I did a lot of scuba, saw lots and lots of shark. It's not a macho thing. Sharks don't eat people. There are so few of us in the water at any given time that they would starve. If an apex predator like a shark preyed on humans, going paddling would be suicide, let alone scuba.
It goes through students minds. It's a delicate subject, like drowning.
If you see a shark, enjoy it - they are truly beautiful. If this thing was interested in you, you wouldn't see it, and because they are good at it if they really wanted your ass, it would be quick. Shark attacks are horrible, but they are more often than not shark accidents.
When great whites are babies, they eat fish. To drive that monstrous metabolism that is a full grown Carcharodon carcharias they need fat, and hence pinnipeds. Juveniles that crave a more energetic drink sometimes confuse divers who look like seals with seals and bite 'em. We don't have the same mouth feel as a seal, we are bony. We are the celery and carrots of a great white diet, we would provide less energy than would take for them to go through the whole process of eating us. They may if we just bleed out and die, but when a great white explores you as a potential food source, you have a marked desire to get out of the water and plug the holes.
Bulls are territorial and hang out in murky water. If the water is turbid, you could be walking right upto one of these buggers, and not even know it. Because they are territorial, they ain't backing off. They will hump their back and display aggressively to warn you, but if you can't see it because the water is turbid, you could get bit.
Tigers will eat any old shit in the water and they do it around dusk. It's not easy to see shit in the water in the dark and if you are top dog and it's floating in your food bowl, it's all academic - you, fish, bog seats - its all part of the food chain. Night swimming with tigers is dangerous. Great whites have teeth like T Rex, tigers are like a big skill saw - if they hit ya, you are gonna be missin' somethin'.
This is not comforting, so we trot out things (this is from memory, and it was a long time ago)
"Dangerous sports are classified in deaths per hundred thousand participants. Right at the top are hang gliding and free climbing. Scuba is relatively low. Of 376 (ISTR) recorded diving fatalities, three were shark attacks, and these were probably defensive on behalf of the shark (seeing a big shark close up is one thing, poking it (like my buddy did) is something else entirely), and apart from a few creative suicides, the rest were entirely preventable, which is why I am still here and why you are here and why I am talking to you"
We then go into the usual macho drivel about going deep.
DON'T.
The recreational limits of diving are to protect you from boredom. It's real cold when it's deep, it's real gloomy, it can be real spacey, you can't stay long and it takes a long time to get down and up safely. It's a waste of time. You wanna go deep for long periods of time and do macho shit, get a commercial certification. And before you do that, hang out with some commercial divers for a bit first, if their behavior does not scare you, and their stories do not scare you, you are a fucking nutcase and should fit right in.
This ain't like climbing Everest. You ain't equipped to go below 132 feet, and if you do it's like playing Russian Roulette. If you are lucky you just die, if you are unlucky you end up in a wheelchair and if you are really unlucky and do it on a boat that I am on and fuck up my diving, I will follow your ass to the recompression facility and take a big shite in the chambers air intake.
There's plenty to see within the realm of a ESA, go beyond that and if your gear freaks out, you could be in trouble on the way up. Go beyond the recreational limit, and you might as well just get it all done and dusted on your first trip and go all the fucking way and spare us all.
Where this is going is that I'm trying to impress on the testosterone poisoned that 12 year olds can get certified so it's not intellectually difficult, I've worked with 70 year olds, so you don't have to be strong. This ain't macho, BUT with all the aforesaid, I have still been asked, how would you kill a shark.
I thought it was a dumb question. Why on earth would I want to kill a shark?
I understand now that it was a thought experiment, and I've thought about it.
Sharks are fucking dangerous. I'd sneak up on it while it was asleep and stick two frangible rounds in it's brain case and fuck off pronto before all the other little fishes came out to see what all the banging and bleeding was about.
If I couldn't get the fucker when he was asleep, I'd look as innocuous as possible, and wait for a split second when he was not looking at me and whip out my piece and put 3 well practiced and tightly grouped shots in his fucking chest as quick as I could. If he was still breathing, I'd put a quick one in his head, pick up the casings, put my piece back and fuck off pronto.
I would NOT:
Spend a lot of time waving my piece around in his kisser spouting forth on how I was the bad guy and he was a weak guy and whaaaaaaaat" BANG BANG BANG "was going to be the last word you ever hear, motherfucker:
Try to impress the shit out of him with my impeccable technique
Educate
School
Terrorize
Monolog
Sermonize
Pistol Whip
or generally fuck about.
He's an apex predator. I wanna get him out of the way as fast as possible, and not let him get the chance to do his thing. I would be relaxed, since I would expect that someone that good would extend me the same courtesy - no muss, no fuss, you are done.
It would be cool. A throwdown with the white death.
Better than dyin' of cancer in my book.
