Han
piscator ψ
As you can probably tell from my avatar, I have always been fascinated by water and the creatures that live in it. Some of the things in the following story may seem a little hard to believe but I assure you I am speaking honestly, I am working from memory alone so some of the dates and events may be vague and slightly jumbled.
The beginning:
I have been able to swim for as long as I can remember, due to the fact that my mother took me swimming as a baby. As a small boy I was happiest when I was in or near water of any kind, and even though I was a vegetarian as soon as I could walk I wanted to fish (angle) even though I had no desire to eat the fish, I wanted to catch them. Obviously this caused a conflict for my mother (a vegetarian) and for as long as she could she resisted buying me a fishing rod, I was allowed a net on the condition that any creature that I caught was returned to the water alive.
My child minder (baby sitter) was very different, and on one occasion I spoke to her about making a fishing rod to go to the local park and try and catch some of the large carp in the pond there, I am sure that she thought that I had little chance of success and agreed. I then created a improvised fishing rod which consisted of a garden cane, a length of baler twine (bright orange) and a hook made from a safety pin (baby pin). When we got to the pond in the park I put a lump of bread on the pin and dangled it in the water, to my and her amazement a large carp swallowed the bread and was hooked, we had little idea what to do next and tried to pull it from the water, thankfully a man who was fishing near by saw what was happening and came over and helped. After landing the fish he had to fetch his pliers to remove the safety pin which the poor old fish had swallowed, I was immediately aware of the discomfort that I had caused the fish, and after he had returned the fish to the water, he shouted at my child minder saying something along the lines of what were you thinking letting your child do that. Neither me or my child minder said anything about what happened to my mother, but I had already decided that if I was going to fish I would need the proper equipment.
Fast forward to the first overseas holiday I can remember (on a Greek Island) and I was lucky enough to be bought a snorkel and mask, and spent the entire holiday in the sea investigating and observing, with absolutely no fear or concern. When I had to go back to school we invariably had to write about what we did in the holidays, after writing about how much I enjoyed snorkeling my teacher suggested that I borrow a book about the sea, and I did. I can specifically remember reading about how misunderstood sharks were, and that there are only twelve species out of many hundreds that pose a threat to people (man eaters). I did a small project about sharks and the teacher was really impressed. one of the things that I wrote about was the lack of man eating sharks in the Mediterranean sea (where I had been swimming on my holiday).
The next important event that springs to mind is watching the movie Jaws (I was no older than eight and should not have been allowed to watch it, but a friend had a video of it and dared me to watch it whilst staying at his house) I can honestly say that I was not afraid of jaws itself in the slightest because it looked so fake, but I did nearly have a heart attack when "Hooper" (Richard Dreyfuss) is investigating the bottom of a boat (at night time) and a dead mans head appears from the hole in the side. One thing that the movie did was increase my fascination with the great white shark, and I read anything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with them (mostly outdated school library books). This resulted in me being very familiar with the different appearance and behaviour of most of the commonly written about sharks e.g. Tigers, hammerheads and basking sharks.
On my next holiday (in Naxos a greek island) I again spent the majority of the time snorkeling, and had no qualms about sharks, because to the best of my knowledge there were no man eaters in the med.
Because of my fascination with fish I liked to go and look at the fishing boats moored in the harbour and see what they had caught, and even though there was a language barrier I was always made welcome. Anyway on one particular day I was looking into the water next to a fishing boat when I noticed three very small shark like fish lying dead on the bottom, that had clearly been discarded by a fisherman. Without a second thought I dived in and manage to collect all three, they were absolutely beautiful and I was really sad they were dead. I would describe them as being like miniature sharks perfectly formed like adults just a fraction of the size, I was and still am convinced that they were baby great whites (I can not tell you how much I regret not keeping them but I was a small child and had no idea of the implications) Something did not add up, how could there be baby great whites when they do not live in the med? I tried to ask one of the fisherman what they were but he did not seem to know, and after a conversation with my mother I threw them back into the sea so that something could eat them.
