Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.
Great white sharks, also known as white sharks, white pointers, and white death are, on average, between four and five metres long, and can weigh far over a thousand kilograms.
If one were in my pool right now, not only would the amount of water it displaced flood my yard, but I would be bumping up against its scaly sandpaper hide. I would know. Yet the question of what if, what if it’s there, what if I don’t know and I’m about to die, remains screaming like a claxon on high alert.
It drowns out every other thought. The cool band of the waterline that circumnavigates my floating body, and the water beneath that supports me with a gentle rocking motion, is a tomb waiting to be closed with me inside. Flowering snow-in-summer trees sway overhead, like overgrown cauliflower, and I focus my mind on them; how absurd they are, how pretty the rays of sun look sifting through its branches.
But a minute later, I’m pulling myself up onto the tile like a drowned cat, scratching at the stone—expecting the jaws of a beast to snap around my waist, ripping me in half and filling the pool with my buoyant innards.
I have galeophobia. Also known as selachophobia, it is an extreme, irrational, and distressing fear of sharks. I have never seen a shark in-person, none of my family members have ever been bitten, and I didn’t see Jaws until I was 18. By that point I had already sworn off the beach. It’s a symptom of a cultural issue that scientists agree and lament that Jaws brought into the limelight.
When traced back to early human culture, sharks can be identified as deific figures in many coastal societies, from Australian First Nations to Hawaii. These gods embody protector roles, guiding fishermen to schools of fish, and swimming alongside their boats. There are scarce stories of menacing sharks, disparate examples from the Ketea of ancient Greek mythology to John Copley’s painting Watson and the Shark.
The fear of sharks that cemented Jaws in our minds and birthed worldwide pandemonium started just over a hundred years ago. In my research, I find newspaper clippings, testimonies, and pictures of the site of one of the deaths. The details converge in my mind, and a speculative scene emerges from the fog of history. Jersey, USA, 1916.
The creek water stretches from bank to muddy bank, lined by reeds as tall as the boys. Green-brown and completely opaque, interrupted only by dragonflies skittering across the surface and old wooden dock posts a ways away. Long, smooth lines are drawn on the water, rippling gently. After running the whole way here, sweat is slick down Carl’s back and shining on his forearms in the dusking summer sun. They both tossed their shorts before they got to the trail—they didn’t bring their proper swim trunks.
Carl swats a blowfly from Lester’s back, and he slaps back.
‘You had a fly on you.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Lester rolls his eyes, and kicks up mud in Carl’s direction. It splatters warm up his leg, leaving damp spots before the earthy mass begins to slide off.
‘Nitwit …’ Carl says to himself, turning and gingerly stepping down towards the water. It’s lukewarm at the surface, after taking the sun’s rays all day—but when his feet disappear below the murk, he can feel chilly water seep between his toes. Lester, still on the bank, wanders over to the posts, and tentatively places a foot on one, testing it for a wobble.
‘You gonna jump off it?’ Carl takes another few steps deeper into the water, its cold embrace creeping further up his legs, slowing his stride to a wade. The pervasive heat of the day melts away with the promise of sweet submersion.
Les aligns himself and hops up, each foot taking up half of the circular post’s top, toes curled white around the rim to grip on. He sways, arms whipping out to his sides to balance himself—leaning a little too far forwards, then a little too far back.
‘Goldbricker!’ Carl hollers, taunting him to commit to the jump. Flapping of wings fills the air as birds flock from a nearby tree at the sudden yell.
‘You watch!’ he says, letting himself tip over his centre of mass and towards the creek, bending his legs before springing into the air. He just barely manages to grab his knees and tuck them up before he collides with the water, sending a circular splash high into the air and raining back down. Carl watches for a moment, waiting for him to resurface. After a moment, he appears, hair flat to his head as he paddles towards Carl.
After having trailed a while behind the two, Frank strolls up to the river. Kicking his way over to him, Carl yells out, ‘Hey sluffer! Nice of you to join us!’
He pokes his tongue out, and runs his hand through his hair. Surveying the river, his brows furrow.
‘Les with you?’
He must’ve seen Carl’s confusion, because he added—
‘Cos you two left at the same time, so …’
Instead of answering, Carl swims back out into the middle of the creek and calls out.
‘Les? Lester?’
There’s a huge patch of thrashing further down. The tips of Les’s fingers breach the water at one point, then another, a yard further away. A grey crescent breaches the surface of the water, jerking wildly back and forth, then whips back under. Carl screams Les’s name, his voice cracking, and he gasps, feeling his chest tighten.
Carl kicks and swims towards the bank with every ounce of force he has, and collapses onto the mud, wrenching himself up by the grass which rips and clumps between his fingers. He stumbles to his feet, and runs towards where Les was. Frank is already there, standing at the waterline, shaking hands clasped on his face.
The creek’s water becomes a frothing white, punctuated by slipping streams of red that billow across the surface. The crescent fin of a huge creature breaches the foaming water again, and this time its long arching back, yards long, rips from side to side. At one end, a large triangular head snaps up with Les in its rows of teeth, his torn body wailing gurgled screams.
