22 Shark Agamst Man 



except for a quirk of geography. The shark had chosen to appear right 

 off the pier at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography— and an ichthy- 

 ology student was there to identify it as a Great White shark. The next 

 day, a Scripps specialist in sharks, Arthur O. Flechsig, was at the pier. 

 He baited a hook and caught the shark. It got away before Flechsig and 

 his two companions could land it. But it had attacked their boat not far 

 from the pier and left behind proof of identification as reliable as a 

 fingerprint: two teeth embedded in the gouged bottom of the skiff. 

 One of the most positive means of identifying a shark is by its teeth. 

 There was no doubt that the teeth in Flechsig's boat belonged to a 

 Great White. 



Within two weeks, nine Great Whites had been caught in the area. 



Shark attacks had been rare in California coastal waters up to 1955, 

 when the Great Whites suddenly appeared. Besides two cases of swim- 

 mers being brushed by sharks, there were on record only three known 

 attacks, one of which in Monterey Bay, on December 7, 1952, was fatal. 

 But in 1955, California's shark-attack pattern changed drastically: two 

 reports of minor injuries from encounters with sharks off Venice Beach 

 ... a grapple between a surfboarder and a shark off Santa Monica . . . 

 a vicious attack upon a SCUBA diver by a 3-foot shark . . . the aston- 

 ishing escape of a spear-fisherman who had been seized by a shark but 

 suffered only a scratched foot. The spear-fisherman had been diving in 

 Monterey Bay. He wore a black rubber diving suit and rubber swim 

 fins. The shark grabbed him by the ankles, ripped both "ankles" off 

 the diver's rubber suit, tore ofiF his right swim fin and a heavy wool sock, 

 and bit through his left swim fin. The fisherman identified the shark as 

 a Great White. 



There was one report of a non-fatal attack in California in 1956. 

 Then in 1957, one eerie encounter with a shark was reported. Peter 

 Savino and Daniel Hogan were swimming beyond the breakers of Morro 

 Bay, near San Luis Obispo. Savino became tired and Hogan began towing 

 him toward shore. A shark appeared, nudged Savino and slashed his arm, 

 apparently by rubbing him with its sandpaper hide. "I have blood on 

 my arms! We'd better get out of here!" Savino yelled to Hogan. They 

 began swimming separately. Hogan turned a moment later to see whether 

 Savino was all right. Savino had disappeared, without an outcry, and 

 was never seen again. 



In 1959, California again experienced a Year of the Shark. On May 

 7th, a swimmer was killed by a shark practically within the shadow of 

 Golden Gate Bridge. And, on June 14th, there almost certainly was 

 another Great White shark off La Jolla, but this time the shark was not 

 caught. Instead, it caught a man. 



Robert Pamperin, a husky, 33-year-old aircraft engineer, was diving 



