56 Shark Against Man 



him and, as the shark's teeth sank into the fish, Slaughter plunged the 

 tube down on the shark's head, directly over its tiny brain. There was 

 a muffled explosion, and a hole as big as a man's fist appeared on the 

 shark's head. The shark was dead. 



Slaughter's weapon was a "powerhead," a lethal device attached to 

 the end of the tube. The powerhead is a length of hollowed steel cylinder 

 consisting of a chamber for a 12-gauge shotgun shell and a firing mecha- 

 nism. The cylinder is plugged with petroleum jelly to seal it from the 

 water. In firing the shell, the powerhead is jammed directly against the 

 shark's head. The thrust drives the end of the shell against a firing pin, 

 which detonates the shell. A massed charge of No. 8 shot is propelled 

 through the petroleum jelly seal and right into the shark; it meets no 

 resistance from water, for its passage is directly from the cylinder to 

 the shark. The charge smashes into the shark's brain, usually killing it 

 instantly. 



If Slaughter misses the brain, he blows a hole in the side of the shark, 

 but the gaping wound hardly slows down the shark. Bullets fired from 

 the surface at sharks beneath the surface are deflected by the water and, 

 even if they penetrate the shark's hide, they do not have the destructive 

 power of the massive shotgun shell charge. With the powerhead, 

 Slaughter says he has killed more than 100 sharks, including Hammer- 

 heads and Great Whites. 



Armed with powerheads like his, more and more underwater hunters 

 are tracking down what they see as the ultimate game— and they are 

 exposing themselves to the ultimate danger. Yet, even when they are 

 stalking the shark, even when they are attacking it, the hunters have 

 rarely been charged by their prey. These experiences have led many 

 skin-divers and spear-fishermen to insist that the shark is a timid creature, 

 whose ferocity has been vastly overrated. 



Then comes a day like August 15th, 1959. On that day, James C. 

 Neal, SCUBA diving about 7 miles off Panama City, Florida, followed 

 a guide cable down to rocks on the bottom. He was never seen again. 

 All that was found was his bloody, tooth-marked clothing and gear. . . . 

 "Sharks are one of the sea's greatest dangers," a veteran Ceylon skin-diver 

 says, "because they are more a potential than an actual danger to a diver, 

 which leads to a disregard for them that can be fatal." 



Michael Lerner, president of the International Game Fish Association, 

 adds his voice of caution: "We feel that fishermen, boatmen, swimmers 

 and skin-divers are becoming increasingly careless about the danger of 

 attack by sharks and barracuda, owing partly to the fact that several 

 recent published reports have tended to discount the ferocity of those 

 fishes. It may be true, especially of sharks, that certain species do not 