Carl screams for his dad, for his mom, for anyone—Frank yells for Les over and over, breaking into cries and sobs. Carl grabs Frank’s hand, they need to get grown-ups. They run, scrambling, tears streaming down their faces, chests heaving with racking sobs. Their feet are torn by gravel as they reach the path. They don’t stop until they get to town, trailing muddy footprints, nakedness long forgotten as they shriek.
‘Shark! There’s a shark in the water!’
Lester Stilwell was 10 years old when he died. He was the third of four to be killed by sharks in that fortnight, which the town still didn’t yet believe. They blamed his death on his epilepsy, until another man died looking for the boy’s body.
Suddenly, there were monsters beneath the waves, and humanity’s self-assured superiority was shattered. Taking advantage of more rapid and widespread information networks than ever before, the news flooded the country.
Frenzied, the residents of Jersey threw dynamite into the water. They swarmed the rivers and coasts with nets and hooks. They pleaded with then-president Woodrow Wilson to grant federal aid to drive away ‘the ferocious man-eating sharks, which have been making prey of bathers’.
Prey.
Every barrier humanity placed between themselves and nature was an illusion. In the water, fire is suffocated, every slash or thrust of a weapon drags, and bullets stop within metres. Desperate primate limbs can’t dream of outswimming the apex predator older than trees, land vertebrates, and the rings of Saturn.
Sharks became an idea: excruciating, unstoppable death.
This is the world I was born into. Sharks feature alongside slashers, aliens, and ghosts in horror movies. They’re always bigger, smarter, faster, and more numerous with each incarnation. Where once an accurately sized white shark was enough, we now have the already gigantic (and extinct) megalodon, exaggerated to kaiju proportions. Larger than any animal to have ever lived on earth—because we forgot that sharks are animals.
Apex predator does not mean ‘killing machine’. Simply put, apex predators eat animals that eat other animals. This means that they keep the populations of predators and their prey in check, and their ecosystems stable. But they’re also mid-level predators, sometimes less than 20cm long, feeding on shrimp and tiny fish. They’re a versatile group, over 400 million years old, as much part of our planet as mountains.
Sharks, through a chain of causality, are crucial for maintaining the health of Earth’s oceans—from coral reefs to whales, including animals that humans rely on for food. They belong in our oceans, seas, and rivers. Over the years, I’ve come to understand and accept that.
Mordialloc Pier. I hop between footstep puddles, dodging peacocking teenagers and fishermen with their long ethereal lines cast into the waves. I know there’s nothing wrong with the one-piece bathing suit I’ve stuffed my curves into, but I breathe a sigh of relief when my friends catch up. My fear melts into the background noise.
Skittles sets down their cane, and Lex offers to put my phone in his bag. He has the best eyesight, so he finds a place where we can jump. We’re maybe … five metres above the water, but standing on that ledge coaxes a shaky breath out of me.
‘Alright! Three, two, one, and we jump on go,’ I say, somehow managing to feign confidence. I look to Skittles, who reluctantly nods. Lex? He gives a grin.
‘Three.’
Distant seagulls caw. A constant shushing of waves, overlapping, echoes in my ears.
‘Two.’
There’s salt on the wind, sharp and fishy on our tongues.
‘One.’
I squint, trying to block out the waves’ glare.
‘Go!’
We jump, and for a short moment, we’re weightless. Our hearts drop as we reach the apex of our leap. Then our bodies tense, wind wooshes past our ears, and we slam into the water. It rushes up my sides, engulfing me, until I’m entirely submerged.
Before I break the surface, my whole world is the cold, fluid sensation of water. I can’t see. I can’t hear anything but warbling distortion. I can’t touch anything. I could have wondered—
Are my toes about to brush up against something? Are my fingers going to reach out and touch something too close to be the pier, but too rough to be my friends? Is my liminal bobbing going to be disrupted by a sudden, jerking crunch as a shark rushes into me and rends my flesh from bone, dragging me deeper and deeper while I drown in a cloud of my own blood?
But … I don’t. When I come up, I feel the sun on my face. I look to see how Skittles and Lex fared, and we’re laughing, complaining, and already figuring out how we’ll get back up and go again.
Lex takes the ladder, while Skittles and I decide to swim back to shore. They tell me stories and I commiserate, while we dodge fishing lines and alternate between breaststroke and side stroke. When our feet find purchase in the shallows, we don’t rush to leave. We splash around, push each other, meet new people, and relax.
The change didn’t happen overnight, I’m still not comfortable on my own, and I still get those irrational thoughts, but it’s better. I’m better. I can be in the water, even the ocean, and not be constantly dreading sharks. Undoing the fearmongering instilled in me is difficult, but rewarding, and necessary.
Sharks aren’t monsters. They should not choke on plastic. They should not suffocate in trawling nets. They should not be hunted for their fins. We shouldn’t teach our society through horror movies and shock-value articles about one of our planet’s oldest and most important animals.
They’re part of our environment. They should be respected for their role, and for the potential threat they pose if we enter their waters. Am I still scared of them? Absolutely. You’d sooner catch me dead than in a shark cage. But I know the difference between my fear and the truth.
