More Shadows Attack 45 



many men have leaped from sinking ships only to die in the jaws of 

 sharks. When the troop transport Cape San Juan, torpedoed by a Japan- 

 ese submarine, went down in the South Pacific during World War II, 

 1,429 men were aboard. The merchantman Edwin T. Meredith saved 

 448, and even during the rescue operation, great schools of sharks were 

 still savaging the life-rafts and their occupants. A member of the Mere- 

 dith crew later told what he had seen and heard: "Time after time, 

 I heard soldiers scream as the sharks swept them off the rafts. Some- 

 times the sharks attacked survivors who were being hauled to the Mere- 

 dith with life ropes," A soldier who survived the torment etched one 

 stark vignette from the hours of horror: "I was sitting on the edge of a 

 raft talking to my buddy in the darkness. I looked away for a moment, 

 and when I turned back, he wasn't there any more. A shark got him." 



The water need not be extensively bloodied to attract sharks. A 

 drop of blood seems capable of alerting sharks to a potential feast. In the 

 exhaustive investigation of the previously mentioned attack on Barry 

 Wilson in California, scientists learned that just before the youth en- 

 tered the water a veteran diver noticed that Barry's body bore several 

 fresh scratches, inflicted when he skinned himself on a rock. The older 

 man warned Barry that the infinitesimal amount of blood oozing from 

 the scratches could attract sharks. Ignoring the warning, Barry dived into 

 the water, and a few minutes later he was seized bv a shark. 



In another case, a skin-diver wearing an aqualung was swimming 

 near the bottom when his nose began bleeding. Some of the blood was 

 draining into his mouth and entering the exhaust tube of the aqualung, 

 sending out a stream of blood-tainted bubbles. A small shark, apparently 

 aiming for the source of the alluring blood, twice struck at the skin- 

 diver's head and face, then darted away. The skin-diver was only slightly 

 injured. 



So sensitive is the shark's perception of blood in the water that Dr. 

 Schultz of the SRP believes it is possible that a woman bather may be 

 in more danger of a shark attack when she is menstruating. 



The presence of fish blood or struggling fish is a well-known shark 

 attractant. Most often skin divers report the loss of the fish that they 

 have captured. Some, less lucky, attract the sharks to themselves. On 

 August 19th, 1962, a fisherman named Hans Fix was standing in waist- 

 deep water off^ Padre Island, a thin strip of land that extends along most 

 of the Texas Gulf Coast. Fix had a string of fish dangling from his belt. 

 A shark, undoubtedly lured by the fish, rushed at Fix. In seconds, the 

 shark bit the fisherman's right leg three times, nearly severing it. Thirty 

 minutes later. Fix died in a hospital. 



When a single shark swoops into a group of persons, usually, it seems, 

 one victim is selected, and the shark pursues that one, ignoring other 



