Demon Fish (39 page)

Graham sees this flexibility as one of whale sharks’ best assets: “Their ability to adapt to all sorts of different environments is an important part of their survival.”

But this deep diving also raises an obvious question: Why do the whale sharks go that deep? Even after several years of study, Hueter falls back on the process of elimination in order to answer the query. At first, researchers thought the animals were seeking food down below, but the plankton is pretty thin at those depths. Then they thought these dives might serve to regulate the sharks’ body temperature, but they haven’t found particular evidence to support that in the data they’ve collected. So now they’re leaning toward the theory that diving allows whale sharks to rest, as they engage in a sort of harmless free fall toward the seafloor. But they are still trying to figure out why whale sharks, along with basking sharks, dive in a number of distinct patterns, such as V-shaped spikes, a W-shaped sawtooth, and oscillatory staircasing.

Whale sharks are a hot property, scientifically and academically speaking: in 2002 the world’s governments decided to protect the species through CITES, one of only a handful of sharks to receive such protection. No one knows how many whale sharks are out there, though Proyecto Dominó and its partners have estimated that at least a thousand—and perhaps as many as fifteen hundred—of them come to Holbox each summer.

“There’s no question they have gotten attention because of their gargantuan size, and they’re polka-dotted animals people are attracted to,” Hueter says. “Does that mean they’re more important? I don’t think so. Does that mean they’re threatened or endangered? Not necessarily. They’ve been treated sort of royally because of the warm-and-fuzzy factor.”

In fact, Hueter and his Mote colleagues had been studying blacktip sharks in Holbox for close to a decade when local researchers mentioned in passing that each year, just after the Floridians left, whale sharks came to the island in droves.

“Why did they start paying attention?” Hueter asks, referring to the Holboxeños. “Because the outside world was telling them how special this is.”

In other words, the market—rather than some abstract environmental ideal—is what has driven conservation in Holbox. Once researchers from the United States and elsewhere in Mexico conveyed to locals that these animals—if kept alive and accessible—have an economic value, area residents started using it to their advantage. And that was the best possible thing that ever could have happened to the whale sharks. Other species, including several kinds of reef sharks, serve as viable tourist attractions across the globe. Once a community manages to turn live sharks into a commodity, they have a better chance of staying underwater instead of being hauled ashore to die.

In fact, whale sharks in the wild make for a stunning sight. Early one morning in August 2007, I headed out to sea with Hueter, de la Parra, and a few other scientists. One of the things locals (and scientists) know about whale sharks is they’re easiest to spot between 7:00 and 11:00 a.m., while they’re surface feeding. Around lunchtime they descend, at which point people don’t have much of a clue as to what they’re doing.

It took an hour to reach the sharks’ usual gathering place. At first the ocean was absolutely smooth: the reddish plankton in the water was so thick it was nearly impossible to discern anything underneath the surface. Then one of the researchers cried out, “There’s one of them!” pointing to a large, shiny dorsal fin poking out of the water. We pulled the boat alongside it, and I found myself gazing at the largest shark I had ever seen.

At twenty-three feet, it really was as big as a school bus. (The researchers have a very straightforward way of measuring the animals: they use a ruler to mark off feet on the side of the boat and then wait until the tail is aligned with the back of the boat to assess its proper length.) Its skin was dark gray and shiny, glinting in the sunlight, with mottled white dots on its back.

All of a sudden it seemed as if there were whale sharks everywhere. It was not as if they were out of the water entirely. Often we could see only a fraction of their massive bodies: their gently curved mouths, agape as they sucked in volumes of water, or the tips of their tails, flicking back and forth as they glided through the water. But more often than not, we could spot their first dorsal fins jutting out of the sea from dozens of yards away.

After the researchers had made some of their basic measurements, I donned my mask, snorkel, and fins and prepared to jump into the water. This should be easy, I thought to myself. The shark does not appear to be moving so fast—Hueter estimates they move between one and two miles an hour—so I should be able to keep up. I’ve watched de la Parra hop over the boat, with his bright yellow plastic tag and slingshot pole in hand, and come back empty-handed, with the tag firmly attached to the shark’s skin. Surely, I can swim alongside this animal.

Wrong.

