Shark Sense

Last Night, instead of the usual dollop of acerbic wit and genius script writing of a certain New Jersey doctor on the goggle box I clicked onto a particular channel that is a family favourite of ours. Along with the tales of ape families that have Lottie enthralled, the myriad of dangerous snakes and bugs Ted likes to watch, the loony antics of a couple of comedian cameramen in Africa that Zoe has admitted are cool, there’s some very good factual stuff among the drivel on Animal Planet. 

And a programme called ‘Sharkman’ astonishingly proved the point. 

Determined to learn more and make the viewer take notice, a keen diver and dedicated enthusiast by the name of Mike Rutzman has set out to take the theories and practices of some of the shark world’s most renowned researchers and experts and put them to the test; specifically that of tonic immobility, which is a state animals can enter in order to fake death, handy if you’re about to get eaten. Until now, it has been possible to put some smaller species of sharks into this state by turning them upside down and holding onto their noses, gently rubbing the sensory pits found in the snout for several minutes at a time. When turned round the right way and let go the shark swims off as if nothing had happened.  

This particular programme documented South African Rutzman’s work with several species of the larger sharks, starting with the grey reef sharks and lemon sharks found in the Caribbean, then moving on to work with perhaps nature’s boldest shark the tiger and, ultimately, to see how the great white would react.  

Before 1977 swimming in the sea was fine, safe and even good for you but after the release of a certain book, subsequently made into one of the most socially disturbing films of all time, going anywhere near the sea meant disaster, especially if you didn’t have a big enough boat. 

From that moment on one of the spikiest, harshest sounding words in the English language struck terror into the minds and hearts of everyone except a few dedicated followers. So I suppose watching this guy have a go at turning a three and a half metre – go measure it! – shark onto its back and tickling its nose was going to be entertaining TV if nothing else. 

What it actually turned out to be was simply stunning. For the Caribbean sharks reef I have actually been privileged to see them go tonic first-hand, well second hand, as we weren’t permitted to do any shark wrangling ourselves, so I was personally convinced this experiment would work. The tiger sharks eventually cooperated after some trepidation, because they sometimes swim upside down of their own accord and when Rutzman twigged that the tiger’s sensory pits are not at the tip of its nose but either side, thus requiring two chain-mailed gloved hands to tickle them, the one he encountered slowed to a stop and hung vertically in the water immobile. Then, even more surprisingly recovered and came round for more of the same treatment, her motionless body dragging him fifty feet straight down as he hung on manipulating the sensory pits in her snout. Proving the theory here meant there was no stopping this man for the next big sharks. 

And so to South Africa and Dyer Island where, the scenes with the great whites off a little rocky island out of Gansbaai made for the most jaw-dropping TV footage I think I’ve ever seen. Situated on the seabed out of the kelp forests and completely without cage protection (although there was one on hand just in case), Rutzman and his team of two divers waited for the arrival of the sharks that had been spotted by the surface crew. They were both in radio contact and at least one shark approached. In she came for a look at the scuba clad divers, no dramas just curiosity. Then another female appeared and worryingly the underwater visibility continued to drop way past the twenty-five feet Rutzman considered necessary for the safety of the exercise. Consider that a three and a half metre shark would only appear in view once it was merely its own length away from you… 

Unperturbed Rutzman tried to make it clear he wanted to have contact with the shark and made a move towards its head as it next approached, getting so close that he could touch the side of its head as it swam past. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing but incredibly nothing he was doing looked foolish or clumsy and he certainly wasn’t provoking or appearing as a threat to these sharks. After these amazing scenes yet more sharks appeared and there was more contact but the water clarity became very much an issue, so the team wisely left the water, carefully too. 

It was not to be the last attempt though and on the next occasion, Rutzman managed to successfully make contact with another female great white shark. This time he brought her to a stop by reaching out and touching the nose with one hand as she opened her mouth, not in an attempt to bite but simply as an involuntary action by having her nose tipped up, don’t forget this animal could’ve removed Rutzman from existence in a spilt second and it was only his swimming action of bringing round his other hand to the shark’s face (do sharks have faces?) that spooked her into swimming away. 

When you stop to think about it, this is something that would never ordinarily happen to any shark in their normal uninvaded environment. What kind of situation would have their nasal sensory pits physically stimulated to a state of euphoria allowing them to drop their swimming motion and just hang out? They don’t kiss each other as part of their courtship…  

Ultimately, we have to learn more about them. Why did they behave like this? Could this be a chink in their otherwise flawless defence system? We must find out, their survival and presence in the world’s ocean depends upon such knowledge. And people like this guy show us how. Maybe some out there will put him down as just another thrill-seeker, maybe not. Everybody in the world should see these scenes for no other reason than to dispel the myth that sharks are just senseless killing machines.  

It’s a fact, although not a very well known one at this point in time due to the much more publicised plight of the attractive whales and their Japanese pursuers, that sharks across the wet globe are being fished into extinction and not for their medicinal liver oils, or their hides, or their famous awe inspiring teeth, or even for their meat and certainly not for researching their ecology to enhance man’s own scientific knowledge base. None of these reasons are why some of the animal kingdom’s unique apex predators are being re-classified as endangered species. The reason, which is dumb-foundingly stupid, is for their fins. These are sliced from living sharks netted both deliberately and accidentally that are then mercilessly thrown back into the sea to drown on the bottom. The fins, usually just the big ones are collected to be sold on to the restaurant industry for use in increasingly popular Asian dishes, although more to fuel the egos and exhibitionist value of being seen in the right place, eating the latest must-have fad food. They are priced per kilo and so there needs to be lots and lots of them which leads to over one million sharks being killed every year, without so much as a second thought to their existence. 

If we don’t stop doing this and stop quickly, then whether we like them or loathe them our world will change forever when we lose them, upsetting Nature’s balance irreversibly and thus rendering everyone’s fame-seeking efforts to save the whales useless.