Raising A Soul Surfer (20 page)

In situations like this, people tend to blame God.
Why her
? My husband was about to begin a long and arduous struggle with questioning God’s goodness. He kept it to himself, but the thought was there, mulling over inside of him for a long time.

That is the thing: Who deserves tragedy or any circumstance, good or bad? Aren’t we all just sinners saved by grace? Waters rise and storms rage; life is full of unavoidable crises. Only God can still the raging storm and keep us in the palm of His hand.

Tom didn’t have much time to analyze his anguish and despair. There was a hospital full of caring friends who just wanted to put their arms around him and our family and let him know how much they cared.

Little did we know that there was a full-on media circus heading to Kauai to get the scoop on this gripping story that would unfurl on news channels for days: a young up-and-coming teen surfer mauled by a shark . . . who lives to tell about it. But the wave of head-spinning insanity hadn’t yet descended on us, and at that moment, in that hospital room, breathing in the sweet aroma of arriving flowers and staring at the huge bandage covering the empty space where Bethany’s left arm should have been, all I could say was,
Thank You, God, for saving her life
.

Our journey to this place had begun long ago; but from this moment on, it was about to go down a wildly different path than any of us could have ever foreseen, and bring us hope in the darkness.

Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or
tie down his tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through
his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook
?
JOB 41:1-2

He has made me his target
.
JOB
16:12

The sun was setting
when our week spent in the hospital ended. Tom and I were finalizing our exit when Billy Hamilton, Tom’s former roommate, came to the hospital room to give his aloha to Bethany. Billy is considered one of the most well-known and influential surfers in the world. He approached Tom and said in a quiet tone, “I think the shark that attacked Bethany is the same one that has been spotted roaming around the North Shore surf breaks. This shark went after a few other surfers in several different locations. It is acting vicious and appears to be a rogue shark. It won’t be long before it will hurt someone else.”

“How can you be sure it’s the same one, Bill?”

“It has a really distinctive ragged fin,” Bill replied. “It swam right through the lineup in Hanalei, harassed a diver and surfers.”
His voice was firm. “And, Tom, the lifeguards at Tunnels were searching for the shark on their jet skis along with a big cooler of ice in case they found her arm. They said they saw the shark, with its ragged fin, just after the attack. The beast had dry-docked itself upon the reef and then wriggled off. Tom, I think there’s something seriously wrong with that animal. Would you be okay if we hunted it down?”

Tom knew that Bill Hamilton wasn’t over-reacting. Bill was an accomplished waterman, fisherman, surfboard maker and pioneering surf legend the world over. Bill is father to the world-renowned big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton and his brother, Lyon. Laird actually introduced his mother to Bill, and they ended up marrying soon after. Laird noticed Bill while watching him surf in the waves on the North Shore of Oahu.

In the movies, sharks are often portrayed as attacking everything and anything, particularly humans. In reality, sharks are just predatory fish that usually do not go out of their way to attack people when there is such an abundance of their natural prey. Animals will sometimes attack when threatened, but a shark that consistently goes after surfers isn’t feeling threatened; it’s moved beyond being a normal predator to a rogue.

To anyone not from a beach culture and, in particular, to anyone not from Hawaii, it might seem like a non-issue to hunt down a shark that was going after people at popular surf or swimming areas. But every surfer knows that encountering sharks is an inherent risk to the sport. A rogue shark, however, is a little different. This big fish is going out of its way to harass humans.

There was another possible objection. In Hawaii, there are those who have kept the embers of the ancient Hawaiian culture alive. The shark, or
mano
, was an
aumakua
, or family god, to be protected from harm. In ancient times it was believed that
a departed family member would turn into a shark or that a departed spirit would possess a shark. Often a particular shark was believed to be a specific dead relative, and the creature might even be fed and cared for by the family. Although many Hawaiians do not hold to these old animist beliefs, there has been a resurgence of these ideas among some groups.

Tom weighed these considerations before replying. Then he said, “You would make my day . . . in fact, you would make my
year
if you were able to get that monster. I never want another family to go through what we’re going through.”

