30 



Shark Agamst Man 



The mass feeding habit of sharks is shown here. The seas are trothing from the frenzied 

 thrashings of sharks in search of food. This is the most perilous situation a man in 

 the water can face. The photo was taken during the Navy's wartime experiments to 

 develop a shark repellent. The sharks are feeding on trash fish dumped overboard by 

 a shrimp boat off Mayport, Florida. The sharks here were tentatively identified as 

 Small Black-Tipped sharks {Carcharhinus limhatus). U.S. Navy Photo 



War II. When the war began, neither sailors nor ocean-spanning pilots 

 were prepared for what awaited them if they were cast into shark-in- 

 fested waters. 



On the very day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, half a world 

 away sharks were attacking, too. A British warship was torpedoed in 

 the South Atlantic on that day. As survivors swam to life-rafts, a pack 

 of sharks appeared among them. A4an after man was attacked. The blood 

 triggered a frenzy, and the sharks went mad with hunger-lust. The men 

 lucky enough to reach the rafts fought off emboldened sharks with 

 paddles. When the survivors were rescued five days later, weary, ♦"errified 

 men were still wielding paddles, and sharks were still claiming victims. 

 Of the 450 men aboard, 170 survived. How many were killed by the 

 torpedoing, how many drowned— and how many were devoured by 

 sharks— will never be known. 



Nor will it be known how many victims sharks claimed in other war- 



