By Kyle Wright
My greatest, most irrational fear in the world is being bitten by a shark. Incidentally, I believe I have my parents to thank for that. Between their indifference toward my television watching habits and the fact that one network or another showed the movie “Jaws” every Saturday afternoon, there’s not a doubt in my mind that I saw limbs being torn from torsos long before I turned 10 years old. Even if I hadn’t, though, I still think I’d be scared of sharks and here’s why: if you happen to find yourself where a shark can bite you, you’re pretty well screwed. Seriously, what are you going to do, out swim the thing?
Years ago, I decided it was time for me to conquer my fear of sharks. I had a speaking engagement booked in South Africa, which, at the time, was home to some of the best Great White Shark activity in the world. False Bay, especially. A quick internet search turned up a company in Cape Town that ferried its customers by boat to a concrete pillar sunk in the ocean floor. Atop that concrete pillar was a metal cage. The boat would anchor at the pillar and lower its customers straight into the cage where they could get an up close and personal look at the ocean’s most intimidating predator.
Jaws and Other Monsters
Long story short, I chickened out. I told people that I didn’t want to spend the money, but the truth is I just lost my nerve.
That was years ago, and the opportunity has passed me by. Not that I’ve been looking at booking another trip, but I’ve missed my window. There’s not a shark to be found off the coast of South Africa these days. That’s because a pair of killer whales moved to town and ran off every shark in the ocean.
Named Port and Starboard due to their distinctive collapsed dorsal fins, the killer whales proved themselves to be the biggest bullies on the block. Killer whales have a decided size advantage over Great Whites. An adult orca can be twice as long as a Great White and four times as heavy.
The Reign of Port and Starboard
You’ve probably seen orcas toying with their prey. They’ve been known to launch themselves out of the water and land on seals like they were coming off the top rope in a wrestling match. If they’re feeling particularly playful, they’ll even use their tails to slap a seal around. Port and Starboard didn’t play those games with sharks, but they certainly enjoyed the hunt. The pair would locate their prey, not just Great Whites but Broadnose Sevengills, too, and either latch onto the fish’s pectoral fin or ram it with their rostrums, stunning the shark. Tonic immobility, it’s called. The killer whales would then channel their inner Hannibal Lecter, flip the immobilized shark over onto its back and remove its nutrient rich liver. Other than the liver, though, Port and Starboard weren’t killing to eat. They were just killing to kill.
Except for those that get bored at Sea World, killer whales have traditionally left humans alone, so the only danger to your liver is that which you inflict yourself. There’s no record of an orca in the wild having ever killed a human. In fact, there is only one confirmed bite on a human, and it wasn’t fatal. In 1972, a surfer in California was bit but released the moment the killer whale realized he wasn’t prey.
Still, I’m not booking a trip to South Africa to go cage diving with them anytime soon.
