We’ve been playing in their waters for centuries. Photo: Screenshot
While perusing the internet last week I came across a headline that I couldn’t resist clicking on. From the Florida Museum of Natural History: “Unprovoked Shark Attacks Plummeted in 2024.” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one intrigued — on the first Google page alone there were at least a half-dozen news agencies running with the story, with outlets ranging from the Associated Press and CBS News, to Yahoo and even the Asbury Park Press. Each headline noting the statistic, compiled by the International Shark Attack file, a data base run by the aforementioned Florida museum, pointing to what was described an “exceptionally calm” 2024, so far as shark attacks go.
Which, if you’re going simply by the numbers, is an accurate assessment: 47 “unprovoked” attacks in 2024, compared to 67 the previous year. Naturally, most of these reports followed the editorial template of virtually all mainstream stories with the word “shark” in their headlines, being careful to explain that the majority of shark bites are cases of mistaken identity, and that the average citizen has a greater chance of being struck by lightning, or (and this is the latest clever analogy) choking to death on a popped champagne cork, than being killed by a shark.
Don’t tell that to surfers. And you can take your “exceptionally calm” and stuff it back into the champagne bottle. Because beyond all the unfortunate cases where waders and swimmers, occasionally finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, are bitten by sharks, surfers virtually live in the shark’s world; have for centuries, since recreational wave-riding first began off the shores of West Africa and the reefs of Polynesia. Throughout all those years, a relationship has developed between the two species whose tone has been passed down from generation to generation, from ocean to ocean, surf spot to surf spot, and there’s nothing calm about it. So, while for example oblivious swimmers and waders in Volusia County, Florida, the shark-bite capital of the world, might find themselves victims of a mistaken bite, we surfers, since the very first one of us paddled out to ride waves for fun, have done so with the understanding, whether conscious or unconscious, that we’re prey; that an atavistic fear, whether unreasonable or not, is justified. Because we live where those monsters are, and one just might be looking for us.
One of the earliest accounts that illustrates the fraught relationship between sharks and surfers can be found in the Hawaiian saga The Epic Tale of Hi’iakaikapoli’opele. This fabulous story, a product of the Hawaiian tradition of mo’oleo, or verbally recounted generational cultural knowledge, is ancient in origin, but was first written down and published in the Hawaiian language newspaper Ka Na’i Aupuni in 1906, and only relatively recently translated to English by M. Puakea Nogelmeier, a professor of Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii.
It’s an epic tale, indeed, following the adventures of the beautiful young priestess Hi’aka on her odyssey to find the goddess Pele’s errant lover, and return him safely to their volcanic crater home. Dangers and perils abound, but most pertinent to those of us who, like Hi’aka apparently, love to surf, is this particular passage, where our heroine, having questioned the wave-riding ability of a Big Island chieftess named Punaloa, is challenged to a surfing competition. Punaloa, the original heavy Hawaiian local, getting first priority.
“The chieftess went far out to sea, to the usual spot where she surfed, and floated there, waiting,” goes the tale. “A mountainous wave rose up and everyone saw Punaloa mount the swell. At the same time, all saw with horror the dorsal fin of a huge shark thrusting out of the wave behind her surfboard…the wave suddenly broke and Punaloa toppled into the surf with her board. As Punaloa dove headfirst into the sea, the shark was right behind.”
Happily, Punaloa was saved from establishing the first fatal surfing shark attack statistic by the benevolent Hi’aka who, drawing on powers bestowed by the goddess Pele, snatched her rival from the gnashing jaws of what, judging by its depicted size and estimated bite radius, must have been a large tiger shark.
“The mouth of the man-eating shark of the seas was forced open [by Hi’aka], its lower jaw pressed down,” continues the account. “and with the strike of her hand, the body of the great-mouthed fish flew onto the sand and was changed into stone.”
High drama, as befitting any classic saga, yet beyond its mythical quality, the entire account, with its detailed description of the encounter, right down to the morphology of the shark, indicates that a factual relationship between ancient Hawaiian surfers and predatory sharks was recognized and well-developed. And yes, while in Hawaiian culture the aumakua, or ancestral spirits that guide and protects families, can take the form of a shark, those Polynesian proto-surfers were well aware of their co-inhabitant’s more ominous nature, when paddling out into their watery realm.
Hardly restricted to myths, however, there do exist 19th century historical records of surfers interacting with sharks. From English seafarer Archibald Campbell’s Voyage Around The World from 1806 to 1812, can be found this observation of Sandwich Island (Hawaii) surfers:
“They often swam several miles offshore to ships, sometimes resting upon a plank shaped like an anchor stock and paddling with their hands,” wrote Campbell, a onetime confident of King Kamehameha I. “Although sharks are numerous in those waters, I never heard of any accident from them, which I attribute to the dexterity with which they avoided their attacks.”
Apparently, early African surfers weren’t quite so lucky. From the account of Captain Sir James Edward Alexander’s voyage along the coast of West Africa, published in 1835, comes this brief, and rather dispassionate, description of the fate of some unfortunate locals riding the waves off Cape Coast, Ghana.
“From the beach, meanwhile, might be seen boys swimming in the sea, with light boards under their stomachs,” writes the good captain. “They waited for a surf, and then came rolling in like cloud on the top of it. But I was told that sharks occasionally dart in behind the rocks and ‘yam’ them.”
In West Africa’s lingua franca, the word yam means “to eat.” Meaning that, written almost 200 years ago, Alexander’s is history’s first description of a surfer being killed by a shark. Which goes far to explain how deeply engrained is the trepidation with which most surfers regard sharks — it’s literally been bred into us over the centuries of wave riding. And so, all these current headlines telling us that shark attacks “plummeted” in 2024, their stories filled with reassuring statistics, and explanations of ‘mistaken identity and hackneyed adages citing lightning and champagne corks, bring little comfort.
Instead, we’re struck by the memory of fellow surfers like Hawaii’s Tamayo Perry, and Australia’s, Khai Cowley, Tod Gendle, Simon Boccanello and Lance Appleby, all who were lost to shark attacks over the past 24 months. Each one of their deaths resonating throughout the tribe in a way no statistic can articulate. Because no matter what the statistics tell us, and unlike just about any other subset of ocean enthusiast you’d care to mention, we surfers live out there with the sharks.
And tragically, sometimes we don’t.
