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    Shark Attacks: Inside the Mind of the Ocean's Most Terrifying Predator
    Shark Attacks: Inside the Mind of the Ocean's Most Terrifying Predator
    Shark Attacks: Inside the Mind of the Ocean's Most Terrifying Predator
    Ebook62 pages50 minutes

    Shark Attacks: Inside the Mind of the Ocean's Most Terrifying Predator

    By Gordon Grice

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    About this ebook

    National Geographic pairs gripping and gruesome stories of shark attacks with cutting edge research to illuminate a fascinating underwater world that few truly understand. Sharks are the world's most fascinating predators-capable of detecting a single drop of blood in 25 million drops of ocean and sensing electricity emitted by their prey. This ebook short takes readers deep into the realm of the very latest shark science, including new insights into the nature of shark attacks around the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNational Geographic
    Release dateJun 5, 2012
    ISBN9781426209819
    Shark Attacks: Inside the Mind of the Ocean's Most Terrifying Predator
    Author

    Gordon Grice

    Gordon Grice is the author of The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators and Deadly Kingdom: The Book of Dangerous Animals. He has written articles about wildlife and biology for magazines like The New Yorker, Harper's, and Discover. He has been called "the Stephen King of nature writing," but he'd rather be known as "the Ambrose Bierce of nature writing."

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      Book preview

      Shark Attacks - Gordon Grice

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      CHAPTER 1

      Swallowed Whole

      The afternoon he was swallowed whole, Bob Pamperin was hunting abalone. An abalone is a sort of large sea snail. It lives in a humped shell like a turtle’s, and it eats by whipping its toothy tongue across the fur of fine algae clinging to rocks. You can eat abalone braised with mushrooms or Chinese cabbage. You can pan-fry them or bake them with sliced avocadoes.

      If gathering food had been the only goal, Pamperin and his friend Gerald Lehrer could have gone groping under the rocks of Alligator Head. The area, at the western extremity of La Jolla Cove in San Diego County, California, is picturesque, with outcroppings and islets and caverns wide enough to kayak through. But on this evening in June 1959, shortly after five o’clock, with the temperature at 68 degrees and the water lucid, Pamperin and Lehrer were in it for the sport, so they were free diving. In six or seven fathoms of water, they’d collect the abalone and return with them to the surface, where they’d left an inner tube floating. A burlap bag attached to the inner tube held the catch.

      The men had separated by at least 30 feet when Lehrer heard Pamperin say, Help me. He saw Pamperin jutting from the water—standing in it, but too high. Lehrer thought his friend might have a cramp, so he swam toward him. And then he noticed the water was red. Pamperin was sinking into it. Looking down on the water from a rock formation, one witness saw Pamperin thrashing as if he were trying to run away from something. Then Pamperin vanished.

      Lehrer dived to find him. There was a good 20 feet of visibility that day, and he saw his friend protruding from the mouth of a shark, his legs already engulfed. After surfacing for a breath, Lehrer dived down to help. By this time, the shark was lying on the sandy bottom, thrashing side to side. Lehrer couldn’t decide whether it was trying to swallow its victim or spit him out. He surfaced for another breath, then dived again, waving his arms to scare the shark.

      It didn’t work. The animal seemed not even to notice him. It went on with its swallowing. Helpless, Lehrer swam for shore.

      Within the hour, divers were in the water searching. The pilot of a helicopter surveying the area spotted a blue swim fin, which was the right color to have been Pamperin’s. A few hours later, the inner tube drifted in at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. Two abalone were still in the burlap bag.

      Authorities showed Lehrer pictures of different shark species, and he recognized the attacker as a great white. Record specimens for this species are roughly 20 feet long and weigh over 7,000 pounds. One large individual measured more than 32 inches across the jaws—a smile broader than a refrigerator. By Lehrer’s estimate, the shark that took Pamperin may have been bigger than that.

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