The Ever-Present Unseeable Terror: On Millennia of Human-Shark Relations

Featured image: John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778

The most haunting of our imagined monsters remain hidden as they stalk us, striking when we least suspect it, while we are relaxing, or at play. The megalodon roams the ocean unseen and unseeable, except in our imaginations. And it often surfaces in our consciousness when we are at rest or play by the seaside. The reason that the great shark holds such a chilling grip on us must be sought in the very long history of the interaction of sharks with people.

Is there anything more spine-chilling than the thought of being eaten alive? Tigers and crocodiles occasionally eat people, but they are restricted to specific regions that are far removed from the areas inhabited by the majority of humans. Of all the great predators, only sharks patrol the waters off all our coastal cities and tourist resorts. As with the most feared of monsters, they are the ever-present, unseeable terror.

There is a contentious theory that our species went through an aquatic phase during its evolution, according to which the long periods our ancestors spent in the sea foraging for marine life account for our hairlessness, our thick layer of subcutaneous fat, and our abilities to swim and hold our breath. If the theory is true, then perhaps this primeval foray into the water has something to do with our deep fear of submerged predators.

More certain is the idea that at least 50,000 years ago, people were making heroic oceanic voyages, for example, to reach Australia. In those days, well before the widespread despoliation of the oceans, these first intrepid mariners must have crossed waters that often roiled with sharks and their prey. Perhaps they even lost the odd companion to snapping cartilaginous jaws. Whatever the case, as soon as our ancestors began plunging into the sea to travel or to exploit it for food, they exposed themselves to the risk of encountering sharks.

Archaeological excavations have provided some convincing evidence that sharks have preyed on humans for many millennia. In 2021 researchers announced the unearthing of the skeleton of a shark-attack victim in a Japanese cemetery that was almost 3,000 years old. The unfortunate person was most likely a fisherman, and his bones bore almost 800 marks made by serrated teeth—most likely from a tiger shark or a great white. The marks included deep incisions, punctures, striations and cuts, and by mapping them on a three-dimensional model, researchers were able to tell that the victim was alive when attacked.

One of his hands was cleanly sawn off, possibly the result of a desperate attempt to break free from the predator. And both legs had been severed from the torso in the attack, one of which had been placed upside down on the corpse prior to its burial. As gruesome as the find is, we are fortunate indeed to have such evidence of prehistoric shark attack, first because buried shark-attack victims must surely be in the minority, as the bodies of many victims are never recovered, and second because it’s rare even for a buried body to remain intact for 3000 years.

Over time, many human communities have struck a balance between fear and respect for sharks, and in some of the most ocean-going cultures of the world, both humans and sharks thrived. Because sharks play vital roles in the marine ecosystems, this live and let live association facilitates healthy, stable food chains, which bring real benefits to humans as well as to the environment.

Many of the communities that maintain a respectful relationship with sharks have incorporated the creatures into creation myths as ancestors, or gods. In Maori mythology Parata is the shark-god who lives in the depths of the ocean. With each breath he controls the oscillation of the tides. The Fijian shark-god Dakuwaqa is the protector of fishermen, shielding them from the jaws of sharks and securing their safety at sea. Sharks can be attracted to canoes and can even swim ahead of them in ways that make it appear that they are guiding the humans in the vessel, and of course, sharks know where the best fishing grounds are, all of which may have influenced Fijian beliefs.

In Hawaii it was believed that the ancestors could manifest in the form of a shark, and that sharks would guide canoes and herd fish into nets. In the Solomon Islands, sharks steer the transition from the living to the spirit world. There, bodies of the dead are laid on reefs at low tide, to be eaten by sharks, allowing the spirits of the deceased to join the ancestors. On Anaa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago, warriors take the name of the oceanic whitetip shark, and in large areas of Polynesia sharks that live in the open ocean (some of which are known maneaters) are seen as taboo and cannot be killed or eaten.

In some traditional Polynesian societies, sharks even provided a spectacle. In a strange parallel to the Colosseum contests of ancient Rome, “volunteer” Hawaiian warriors would sometimes engage in battles to the death against a shark. The spectacle occurred in a sea pen, fashioned with large basaltic rocks. Bait was placed inside to lure sharks into a narrow opening that faced the open ocean, and once a shark was in the pen, the opening was closed and the warrior plunged into the water, brandishing a small wooden rod that terminated in a single shark’s tooth. As the shark lunged at the warrior, he would aim the toothdagger toward the beast’s belly in a bid to disembowel it. Human victories were rare, and the few men who did survive gained great Mana (prestige) and were believed to have gained supernatural powers.

Following the adoption of Christianity in Oceania in the early 1800s, many of the beliefs protecting sharks broke down, and some previously protected species were intensively fished to the point that they vanished from the once well-frequented waters. Only in the most remote and uninhabited of places, such as Caroline Island in Kiribati, or the privately owned Clipperton Island, can the full glory of sharks before human hunting decimated them now be appreciated.

In a spectacle reminiscent of the Pacific before human exploitation, hundreds of black-tipped reef sharks can be seen in the lagoon shallows there, while numerous larger sharks patrol offshore. All are so unafraid that they will bite at the paddles of rowers making for the shore, and even nip at their feet as they wade onto the beach.

The oceanic whitetip is a deep-water species of shark that has been severely impacted by the breakdown of pre-Christian taboos that protected it. It’s a slow-moving, slow-growing species with a low reproductive rate, and as it was killed in increasing numbers by newly minted Christians it went into swift decline. One favored method was to travel far out to sea and to use a goat as a lure. When the oceanic whitetips approached, the fishermen would lasso the sharks by the tail, one by one, as they approached the bait.

As Europeans embarked upon the age of sail, voyaging to evermore distant parts of the globe, they encountered predatory sharks, in many cases for the first time. Early English voyagers referred to them as sea-dogs, but eventually the term shark, derived from the Dutch word for scoundrel, was adopted. The spectacle of both a shark attack and a heroic rescue is eerily yet beautifully conveyed in a 1778 painting by John Singleton Copley, “Watson and the Shark,” held in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

It depicts a ghastly event that occurred in the 1740s, when 14-year-old orphan Brook Watson imprudently dived off a small boat he was working on in Havana Harbor, Cuba. Within view of several horrified onlookers, a panicked Watson was dragged underwater by a huge shark that had latched on to his leg. He resurfaced once, only to be pulled under again by the shark. A crew member finally chased the shark away with a pole topped with a large hook. The creature left bearing Watson’s right foot and onlookers were able to rescue the lad. Amazingly, Watson lived to tell the tale. In Copley’s painting Watson floats naked in the turbulent waters, his body pale and vulnerable, one arm desperately outstretched to several men in a boat, as the monstrous shark approaches with its jaws wide open.

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Excerpted from Big Meg: The Story of the Largest and Most Mysterious Predator that Ever Lived by Tim Flannery and Emma Flannery. Copyright © 2024. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.