While we sat on the beach the next day I was talking to my mother about them and how I was sure that they looked identical to mini great whites, when a man who was sitting next to us started to laugh out loud, he then proceeded to try and explain to me why there could not be any present in the med due to the lack of prey items, I responded by saying that well I don't see how dolphins could survive either then? and we know they are definitely here (in the med) his response was along the lines of well dolphins and sharks do not live in the same places, which I knew to be nonsense especially as I remembered a particularly graphic photo of a great white attacking and eating a dolphin. I am sure that he was trying to reassure me and was probably taken aback at my question, but he did not have an answer. And besides I was still not afraid in the slightest at being in the sea. In fact I spent the rest of the holiday as usual snorkeling. When it was time to leave for home we had to get a coach from the small resort we were staying in to the main port of the island, and whilst waiting for the ferry I had my customary walk around the harbour and was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw a newspaper clipping that had been framed and hung on the harbour masters shack/cabin that showed a huge dead shark that I identified as an adult great white, sadly the article was in Greek and I could not read it, I wanted to ask around for any more information but it was time to leave so I could not. (I wish I had taken a photograph of the article or even noted down the date but again I was a small child and it did not occur to me).
The next time I went to Greece we stayed in a beach resort called Tolo or Tolon on the mainland, I was probably eleven or twelve by this time and quite a good swimmer, there was an island across the way, probably 3/4 of a mile away and I swam over to it spent some time looking around and started to swim back again, about halfway back I became aware of how much colder the water was in the deeper areas and started to worry that I would tire before I made it back. I then used one of the life saving techniques I had learned, which was to switch to very slow sort of floating backstroke and alternate the use of my arms and legs, when I got back I decided that I would not try and swim back to the island. However just up the beach there was a woman that hired out jet skis, pedalos(paddle boats US) and kayaks. After much persuasion I convinced my mother to let me hire a kayak the next day, so that I could go and investigate the island again. I am not sure if kayak is the best way to describe what I hired it was more like a very thick surfboard with an indentation where you sat and rowed with a paddle.
After hiring this kayak thingy I set of for the island and did not give the fact that I was not provided with a life jacket a second thought. After exploring the island for sometime I set off for the beach again I was not very far from the island but in very deep water (you could not see the bottom) when I felt a bang from below the boat, it was not enough to capsize me but was enough of an impact for me to know it was not me accidentally hitting the boat with the oar, and the fact that it lifted the boat slightly made me think it was a rock I had not seen, I then started to look around in the water for the rock, when to my absolute horror I saw a very large shark like shape swimming down and away from me, I froze and did not dare move, as I watched it descend I tried to convince myself it was a dolphin, but the real game changer was when I saw the movement of its tail, a dolphins tail goes up and down, but a sharks goes side to side. This creatures tail went side to side, words can not describe the range and magnitude of the fear I felt. The thing that really compounded my fear was my knowledge of the characteristics of the great white i.e its preference to suprise attack from bellow and overwhelm its prey before it knows anything about it. I had a choice either sit there frozen in fear or rush for the beach as fast as I could go, I chose the latter and expect I probably set some kind of record for rowing from the island to the beach, such was the level of my panic.
Thank goodness I made it back, but when I did arrive I was in absolute shock, so much so the woman whom I had hired the boat from asked what on earth was the matter, when I tried to explain she tried her best not to laugh, but it was pretty obvious she did not believe me. She said it was probably a dolphin because "there are no sharks here".
After that I would not go back in the sea and decided to use the swimming pool at a near by hotel instead.
When I arrived back in England I contacted my uncle (a Zoologist) and convinced him to ask around about great whites in the med, when he did eventually get back to me he sad that there used to be a small population but there had been none seen for decades to his knowledge.
A few years later I saw an article in a newspaper about a great white that had been caught off the coast of Italy, and that there might be the occasional "lost" great white living in the med.
Not too long after seeing the newspaper article I saw a television documentary about great whites in the med and that is was possible that they migrated there to breed.
I am still a reasonably strong swimmer, and the last time I visited Greece, the friend I was staying with owns a small boat, which he uses to go fishing, I really wanted to go with him the next time he went out, but he had seen the fact that I would not go in the sea and thought that I could not swim and was using sharks as an excuse to cover it up. because even after me trying to explain that there definitely are sharks capable of eating people in the med and that I thought that I had briefly met one, he was not convinced, and quoted the same old line "there are no sharks because of the dolphins". I was left with two choices: either not go on the fishing trip, or demonstrate that I could swim. So with no small amount of fear I went for a swim with him and tried to convince myself that this was a different part of Greece (to where I had my encounter). Thankfully I saw no sharks and he was convinced that I was OK to join him on the fishing trip, which was fantastic because we were in a very small boat and I was able for the first time in my life, see the stars with hardly any light pollution.
