36 Shark Against Man 



during those 20 long minutes, the shark constantly hovered close by the 

 rescuers and the victim they had snatched from it. Again and again— 

 usually when the men stopped to prop Barry's slipping body back into 

 the tube— the shark appeared. That is all it did. Appear. Never did it 

 strike at Barry. Never did it make a feint. The men said its movements 

 were slow, deliberate, almost leisurely. 



Somewhere during that nightmare, Barry died. He was dead when 

 a waiting physician examined him the moment his body was carried up to 

 the pier. The lower part of his right buttock and nearly all of the back of 

 his right leg from the thigh almost to the knee was ripped away. His left 

 leg bore deep slashes. 



By careful examination of the wounds— and by interviewing the 

 rescuers, who had been able to observe the shark closely, ichthyologists 

 concluded that the killer had been a Great White, 12 to 13 feet long. 

 Rolf L. Bolin, an ichthyologist from Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific 

 Grove, deduced that Barry had been bitten at least four times. 



"The corroboratory evidence of the witnesses," Bolin reported, "in- 

 dicates the sequence: first, on the lower left leg from behind, which 

 strike wounded and startled him; second, on the medial surface of the 

 right thigh, when the shark approached him from in front, and, passing 

 partially between his legs, lifted him high out of the water; third, on the 

 upper left leg from the back and side, when Wilson struck in desperation 

 at the water, and, finally, on the back and side of the right thigh, while 

 he was being placed in the tube and when he was undoubtedly already 

 dead." 



The attack took place in water about 30 feet deep. The water tem- 

 perature, which had been slowly falling from about 56° to 55 °F. for 

 about a week, was hovering at around 55° at the time of the attack. A 

 heavy surf, reaching to heights of about 8 feet, was running, and the 

 water was somewhat murky— because of dirt washed into the sea by 

 rain the night before and a heavy concentration of plankton. Visibility 

 was limited to about 6 to 8 feet underwater. The day was partly cloudy. 



Those were the factual ingredients of the attack. Is there, somewhere 

 among them, an answer to the riddle of why sharks attack men? 



If there is an answer to the riddle, it is certainly hidden in the se- 

 quence of events that trigger an attack— the conditions in the water, 

 the reaction of the swimmer, the responses of the shark to a complex 

 series of causes and effects. But so many factors seem to be involved 

 that no simple equation can be set up. With what is known about sharks 

 today, no one can honestly say that a certain set of conditions will or 

 will not produce a shark attack. Only one categorical statement can be 

 made about sharks: they are unpredictable. 



Captain Cousteau, who has become one of the world's outstanding 



