I Survived a S

hark Attack

Springboard 6

Shark attacks are rare. But when sharks do attack, the victims find themselves in a desperate struggle for their lives. Read this survival story to learn about sharks and the reasons why they sometimes attack. Read the terrifying stories of five people who lived to tell the tale.

Other Survival Stories in Springboard 6:

Trapped in the Tube Against All Odds

I Survived a Shark Attack

Written by Jasper Williams

I Survived a Shark Attack

Written by Jasper Williams Cover images of surfer Bethany Hamilton at The Teen Choice Awards 2004 and a great white sharkPhotography by Corbis/Tranz (cover left, p9, p12, pp14–16, pp21–24, p25 bottom, pp35–37); Newspix (Paul Beutel p13, Swanborough Ross p28, Screen Grab p32, Alex Coppel p38); Corbis (p18); Photodisc (cover, p17); Digital Vision (cover right, p1, p5 bottom, p7, p19, p25 top); Imagelibrary (p4, p5 top)

© 2007 Macmillan Education Australia Pty Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

While every care has been taken to trace and acknowledge copyright, the publishers tender their apologies for any accidental infringement where copyright has proved untraceable.

Published byMacmillan Education Australia Pty LtdLevel 1, 15–19 Claremont Street, South Yarra, Victoria 3141www.macmillan.com.au

Edited by Adrian BellDesigned by Jamie LauriePrinted in Hong Kong 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN: 978-1-4202-6199-8

I Survived a Shark Attack

Introduction .......................................4

Why Do Sharks Attack People? ........6

Mary Jane Ryan ............................... 10

Avoiding Shark Attacks ................... 14

Craig Hutto .....................................20

Zak Golebiowski .............................26

Eric Nerhus .....................................30

Bethany Hamilton ...........................34

Glossary ...........................................39

Index ................................................40

Contents

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Introduction

A lot of people are more afraid of sharks than of any other animal. Sharks have a very bad reputation. But in fact, shark attacks are quite rare. Millions of people go to the beach every day, but on average, only eight people in the world die each year from shark attacks. Your chances of suffering a shark attack are millions to one. So why are people so concerned about shark attacks?

The shark’s frightening reputation comes from the fact that when sharks do attack, the situation is desperate. They have massive, powerful jaws and razor-sharp teeth, and they attack without warning. The thought of a shark attack is especially terrifying because the water is not a human’s natural habitat. Compared to a shark, a human is slow, blind, and vulnerable in the water.

But even if a shark does attack, the experience is not always fatal. Many people survive shark attacks. How can that be? How can a human win a fight with a big, dangerous shark? To understand, you need to learn about why shark attacks happen.

For a lot of people, being in the water with a shark is their greatest fear.

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Why Do Sharks Attack People?

Why do shark attacks happen? You probably think you already know the answer – shark attacks happen because sharks want to eat people. However, although there are, on average, 70–100 shark attacks every year, very few people actually die. Most people who suffer shark attacks get away with their lives. But if the sharks really wanted to eat these people, it would be impossible for so many of them to escape. The shark is big, fast, and strong; if the shark wants you, you do not stand a chance.

The fact is, although sharks are hunting animals, or predators, they do not actually prey on people. Many people think that sharks will eat anything – they are sometimes called “swimming rubbish bins.” But the truth is, sharks need a particular kind of food, or diet. They have a very slow digestive system, which means that they need to eat food with a high ratio of fat to muscle. Their preferred food items are sea animals such as seals and turtles, which have a thick layer of fat to keep them warm in the cold water. Humans have a high ratio of muscle to fat, and are simply not suitable for a shark’s diet.

So why do sharks attack so many people every year? It becomes easier to understand when you learn that almost all shark attacks follow the same pattern – the shark bites the person once and then swims away without attacking again. This is called a “hit-and-run attack.” Most such attacks are cases of mistaken identity. When a shark attacks a seal, it swims quickly in to take one massive bite, then backs away for a moment before returning to finish the seal off. In most hit-and-run attacks on humans, the shark mistakes the swimming person for a seal or turtle. But after that first bite, it realizes that it has attacked the wrong kind of prey and, instead of attacking again, it swims away. Not all attacks are hit-and-runs. In the deep sea, sharks such as the oceanic whitetip shark do kill and eat humans. But most attacks on swimmers and surfers are because of mistaken identity.

A shark often attacks by swimming up from underneath.

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But humans do not look like seals, do they? Actually, they sometimes do. Hit-and-run attacks usually happen quite close to shore, in the area where waves are breaking, or the surf zone. The surf churns the water up, making it murky, and reducing the distance that the eye can see clearly, or the visibility. Furthermore, a lot of the shark attack victims in the surf zone are surfers wearing wetsuits. In the murky water, the smooth, black wetsuit looks a lot like the skin of a seal. And as the diagram below shows, the shape of a person on a surfboard can also look, to a shark, like the shape of its usual prey.

None of this means, though, that people should not be concerned about hit-and-run attacks. The shark might only take a single bite – but one bite from a huge predator, 2 m or longer with massive, razor-sharp teeth, does terrible damage. The people who die from these attacks usually die after the attack has finished, from losing huge amounts of blood as they try to swim back to the beach. Those who make it back have quite a story to tell.

Even one bite from teeth like these causes terrible injuries.

sealsurfer turtle

A Shark’s-Eye View

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