34 Shark Against Man 



illustrate is the fact that, though clothing cannot be depended on to 

 prevent attack, sharks are more apt to bite a bare than a clothed body." 



The wartime experiences recounted to Llano and other researchers 

 in the Air Force and the Navy provided science with some new informa- 

 tion about shark behavior— and showed the absurdities of some old be- 

 liefs about sharks. But man still has a lot to learn. 



Anyone who read of a shark attack, then went to the beach, felt a 

 slight chill when the thought of a shark passed through his mind. The 

 very terror of the shark, however, often suppresses reason. Shock, horror, 

 revulsion, grief, panic, fright— these are the typical ingredients of a shark- 

 attack story. They are ingredients that rarely produce a cool, analytical 

 report of what actually happened. 



After an attack, if the victim is dead and the body is recovered, it 

 may still bear some evidence. Pathologists may find some clues: a tooth, 

 or a crescent of wounds that will indict a certain species of shark. If the 

 victim lives, he may babble an incoherent story, or, as has happened 

 several times, he may be able to recount, vividly, exactly what happened 

 —but only during those few awful seconds when his Ufe or death hung 

 on the whim of a shark. 



"All I remember about the actual accident," one victim said, "was 

 that there was a movement on the surface and my left hand had disap- 

 peared in a shark's mouth ... I closed my right hand and hit upward 

 on the end of his nose . . . The fish obligingly opened his mouth and 

 disappeared. I had not seen him come, nor did I see him go— even though 

 we were only a foot or two apart." 



The man who told this story, Philip C. Diez of Honolulu, was at- 

 tacked off the Island of Molokai in Hawaii in 1956. He was hauled aboard 

 a nearby boat and taken to shore, where prompt medical attention saved 

 his mangled arm. To Diez, the attack was as sudden and as inexplicable 

 as a bolt of lightning searing a sunny summer sky. 



Rarely are there calm, competent witnesses who have seen the whole 

 terrible tableau of an attack and have had the necessary background 

 to interpret soberly what their shocked eyes have seen. There is on 

 record, however, at least one such accumulation of eyewitness testimony 

 about an attack. From this testimony has come a thorough study of a 

 shark attack. But for this detailed report, a young man had to die, and 

 several brave men had to risk death. 



The victim was Barry Wilson, aged 17, who was attacked by a shark 

 off Pacific Grove, California, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon of De- 

 cember 7th, 1952. 



Barry's ordeal with a shark began, like many another, with a scream. 



