102 Man Against Shark 



for fishermen. When he hooks a shark, a fisherman must simultaneously 

 fight the shark and fight to keep from falling into the sea. Then, to 

 beach the shark, he must stumble along the blocks, working his way 

 back the length of the pier to shore. A misstep can send him plunging 

 into a maelstrom of swift currents and voracious sharks, lured to 

 Durban harbor by the scent of whale carcasses towed into port by 

 whaling ships. 



Brian Bernstein, a veteran fisherman at the age of 15, may serve as 

 an example. At the age of 7, Brian caught his first fish, a 15-pound 

 salmon. At the age of eleven, he caught his first shark, a 20-pound 

 Hammerhead pup. By the time he was 14, he had caught several little 

 Hammerheads, some Small Black-Tipped sharks (called Gray sharks in 

 Durban) and a few Milksharks (Scoliodon ivalbeehmi), which never 

 grow to more than 4 feet. One of his Gray sharks was a 444-pounder, 

 a respectable size, especially considering that Brian weighed 140 pounds 

 himself. 



The Blue Pointer of Durban harbor is a match for any fisherman. 

 It is a ferocious fighter and, though its Durban alias masks its man-killing 

 notoriety, it is indeed the dread Carcharodon carcharias— the Man-eater, 

 the White Death, the Killer. Brian's first Blue Pointer was a 430-pounder, 

 which, by the standards of the South Pier shark aficionados, is a small 

 one. It had not given Brian a great fight— again, by South Pier standards. 

 But, in a patronizing sort of way, he was welcomed, at 15, into the 

 informal fraternity of Blue Pointer hunters. 



A few days after he caught his first Blue Pointer, Brian was out on 

 the seaward corner of the South Pier again. At 9:30 a.m., a shark took 

 his bait and streaked 500 yards seaward. Only 200 yards of line, strained 

 to the breaking point, remained on the lad's burning reel. He succeeded 

 in preventing the shark from ripping out the rest of the line. But the 

 battle was far from over. It took six hours of fighting to land that 764- 

 pound shark (another Blue Pointer), and, before the duel ended, Brian 

 had used every trick known on the South Pier. He had run up and 

 down the pier, struggling to keep the shark from running out to sea. 

 He had "winched"— that is, he squatted down, crooked his right leg 

 around the butt of his rod, and rested the rod on his left leg. Then, with 

 both hands, he arduously turned the reel. At one point in the battle, the 

 boy had even shouldered his rod like a rifle, turned his back to the 

 water, and dragged against the shark, as a plowhorse strains against the 

 plow. This is real shark fishing. 



No shark hooked off the South Pier is an easy catch. Every battle is 

 exciting and unpredictable, for inevitably the angler must clamber over 

 rocks and struggle along the pier to land his shark. Under the code of 

 the pier, no one may aid him— unless, which is unthinkable, he asks for 