After talking about it together, Tom, Bill and I agreed that if we did go after it, we would have to do it right. Bill teamed up with another local legend for the shark hunt. He was a leathery skinned, white-bearded sea dog and professional fisherman named Ralph Young. Ralph, for many decades, was one of the best longboarders on Kauai. In the local annual Pine Trees surf competitions, Ralph and Billy were usually neck and neck for first place wins.

In Hawaii, it is important to show respect; the community is too small and tightly knit to ride roughshod without considering others. They talked to key members of the Hawaiian community, many of them surfers themselves. After hearing the evidence for a rogue shark with a distinct ragged fin, the majority gave their thumbs-up.

The hunt was on for the ragged-finned shark!

From the many sightings and the size of the shark bite in Bethany’s surfboard, Bill Hamilton and Ralph Young estimated the shark to be 12 to 15 feet long. Catching it wouldn’t be easy.

Ralph knew of an underwater spring near a popular surf break where the shark had been frequently sighted. According to him, the place seemed to attract sharks that were spawning their young—something that happened near that time of year.

Bill and Ralph decided they would set the bait at night because attracting sharks in the day could endanger those surfing nearby. They used a steel cable, anchoring their bait on a large hook connected to a buoy. A 15-foot tiger shark can weigh close to 2,000 pounds, and its jaws have enough force to snap anything less substantial. At first light, the two fishermen returned to see if anything had paid a visit overnight. At the break of dawn Ralph found the bait half gone.

The following morning the bait was gone, and to their astonishment the hook was completely straight! Something big was lurking around the spring.

“Well,” said Ralph when he saw the undoing, “I’ve got to get a little more serious.”

The next night, they used a massive hook that Ralph had brought home from New Zealand for hunting this kind of huge animal. As bait they used a Galapagos shark, one of the most abundant species of sharks in island waters. Over the next few days they baited huge hooks and anchored them deep in the bay.

On the fifth day, Ralph went out to check and saw that the lines and buoys had become tangled. He put on a dive mask and leaned over the boat. There on the bottom, firmly caught on the cable, was a massive Tiger shark with a distinctive ragged dorsal fin.

The two men hoisted up the shark and towed it to the beach where a backhoe was enlisted to get the shark out of the water. The 14-and-a-half-foot shark began to attract a crowd on the beach, and Ralph and Bill didn’t want to cause a scene. They used their two small boats to haul the shark out to sea so they could cut the stomach open to examine the contents.

The stomach was empty.

Ralph had seen this before. As he explained to us later, sharks (particularly Tiger sharks) will fill their bellies with so much
inedible garbage, including rocks, cans and trash, that they will actually turn their stomachs inside out to regurgitate the contents. And, if he were correct, the large chunk of surfboard made of fiberglass and foam, which the shark had eaten (along with our daughter’s arm and her wristwatch), would cause the shark to disgorge its stomach. Not just because it was inedible, he said, but also because it could have seriously disrupted the shark’s buoyancy.

It was the ragged fin that told them they’d gotten the shark that had been hunting surfers. It correlated to the many other eyewitness accounts, including that of the Tunnels’ lifeguards. But was it for sure the one that attacked Bethany?

Ralph and Bill carefully took the tender stomach skin to give to a Hawaiian drum maker and then loaded the giant carcass with rocks and sent it back into the ocean, but not before cutting out the huge jaw. There was one last test before knowing for sure whether the hunt had been a success.

Tom and Bethany took her mutilated surfboard down to Ralph’s
hale
. They carefully matched the gaping jaws with the shape of the crescent torn out of the red, white and blue board. It was a perfect match! They had found the rogue shark.

While we certainly don’t celebrate the destruction of one of God’s creatures, I have to admit that it made all of us feel very good to know this particular animal would not be preying on any other surfers, divers or swimmers. Tom, in particular, was extremely thankful that through the determined efforts of his friends Ralph and Bill, the shark that had caused us such grief would not go on to cause an even greater tragedy for another family.

Months later, Ralph gave each member of the family a tooth from the jaws. To Tom’s surprise, Bethany tentatively smiled as she received hers. This ceremonial gesture brought closure to this traumatic chapter in our lives.

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him
.
1
CORINTHIANS 2:8-1 0,
NIV

Cast your cares on the L
ORD
and He will sustain you;
He will never let the righteous be shaken
.
PSALM
55:22,
TNIV