Too cut an overly long story short, when we got back to the city where he lives, we visited the museum, and to his astonishment I pointed out some very large ancient fishing hooks which would only be practical for use in shark or tuna fishing, and they had been found only a matter of miles from where we had swum. He had visited that museum many hundreds of times and had never noticed the said hooks, which when we inquired had been on permanent display for about 25 years.
You maybe wondering what the point of this story is, so I will try to explain how I see it:
As a general rule the more you know about something the less afraid you will be of it, but this is not always the case, in this instance my knowledge about the great white and its habits fills me with dread at the prospect of being at its mercy, too such an extent that I am no longer comfortable swimming in the sea, the fact that as a small child I was able to work out the "truth" (that there are great whites in the med) but was ignored because of my age, to my mind demonstrates that how a situation is handled can have lifelong implications, I often wonder if I had managed to collect those baby sharks and get them to a marine biologist would the date of acceptance of the fact of the great whites presence in the med been brought forward and would my attitude and actions be different? i.e would I have swam over to the island or not? my guess is not.
I have nothing but admiration for those who go surfing in waters where they know there are sharks, and even more for the marine biologist I saw swimming (no shark cage) with a snorkel and mask with two of the biggest great whites you will ever see, they did not attack him, and I am convinced that they are not the mindless cold-hearted killers that most people think they are. Sadly however I have managed to convince myself that I am different and am some how more appealing to be eaten than most people, however irrational I know it is.
One of the most harrowing accounts I have ever read was the testimony from the survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.
Another factor that I have not mentioned is that my grandfather served aboard a Corvette escorting convoys across the Atlantic during WWII and lived in constant fear of being torpedoed by a U-boat (which did happen to him. He was one of only nine survivors which he put down to the fact that he was carrying a "Caul*" given to him by my grandmother who was a nurse, but that is another thread entirely). The reason I mention this is because of the similarity I see between a U-boat and a shark, and the fact that I knew about his experience.
In an over sized nutshell because of my experience with this scenario, there are certain stones that I dare not overturn, for example I do not "believe" in ghosts, but you will never catch me within 5 feet of a Ouija board, I think Christopher O'Brien summed up my attitude perfectly when he said in another thread "What you banish you may invoke"**
*amniotic sac
**David Weatherly: Strange Intruders, Black-Eyed Children and more! Questions? | The Paracast Community Forums
The beginning:
I have been able to swim for as long as I can remember, due to the fact that my mother took me swimming as a baby. As a small boy I was happiest when I was in or near water of any kind, and even though I was a vegetarian as soon as I could walk I wanted to fish (angle) even though I had no desire to eat the fish, I wanted to catch them. Obviously this caused a conflict for my mother (a vegetarian) and for as long as she could she resisted buying me a fishing rod, I was allowed a net on the condition that any creature that I caught was returned to the water alive.
My child minder (baby sitter) was very different, and on one occasion I spoke to her about making a fishing rod to go to the local park and try and catch some of the large carp in the pond there, I am sure that she thought that I had little chance of success and agreed. I then created a improvised fishing rod which consisted of a garden cane, a length of baler twine (bright orange) and a hook made from a safety pin (baby pin). When we got to the pond in the park I put a lump of bread on the pin and dangled it in the water, to my and her amazement a large carp swallowed the bread and was hooked, we had little idea what to do next and tried to pull it from the water, thankfully a man who was fishing near by saw what was happening and came over and helped. After landing the fish he had to fetch his pliers to remove the safety pin which the poor old fish had swallowed, I was immediately aware of the discomfort that I had caused the fish, and after he had returned the fish to the water, he shouted at my child minder saying something along the lines of what were you thinking letting your child do that. Neither me or my child minder said anything about what happened to my mother, but I had already decided that if I was going to fish I would need the proper equipment.
Fast forward to the first overseas holiday I can remember (on a Greek Island) and I was lucky enough to be bought a snorkel and mask, and spent the entire holiday in the sea investigating and observing, with absolutely no fear or concern. When I had to go back to school we invariably had to write about what we did in the holidays, after writing about how much I enjoyed snorkeling my teacher suggested that I borrow a book about the sea, and I did. I can specifically remember reading about how misunderstood sharks were, and that there are only twelve species out of many hundreds that pose a threat to people (man eaters). I did a small project about sharks and the teacher was really impressed. one of the things that I wrote about was the lack of man eating sharks in the Mediterranean sea (where I had been swimming on my holiday).