I made a cardinal mistake: I jumped in near the shark’s tail. From that point on, I was furiously swimming to try to catch up with the fish, an impossible task.

I tried again, with a different shark. Same problem: by the time I swam out to it, the shark had turned and I was out of luck.

Finally, I managed to plunge into the water near the animal’s head. Within seconds, I found myself facing an enormous, blunt-nosed creature, heading toward me at what seemed like a shockingly rapid rate. While I marveled at its massive nostrils and the eyes tucked on either side of its head, I was also cognizant of the fact that I was set for a head-on collision with a three-thousand-pound shark. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t boast sharp teeth, since I was simply going to get smushed. I ducked.

The whale shark cruised by, seemingly unperturbed by my last-minute bailout. It was on its way, and I was now on the sidelines.

By the time I scrambled back onto the boat, everyone was ready with their quips about my sudden evasive maneuver. I did not care. I had seen a whale shark, face-to-face. And I began to think that maybe whale shark tourism in Mexico has a future after all.

To get a sense of what this sort of sightseeing looks like when it becomes truly big business, one must travel thousands of miles away from the Yucatán Peninsula to South Africa. It has capitalized on shark tourism better than almost any other country, in part because it serves as a part-time home for the iconic great white. While scientists can predict when the white sharks will show up—they congregate around areas such as Dyer and Seal islands during June, July, and August and come closer inshore during September through December—it remains slightly unclear what draws them to the area. Food is the most obvious explanation: young seal pups are just beginning to venture out into the water during South Africa’s winter months (what is the summer for the Northern Hemisphere), making them vulnerable to predation.

The improbable idea of charging tourists for jumping into the water with lethal animals began on February 5, 1976, when the underwater filmmakers Valerie and Ron Taylor agreed to guide four Americans on an expedition to Port Lincoln, South Australia, to see white sharks in what Valerie Taylor later described as “their natural element.” The trip—organized by the U.S.-based See and Sea Travel—cost $4,000 a person, plus airfare, and generated significant publicity. Judging from Taylor’s diary of the trip, it’s miraculous that everyone emerged unscathed from the adventure. As she wrote on February 8 at 7:30 p.m. of the first great white the group encountered, “That poor shark. He must have wondered what kind of creature this wall of black eyes looking at him belonged to. Every pass of the boat was heralded by the excited cries from the Americans and a dozen clicking cameras. Never was a shark so photographed … The shark rammed into the far cage. Everyone yelled and cheered. From our boat, it looked chaotic and probably was. But the visitors were so happy it made us natives happy just watching them.”
²
The events on Dangerous Reef were captured on film, not only by Ron Taylor, but also by some of the Americans, and sparked an unexpected backlash. Shark hunters flocked to the reef and killed at least twelve sharks, while some members of the public recoiled at the idea that great whites were that accessible. A similar trip planned for the following year was canceled.
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For years, cage diving was the exclusive preserve of the very rich and the occasional adventure-documentary filmmaker. But around 1989, Kim Maclean—who at the time was earning extra money on weekends taking people out fishing on a small jetty—was strolling along the harbor in Hermanus, South Africa, when she saw a little Afrikaner boy fishing with a rod and reel. He happily plunked one fish after another into his bucket, until he reeled in a small sand shark. That one he tossed aside and left to die on the sand.

Maclean—who had grown up “shark mad,” as she describes it, with shark posters covering her bedroom walls—was horrified. “This little boy had been trained the only good shark is a dead shark,” she thought to herself. And she decided there was a straightforward way of convincing people to think otherwise. It just meant getting them into water with great whites.

Maclean is a blunt-spoken, stocky bleached blonde who’s spent years taking on the fishing boys’ club. She started Shark Lady Adventures in 1992, and she’s still the only woman running her own great white diving operation on the Eastern Cape. Maclean can operate in every position on a ship, and isn’t shy about saying so. But while she’s not above a bit of self-promotion, she also is a genuine conservationist. There’s a visible divide among the eight cage-diving operators who work out of Gansbaai, the impoverished town two hours away from Cape Town. Several of them have brochures that picture a great white with its mouth agape (the typical shark money shot), with phrases like “The JAWS … of LIFE.” While nearly every operator touts its eco-friendly credentials, several highlight the scarier aspects of getting in the water with white sharks.

