Brush with a Silvertip

Richard comes into the wheelhouse, where the skipper drives the boat. “A silvertip just took a swipe at my head!” he says. “JR said that’s the most worried he’s ever been for my safety.” He is worked up a bit. Richard, JR and Mike had gone down on a mission to catch that elusive third whitetip with the temp logger.  They joined up with a tourist boat in the area, Mike Ball’s Diving Expeditions, and their divers got a rare opportunity to witness the shark rodeo firsthand. What they didn’t expect was to see Richard almost getting bitten on the head by 9-foot silvertip.

Back on board we’re watching the video footage to see exactly what happened. Richard had opened up the bait box and the sharks started going mad. When one shark starts gnawing on dead fish flesh, the others quickly join the action and in a minute you have several sharks frantically biting at the bait. When sharks get into a feeding frenzy, they start swimming faster, darting about, and grabbing and jerking their heads back and forth to rip flesh from the fish carcasses. Richard got right in the action and a silvertip came in from behind him. The shark bit the top of his tank instead of his head, swiping over Richard’s head with its abdomen. And then the silvertip came in for another bite! Lucky for Richard, he survived with all his limbs intact; he didn’t get the shark.

“That’s one I can send home to my mum,” he says about the video footage. “I never tell her where I’m going or what I’m doing. I just tell her what I’ve done. She doesn’t want to know.”

At least one person on this boat has had a full-on shark attack. In 1978, Mike was swimming at the lagoon of Enewetak, an atoll within the Marshall Islands, taking underwater photos of sharks. He saw a grey reef shark coming toward him in an unusual position. “Its back was arched, its nose was raised up, and its pectoral fins were arched way back,” he says. “It looked all cramped and convoluted. I was aware it was a threat posture and that I should back away, but I took a photo. That was my fatal mistake.” As soon as the camera flashed, the shark took off the top of his arm, then swung back around and took a bite of his fin, and then came back a third time biting his buddy’s hand.

He then had to keep his wits about him enough to swim 50 yards to the dive boat. When he got aboard his buddy had already arrived on board, helped him up, and then laid back down. “I realized he’d gone into shock, and I tried to radio for help.” It took nearly an hour before some Army medics showed up in a helicopter. In the middle of the North Pacific, they were able to find the boat because of the red color. Mike’s blood.

Richard also was bitten — on the rear end as it so happens — by a grey nurse shark he worked with at the Manly aquarium. It was his last day and he was mucking around too much while hand feeding the sharks, and it came up behind and bit him on the butt.

On the first night here, Richard told me to ask JR about the time he got bitten on the head by a tiger shark, followed by everyone’s mirthful laughter. So after some coaxing, he told me the story. Turns out JR had a huge tiger shark jaw in his attic, and it fell onto his head. Nine stitches.

Working with sharks can be dangerous business, to be sure. The more you work with them, and the more you’re in the action, the greater the chance that they might injure you. To get the photos she does, Cat puts herself right in the action at times, but as a writer observing the expedition, I sit back and observed from a distance. The tourists that come to dive with the Osprey reef sharks on the Undersea Explorer and other dive boats in the area also watch from a distance. There is danger, but it’s not excessive for those who are merely witnesses.

“We’re extremely careful with what we do. It may look crazy but we know what we’re doing,” says Richard. The risks are outweighed by the importance of his work, and the legacy he hopes to leave for marine and elasmobranch conservation. “All shark stocks around the world are in critical condition. We need to get the data to show the politicians and the general public the dire straits sharks are in.”

One night of the trip the crew filmed a scene capturing whitetips at night. I never got an opportunity for a night dive because the crew that needed to go with me were often busy with research or filming, but I watched from the boat and could see underwater strobes illuminating the ocean as they lassoed sharks. Whitetips are normally pretty placid creatures, though their super fine razor like teeth can certainly take a chunk out of your flesh. “Their behavior at night is completely different,” says Mike. “Even on the duckboard they were jumpy.” It was a heart-pumping adrenaline rush, and Mike says since his shark attack at Enewetak , over 30 years ago, he has some fear and anxiety about sharks and the damage they can cause. It doesn’t seem to stop him from working with them though.

Our last order of business before heading home is a final attempt to capture the third whitetip with the temp logger. Expedition Shark presenter Celine Cousteau and sea turtle biologist Ian Bell, who worked with the team while filming tiger shark and green sea turtle interactions at Raine Island, were shuttled out to the Undersea Explorer today for some final wrap-up scenes with the whole crew together, so they get front seats at the shark rodeo, too.

We know where the elusive whitetip hangs out —right by the mooring at North Horn. Every time they bring down the bait box, she comes to check it out, but so far, she has eluded capture. Since it’s the end of the trip, Richard makes the call to bring down all the remaining bait, including some 200 pounds of tuna. “If anything’s going to happen, now is the time.” Everyone suits up; the whole crew is going down to watch except for a few remaining on the boat. I walk by the wheelhouse to see the Undersea Explorer staff having an impromptu meeting about the procedure for shark attack. This does not calm my nerves.

I must admit on this dive I am a little nervous. Something about the unknown, the excess bait, everyone else getting amped, and the private meetings about medical evacuation and shark attack procedures just did it for me. My heart’s thumping but I jump in and dive down to the coral reef shelf to watch the rodeo for a final time.

Images: Silvertip reef shark; Richard with whitetip

Photos: Getty Images | Cat Gennaro/DCL

Comments

[Cathy]

Hi Cat! Miss you!!!

[Melody Smith]

Whoa! Wild stuff! I truly admire those folks for risking their own safety to get the information they need.

[samantha egnor]

Must have been hard to catch that Whitetipped shark ,(whitch is what I would say) ...