The next important event that springs to mind is watching the movie Jaws (I was no older than eight and should not have been allowed to watch it, but a friend had a video of it and dared me to watch it whilst staying at his house) I can honestly say that I was not afraid of jaws itself in the slightest because it looked so fake, but I did nearly have a heart attack when "Hooper" (Richard Dreyfuss) is investigating the bottom of a boat (at night time) and a dead mans head appears from the hole in the side. One thing that the movie did was increase my fascination with the great white shark, and I read anything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with them (mostly outdated school library books). This resulted in me being very familiar with the different appearance and behaviour of most of the commonly written about sharks e.g. Tigers, hammerheads and basking sharks.
On my next holiday (in Naxos a greek island) I again spent the majority of the time snorkeling, and had no qualms about sharks, because to the best of my knowledge there were no man eaters in the med.
Because of my fascination with fish I liked to go and look at the fishing boats moored in the harbour and see what they had caught, and even though there was a language barrier I was always made welcome. Anyway on one particular day I was looking into the water next to a fishing boat when I noticed three very small shark like fish lying dead on the bottom, that had clearly been discarded by a fisherman. Without a second thought I dived in and manage to collect all three, they were absolutely beautiful and I was really sad they were dead. I would describe them as being like miniature sharks perfectly formed like adults just a fraction of the size, I was and still am convinced that they were baby great whites (I can not tell you how much I regret not keeping them but I was a small child and had no idea of the implications) Something did not add up, how could there be baby great whites when they do not live in the med? I tried to ask one of the fisherman what they were but he did not seem to know, and after a conversation with my mother I threw them back into the sea so that something could eat them.
While we sat on the beach the next day I was talking to my mother about them and how I was sure that they looked identical to mini great whites, when a man who was sitting next to us started to laugh out loud, he then proceeded to try and explain to me why there could not be any present in the med due to the lack of prey items, I responded by saying that well I don't see how dolphins could survive either then? and we know they are definitely here (in the med) his response was along the lines of well dolphins and sharks do not live in the same places, which I knew to be nonsense especially as I remembered a particularly graphic photo of a great white attacking and eating a dolphin. I am sure that he was trying to reassure me and was probably taken aback at my question, but he did not have an answer. And besides I was still not afraid in the slightest at being in the sea. In fact I spent the rest of the holiday as usual snorkeling. When it was time to leave for home we had to get a coach from the small resort we were staying in to the main port of the island, and whilst waiting for the ferry I had my customary walk around the harbour and was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw a newspaper clipping that had been framed and hung on the harbour masters shack/cabin that showed a huge dead shark that I identified as an adult great white, sadly the article was in Greek and I could not read it, I wanted to ask around for any more information but it was time to leave so I could not. (I wish I had taken a photograph of the article or even noted down the date but again I was a small child and it did not occur to me).
The next time I went to Greece we stayed in a beach resort called Tolo or Tolon on the mainland, I was probably eleven or twelve by this time and quite a good swimmer, there was an island across the way, probably 3/4 of a mile away and I swam over to it spent some time looking around and started to swim back again, about halfway back I became aware of how much colder the water was in the deeper areas and started to worry that I would tire before I made it back. I then used one of the life saving techniques I had learned, which was to switch to very slow sort of floating backstroke and alternate the use of my arms and legs, when I got back I decided that I would not try and swim back to the island. However just up the beach there was a woman that hired out jet skis, pedalos(paddle boats US) and kayaks. After much persuasion I convinced my mother to let me hire a kayak the next day, so that I could go and investigate the island again. I am not sure if kayak is the best way to describe what I hired it was more like a very thick surfboard with an indentation where you sat and rowed with a paddle.
After hiring this kayak thingy I set of for the island and did not give the fact that I was not provided with a life jacket a second thought. After exploring the island for sometime I set off for the beach again I was not very far from the island but in very deep water (you could not see the bottom) when I felt a bang from below the boat, it was not enough to capsize me but was enough of an impact for me to know it was not me accidentally hitting the boat with the oar, and the fact that it lifted the boat slightly made me think it was a rock I had not seen, I then started to look around in the water for the rock, when to my absolute horror I saw a very large shark like shape swimming down and away from me, I froze and did not dare move, as I watched it descend I tried to convince myself it was a dolphin, but the real game changer was when I saw the movement of its tail, a dolphins tail goes up and down, but a sharks goes side to side. This creatures tail went side to side, words can not describe the range and magnitude of the fear I felt. The thing that really compounded my fear was my knowledge of the characteristics of the great white i.e its preference to suprise attack from bellow and overwhelm its prey before it knows anything about it. I had a choice either sit there frozen in fear or rush for the beach as fast as I could go, I chose the latter and expect I probably set some kind of record for rowing from the island to the beach, such was the level of my panic.
