Anti-Shark Warfare 131 



camera. The shark swam past, and began circling again. The other two 

 sharks approached. The three sharks continued to menace the divers until 

 their boat approached and apparently frightened the sharks away. 



From then on, Cousteau and Dumas carried "shark billies," clubs 

 4 feet long, studded with nails at one end. They planned to use them 

 because, as Cousteau says in his book. The Silent World: "After seeing 

 sharks swim on unshaken with harpoons through their heads, deep spear 

 gashes on their bodies, and even after sharp explosions near their brains, 

 we place no reliance in knives as defensive arms." 



At the time he wrote, Cousteau had never used the billy, so he had 

 no way of knowing its effectiveness. "It may," he wrote, "prove to be 

 merely another theoretical defense against the creature which has eluded 

 man's understanding." 



All defenses against the shark are theoretical. But some defenses that 

 have been suggested by self-proclaimed experts are not merely theoreti- 

 cal; they are virtual incitements to suicide. 



Item, from a skin-diver magazine: "You can actually swim up to a 

 Nurse shark and kick it without eUciting harm to your person. Try it 

 some time." 



Item, by the author of a book on skin-diving: "If a shark comes too 

 close, put your head under water and yell as loud as you can, 'Go away, 

 you bum! Get lost!' He can't hear you, but he can feel the vibrations. 

 If he still comes on, hit him on the nose . . ." 



Item, from a skin-diver magazine: ". . . If hand-to-shark combat be- 

 comes necessary (a most remote possibility), avoid those snapping jaws 

 by stiff-arming, the brute's long nose. Use your knife in the gill slits or 

 slash him across the back of the neck ... If you are caught without a 

 knife, jam your fingers into his nostrils or gill slits, if possible, hang on 

 to the pectoral or side fin as long as you can hold your breath." 



If the survival of swimmers confronted by sharks depended on gross 

 misinformation such as this, there would be few survivors. The man who 

 provokes a shark— any shark— does so at peril of his life and/or limbs. 

 Men have provoked, ridden on, stabbed, and hit sharks— and lived. So, 

 too, have men lived after hurling themselves from tall buildings, throw- 

 ing themselves under the wheels of trucks, and shooting themselves in 

 the head. 



Hitting or stabbing a shark is suicidal unless it is the last, desperate 

 act of a man fighting to live at the moment that comes when he is facing 

 death. Captain Jonathan Brown, commander of an Air Force C-124 

 Globemaster which crashed in the Pacific in 1958, was one such man. 



He and two other members of the crew of nine survived the crash. 

 The three men fashioned a raft out of a piece of wood and buoyed it 

 up with mail sacks. They clung to this during the night. At dawn, the 

 sharks appeared. For a while, shark repellent seemed to keep them away. 