Shark Lady Adventures, by contrast, appeals to the higher-end, tree-hugger crowd. With catchphrases like “We care, protect and educate” and “This time, it’s you in the Zoo,” the operation navigates the line between typical thrill-seeking tourism and environmental protection. Maclean has established strict rules for the dive master, including making sure the bait is at least six feet from the boat so that the sharks don’t come into contact with the divers. In 2009 she constructed the White Shark Embassy, an attractive building right on the water that includes educational panels on sharks prepared by the Save Our Seas Foundation as well as plenty of stuffed animals, sweatshirts, and beaded wire sculptures. Maclean has little patience for backpackers, or the tourists who have put cage diving on their to-do list, right after bungee jumping and skydiving. “I’m not there to entertain people who just want to tick it off their list,” she says. “They want to see the gory blood, and want to see the fierce teeth.”

That said, everyone who decides to cage dive with a great white is looking for thrills. And all of them are at least a little bit scared when they show up at the Shark Lady’s launching point.

Gansbaai—the so-called White Shark Capital of the World—is a grim town. The largest local commercial establishment appears to be Dit and Dat Trading, and the most cheerful roadside signs all feature sharks. There are none of the usual trappings of a destination spot: small bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants, or curio shops. Tourists come first thing in the morning to head out to sea, and they depart in the afternoon for either Hermanus or Cape Town. Maclean tried to put on a white shark festival one year, to generate a little income for the town, but her competitors weren’t interested in cooperating. While cage diving might support more than half a dozen tour businesses, it’s done little to lift the standard of living for these operations’ departure site.

By the time I arrive at the White Shark Embassy—a freshly whitewashed building with clipper ship chandeliers and ocean views—a small group has begun to assemble on the building’s second floor, where there’s a hot breakfast being offered. It’s an eclectic mix of people: a professional South African cricket player and his girlfriend; a Scottish business consultant and his daughter, fresh out of university; a Brazilian sales representative for Caterpillar, his wife, and their nine-year-old daughter; and a Malay-British couple with two teenage sons.

“It was his idea,” Jeanne Kietzmann says bluntly. Kietzmann’s boyfriend, Dale Steyn, is one of the South African national cricket team’s star players. After seeing a show about great whites on a sports channel, he decided they needed to go. “I’m just being dragged along,” Kietzmann offers, glancing out the window at the boats docked below. “I’ve actually got a massive shark phobia. So it’s going to be interesting.”

Lance Coetzee, the dive master, is a cheerful sort, sunburned all over his face except for the strip of white skin protected by his sunglasses. He gives a decent lecture on the white shark basics—their anatomy, different senses, feeding habits—and does his best to reassure the most jittery customers. “It will not come up on the boat and attack it just because you’re afraid and your heart is beating,” he lectures, just after describing how the sharks can detect the heartbeats of other creatures underwater. “These animals have been portrayed by the movie
Jaws
as bloodthirsty monsters. They’re not.” (Later, Coetzee confides, “I’m sure
Jaws
sells the product for us. I’m sure it helps, sensationalism. But sensationalism isn’t going to keep the sharks here.”)

Then we’re off, with Coetzee shepherding us gently on the boat. Stuart Richardson, the Scottish businessman, relishes the idea of crossing paths with a dangerous animal underwater: “The ultimate is swimming with something like that. It’s almost a religious thing. If God wants to meet you, he’s going to meet you.” This is what sustains the cage-diving industry—the idea that one is doing something theoretically dangerous, even though every possible precaution is taken to minimize risk.

After motoring for fifteen minutes, we’re within reach of Dyer Island, a well-known congregating spot for sharks. Several other boats have already made it out there, and from the cries we can hear nearby, they’ve presumably found what they’re looking for. As one of the mates starts chumming the water with a reddish fishy soup, Coetzee lowers the cage into the water. It doesn’t look anything like what I had envisioned: black rubber covers the metal contraption, which has four separate chutes divers can lower themselves into simultaneously. And only the most rudimentary gear is required—a hooded wet suit and snorkeling mask—since once in the cage, divers keep their heads above water until a shark comes close enough to observe.