48 Shark Against Man 



But the conditions that lure sharks do not always of themselves 

 trigger an attack; the effect of them may be, curiously, the opposite. 

 The famed shark expert, E. W. Gudger, noted, for example: "At Key 

 West, I have seen boys diving for pennies off the old Mallory Line dock, 

 while 200 yards away, a dead horse drifting out with the tide was 

 surrounded by four or five 10-foot Tiger sharks bucking and surging, 

 trying to tear it apart so that they could eat it. The point is plain— the 

 Tigers preferred dead horse to live boy." 



A man adrift at sea, far from land, never knows, however, when or 

 whether a shark will be drawn to him. Two Air Force men parachuted 

 into the Atlantic about 200 miles east of Savannah, Georgia, one night 

 in 1953. The men. Sergeant Larry C. Graybill and Airman Second Class 

 James B. Henderson, kept afloat by their Ufejackets, lashed themselves 

 together back to back. They floated for 22 hours until they were rescued. 

 And for most of those hours, they fought off sharks. 



"I remembered something I had read— if you hit them on the snout, 

 they take off. It worked," Henderson said. 



Graybill was not so lucky. "Something rushed by me," he recounted. 

 "I felt one hand in a mouth, so I took a poke at him to get loose." 



Graybill's hands were both cut and scraped by the sharks. Hender- 

 son's forearms were raw with Portuguese men-of-war stings. Their blood 

 in the water should have doomed them to the jaws of gore-crazed sharks. 

 But no such mob-feeding frenzy occurred. Once more, sharks showed 

 how unpredictable they could be. 



The greatest number of shark-attack victims have died during marine 

 disasters. More people were killed by sharks in several World War II 

 ship sinkings than were killed close to shore in all of recorded history. 

 But, of those killed near shore, most have been in areas "where bathers 

 are most thickly congregated," a Shark Research Panel report points out. 

 However, it is thought that the danger is far greater in some of the 

 open seas, and the proportion of attacks all over the world bears this out. 



Also, men have drifted for long periods in warm seas without seeing 

 a shark or any other fish. We simply know nothing valid of shark, or 

 even of fish migrations in any true scientific sense. 



How does a shark select one out of many bathers? What attracts a 

 shark to one man or one woman? Is the attack only a wild, random raid? 

 Or is the shark truly selective about its victim? 



Assuming that the shark is somehow selective, the list of possible 

 attack-triggering factors is again a long one. A glittering ring, a flashing 

 piece of jewelry, or a shiny brass beach-locker tag worn on wrist or 

 ankle may lure a curious shark, just as dazzling manufactured fish lures 

 are supposed to attract game fish. The color or pattern of a swimmer's 

 bathing suit may be the lure. 



