was bizarre; a father holding a thrashing child up to the glass, slowly moving the horrified body alongside the slow moving sand tiger shark. I watched as the child’s face contorted into a mask of sheer terror as he attempted to squirm out of his father’s grasp. The adult sported a goofy grin as he kept pace with the shark and continued to thrust the panic stricken toddler to within inches of the animal’s teeth and eyes. An older child, possibly his brother, laughed and clapped as he skipped excitedly behind his father. A woman leaned against the railing, nonchalantly watching the scene unfold in a manner suggesting boredom.
          The event is the closest I’ve ever come to witnessing a shark attack. Obviously the boy was in no physical danger from the shark, but seeing the interaction between animal and human being, the look of fear, the emotional trauma suffered, it is an event the child likely will never forget. No rational person would blame the shark for frightening the little boy. The shark was simply doing what it is programmed to do every day of its life, swim. The father’s sadistic sense of humor is the culprit. Human behavior, not shark behavior, caused an act of what I consider child abuse. The shark is innocent, and while it may be difficult to call an animal capable of biting a human being in half, and known to do so innocent, consider the thousands of physiological differences that separate human beings and sharks.
          To quote fictional ichthyologist Matt Hooper, “[Sharks] are a miracle of evolution. All this shark knows how to do is swim, eat, and make little sharks, that’s all” (Jaws 1975). For all the unrealistic shark activity in the film Jaws, Hooper’s description of shark etiquette is accurate. In the tragic case of Jesse Arbogast the shark did not venture into shallow water seeking human prey. Instead the shark functioned in a manner consistent with millions of years of evolution. Sharks hunt at dusk and dawn, following smaller creatures in which they feed. An abundance of potential prey items was present in the surf, and unfortunately a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time occurred.
          According to George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File, practically every attack on man can be attributed to mistaken identity. Peter Benchley reiterates the point by saying, “when we use the word shark attack, for the most part we’re talking about shark bites, one step in the shark’s normal feeding pattern, motivated not by rage, fear, or frenzy, but by curiosity, confusion, and hunger” (Benchley 84). Sharks do not normally target children frolicking in the surf. Unfortunately, the tragic event was a result of an animal in its own environment encountering a human being and reacting to it in the way nature intended it to react.
          Unlike the father in the aquarium, nobody forced interaction between human being and shark. Luckily Jesse survived the ordeal but will carry the unthinkable trauma with him for the rest of his life. No evil force existed in Pensacola Florida on July 6, 2001. Evil does not exist in the animal kingdom. Misinformation and ignorance are the only enemies people face when interacting with nature. The shark, like the tiger, grizzly bear, or timber wolf, is an animal deserving of respect, not only because of the potential danger they can pose towards man, but for their beauty and gracefulness as creatures possessing integral roles in the natural world.
          The myth of the man eating shark is more dangerous to shark than man. Statistically the odds of getting eaten by a shark are .000003 %, the formula taking into account the number of hours spent in the ocean, and the number of attack incidents recorded in a year. Compare those numbers to the number of sharks a single Japanese fishing trawl processes on an annual basis, and the true predator-prey relationship emerges. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex web, it is accurate to say more people eat sharks, then sharks eat people, by an equally absurd percentage. If one could choose to pick a species, based solely on likelihood of being eaten by the other species, human beings would be the clear victor. In a life and death struggle between man and shark, man wins 99 times out of 100. Unfortunately, it seems the one time becomes the rule instead of the exception.
          Human beings do not have to suddenly abandon recreationally swimming in the world’s oceans, to avoid being eaten by a shark. Instead, simple rules and guidelines can be followed and the threat of an attack virtually eliminated. In the Jesse Arbogast case, a human being found himself unknowingly mixed up in a food chain. The shark’s natural response was to investigate this new potential prey item. Was it mistaken identity? Nobody can say for sure. Murky water with low visibility is usually attributed to shark attacks where mistaken identity is believed to have occurred. Since the attack happened in waning day light, the likelihood that the water’s visibility was far from optimal is a reasonable assumption. Brackish, cloudy water, especially near the mouths of rivers, are ideal habitats for predators like sharks. Benchley lists the ways to avoid shark attack: avoiding cloudy water, swimming at dawn and dusk, or swimming between sandbars. These three safety tips dramatically decrease the already infinitesimal odds of being attacked by a shark.
          Part of the reason why sharks fascinate people is because people know little about them. It has become a cliché to describe the shark as “nature’s perfect killing machine,” yet the moniker fits appropriately. How can people not help but become enamored with a creature capable of living up to that description? Just because a shark is equipped to kill a human being in the ocean does not mean the action is hardwired into its behavior. Most sharks never encounter human beings, and if they do, the shark usually either retreats from the unfamiliar organism, or ends up dead.
          As the role of sharks in the environment becomes better understood, their importance, and more importantly the threat of their absence become clear. The sudden disappearance of sharks would wreak havoc on the ocean’s ecosystems. Due to the efforts of activists like Peter Benchley and George Burgess, awareness about sharks has increased. Tragic events like the attack on Jesse Arbogast continue to be misinterpreted by the public. The result is a bad reputation for sharks and a dangerous threat to shark species facing extinction. Education of the public and stricter conservation laws and penalties should be implemented to help sharks. Information can prevent attacks on human beings as well as debunk the myths and misconceptions of these fascinating animals. Sharks have come a long way compared to the depiction of the great white in Jaws, but still face the threat of a species who fails to understand and appreciate the shark’s true significance.