Read Online Shark Trouble by Peter Benchley - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Benchley
Tags: Fiction
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them. Iâd bet that many of the crewmen of the
Indianapolis,
in 1945, were killed by long-hands, but no one will ever know.
I do know, however, that
longimanus
is unpredictable, scary, and demonstrably capable of killing a human. Thereâs a story about one that attacked two U.S. Navy divers in the deep waters of the Tongue of the Ocean in the Bahamas. The shark took a big bite out of one of the divers and then, as the diverâs mate fought it for possession of his friend, dragged the diver into the abyss. Finally, at a depth of about three hundred feetâfar beyond safe scuba depthâthe mate had to choose between letting go of his friend and dying himself, and he watched as shark and body disappeared into the gloom.
Long-hands are my personal bêtes noiresâone of the few species of shark of which I am genuinely and viscerally afraid. A couple of decades ago one made an honest effort to eat me. I donât blame the shark for trying, because my situation fell well within the bounds of Stupid Things You Should Avoid at All Costs, but the near-miss scared meâand scarred me permanentlyânevertheless.
I was with an ABC-TV crew, also in the Tongue of the Ocean, in open water more than a mile deep. We had tied our boat to a Navy buoy that had become a popular spot to film because it had been in the water for so long that the sea had claimed it, transforming it into an artificial reef. Microscopic animals had taken shelter in the buoy and the chain and had been followed by tiny crustacea and other small critters. Then the larger ones had come to feed, and those larger still, untilâin the magical way the sea has of generating life on all levelsâthe entire food chain had come to use buoy and chain as a feeding ground.
A school of yellowfin tuna was swarming around the buoy, attracted by something, and in the brilliant sunlight of the summer day the colors were so gorgeous that we decided to take some footage for the film segment about the Bahamas that we were working on for
The American Sportsman
.
I, as the so-called talent, was dispatched into the water. Stan Waterman followed to film whatever happenedâpresumably nothing more than the contrasting colors of the beautiful fish against the cobalt sea, interrupted now and then by a black-rubber-suited human wearing a yellow âhorse-collarâ buoyancy-compensator vest around his neck.
Back then I was still a pretty green blue-water diver. Blue-water diving is diving in water with no bottom visible or reachable; it can spark fears and phobias, for to look down into the darkling blue nothingness is to harken back to childhood nightmares about monsters and infinity. I wasnât accustomed to diving in water I knew to be more than five thousand feet deep, and once in a while I was haunted by a vision of my body drifting down, down, down, from light blue to darker blue, to purple and violet and the unknown black.
So, naturally, whenever I had to dive in blue water, I carried a security blanket: a sawed-off broomstick about three feet long, attached to my wrist by a rawhide thong. Exactly what it was supposed to protect me from I never determined, but my logic was unassailable: if cameramen could carry cameras with which to ward off attackers, and assistants could carry cameras and lights, why shouldnât I be allowed to carry a broomstick?
Thus armed, I jumped overboard and swam among the yellowfin tunaâor, rather, they swam around me. I held on to the barnacle-covered buoy chain to keep from being swept away by the current, and the school of tuna, which had scattered when I splashed into the water, re-formed and circled me. The shafts of sunlight piercing the surface glittered on their silver scales and yellow fins, and it seemed to me that Stan must be gathering an entire library of beauty shots.
The water was very clear, visibility more than a hundred feet, I was sure, though itâs hard to tell in blue water, for
Indianapolis,
in 1945, were killed by long-hands, but no one will ever know.
I do know, however, that
longimanus
is unpredictable, scary, and demonstrably capable of killing a human. Thereâs a story about one that attacked two U.S. Navy divers in the deep waters of the Tongue of the Ocean in the Bahamas. The shark took a big bite out of one of the divers and then, as the diverâs mate fought it for possession of his friend, dragged the diver into the abyss. Finally, at a depth of about three hundred feetâfar beyond safe scuba depthâthe mate had to choose between letting go of his friend and dying himself, and he watched as shark and body disappeared into the gloom.
Long-hands are my personal bêtes noiresâone of the few species of shark of which I am genuinely and viscerally afraid. A couple of decades ago one made an honest effort to eat me. I donât blame the shark for trying, because my situation fell well within the bounds of Stupid Things You Should Avoid at All Costs, but the near-miss scared meâand scarred me permanentlyânevertheless.
I was with an ABC-TV crew, also in the Tongue of the Ocean, in open water more than a mile deep. We had tied our boat to a Navy buoy that had become a popular spot to film because it had been in the water for so long that the sea had claimed it, transforming it into an artificial reef. Microscopic animals had taken shelter in the buoy and the chain and had been followed by tiny crustacea and other small critters. Then the larger ones had come to feed, and those larger still, untilâin the magical way the sea has of generating life on all levelsâthe entire food chain had come to use buoy and chain as a feeding ground.
A school of yellowfin tuna was swarming around the buoy, attracted by something, and in the brilliant sunlight of the summer day the colors were so gorgeous that we decided to take some footage for the film segment about the Bahamas that we were working on for
The American Sportsman
.
I, as the so-called talent, was dispatched into the water. Stan Waterman followed to film whatever happenedâpresumably nothing more than the contrasting colors of the beautiful fish against the cobalt sea, interrupted now and then by a black-rubber-suited human wearing a yellow âhorse-collarâ buoyancy-compensator vest around his neck.
Back then I was still a pretty green blue-water diver. Blue-water diving is diving in water with no bottom visible or reachable; it can spark fears and phobias, for to look down into the darkling blue nothingness is to harken back to childhood nightmares about monsters and infinity. I wasnât accustomed to diving in water I knew to be more than five thousand feet deep, and once in a while I was haunted by a vision of my body drifting down, down, down, from light blue to darker blue, to purple and violet and the unknown black.
So, naturally, whenever I had to dive in blue water, I carried a security blanket: a sawed-off broomstick about three feet long, attached to my wrist by a rawhide thong. Exactly what it was supposed to protect me from I never determined, but my logic was unassailable: if cameramen could carry cameras with which to ward off attackers, and assistants could carry cameras and lights, why shouldnât I be allowed to carry a broomstick?
Thus armed, I jumped overboard and swam among the yellowfin tunaâor, rather, they swam around me. I held on to the barnacle-covered buoy chain to keep from being swept away by the current, and the school of tuna, which had scattered when I splashed into the water, re-formed and circled me. The shafts of sunlight piercing the surface glittered on their silver scales and yellow fins, and it seemed to me that Stan must be gathering an entire library of beauty shots.
The water was very clear, visibility more than a hundred feet, I was sure, though itâs hard to tell in blue water, for
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