Thank goodness I made it back, but when I did arrive I was in absolute shock, so much so the woman whom I had hired the boat from asked what on earth was the matter, when I tried to explain she tried her best not to laugh, but it was pretty obvious she did not believe me. She said it was probably a dolphin because "there are no sharks here".
After that I would not go back in the sea and decided to use the swimming pool at a near by hotel instead.
When I arrived back in England I contacted my uncle (a Zoologist) and convinced him to ask around about great whites in the med, when he did eventually get back to me he sad that there used to be a small population but there had been none seen for decades to his knowledge.
A few years later I saw an article in a newspaper about a great white that had been caught off the coast of Italy, and that there might be the occasional "lost" great white living in the med.
Not too long after seeing the newspaper article I saw a television documentary about great whites in the med and that is was possible that they migrated there to breed.
I am still a reasonably strong swimmer, and the last time I visited Greece, the friend I was staying with owns a small boat, which he uses to go fishing, I really wanted to go with him the next time he went out, but he had seen the fact that I would not go in the sea and thought that I could not swim and was using sharks as an excuse to cover it up. because even after me trying to explain that there definitely are sharks capable of eating people in the med and that I thought that I had briefly met one, he was not convinced, and quoted the same old line "there are no sharks because of the dolphins". I was left with two choices: either not go on the fishing trip, or demonstrate that I could swim. So with no small amount of fear I went for a swim with him and tried to convince myself that this was a different part of Greece (to where I had my encounter). Thankfully I saw no sharks and he was convinced that I was OK to join him on the fishing trip, which was fantastic because we were in a very small boat and I was able for the first time in my life, see the stars with hardly any light pollution.
Too cut an overly long story short, when we got back to the city where he lives, we visited the museum, and to his astonishment I pointed out some very large ancient fishing hooks which would only be practical for use in shark or tuna fishing, and they had been found only a matter of miles from where we had swum. He had visited that museum many hundreds of times and had never noticed the said hooks, which when we inquired had been on permanent display for about 25 years.
You maybe wondering what the point of this story is, so I will try to explain how I see it:
As a general rule the more you know about something the less afraid you will be of it, but this is not always the case, in this instance my knowledge about the great white and its habits fills me with dread at the prospect of being at its mercy, too such an extent that I am no longer comfortable swimming in the sea, the fact that as a small child I was able to work out the "truth" (that there are great whites in the med) but was ignored because of my age, to my mind demonstrates that how a situation is handled can have lifelong implications, I often wonder if I had managed to collect those baby sharks and get them to a marine biologist would the date of acceptance of the fact of the great whites presence in the med been brought forward and would my attitude and actions be different? i.e would I have swam over to the island or not? my guess is not.
I have nothing but admiration for those who go surfing in waters where they know there are sharks, and even more for the marine biologist I saw swimming (no shark cage) with a snorkel and mask with two of the biggest great whites you will ever see, they did not attack him, and I am convinced that they are not the mindless cold-hearted killers that most people think they are. Sadly however I have managed to convince myself that I am different and am some how more appealing to be eaten than most people, however irrational I know it is.
One of the most harrowing accounts I have ever read was the testimony from the survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.
Another factor that I have not mentioned is that my grandfather served aboard a Corvette escorting convoys across the Atlantic during WWII and lived in constant fear of being torpedoed by a U-boat (which did happen to him. He was one of only nine survivors which he put down to the fact that he was carrying a "Caul*" given to him by my grandmother who was a nurse, but that is another thread entirely). The reason I mention this is because of the similarity I see between a U-boat and a shark, and the fact that I knew about his experience.
In an over sized nutshell because of my experience with this scenario, there are certain stones that I dare not overturn, for example I do not "believe" in ghosts, but you will never catch me within 5 feet of a Ouija board, I think Christopher O'Brien summed up my attitude perfectly when he said in another thread "What you banish you may invoke"**
*amniotic sac
**David Weatherly: Strange Intruders, Black-Eyed Children and more! Questions? | The Paracast Community Forums
