WE LOVE TO HATE YOU
The creature we love to hate
So every couple of months or so I go viral on Facebook and get a barrage of love and hate messages. This is not the norm for me. I’m not famous or wildly divisive and my social media mostly consists of beautiful images aimed at inspiring an appreciation of nature, especially the ocean. In fact, to be honest - I am rather conflict averse on social media, I don’t think it’s a platform that works for real debate. In 2015 I shared the photo of me in the blue blue water searching for oceanic white tip sharks and it has reached over 10 million, been shared over 20 000 times (and counting!) with thousands of comments. Basically a pic of an okay freediver in blue water. Bearing in mind I often share photos nose to nose with big sharks, sperm whales, giant manta rays, whale sharks and more.
The comments I get on the blue water pic range from ‘you deserve to get eaten by sharks’ to ‘the only good shark is a dead shark.’ I am fascinated by why people get so outraged by my support of sharks (which in fact of course means a support of the ocean ecosystem and by extension life on earth!). In his book, How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts, risk perception expert David Ropeik draws a very interesting conclusion. He reckons we are terrified of what a death by shark attack would feel like, not the fear of death itself. Which is why using the stats of ‘you’re more likely to die by a cow falling on you’ and so on never really hits the mark. "The idea of being munched on by an animal that is in control is another factor," Ropeik says. "It's the nature of the experience, and not the agent, per se.”
Having taught hundreds of people freediving and ocean confidence, I also believe that for many people the sea in all its wild vastness is a foreign place. This sense of being outside of our comfort zone, not knowing what lies beneath the surface and a lack of knowledge of the local critters greatly fuels the fire of our fear. This of course is helped along by films like ‘Jaws’, ‘Sharknado’ and the many many times an encounter with a shark is labelled an ‘attack’ and the presence of sharks is almost always described as ‘lurking’ and the water as ‘shark infested’. We have quite simply been taught to fear them.
Having an irrational fear of spiders or snakes may seem similar but has one fundamental difference that scares me far more than all the teeth in a great white’s mouth - our irrational fears of sharks are resulting in the possible extinction of several species of sharks. An ocean without sharks is an ecosystem collapse.
My very first time freediving with tiger sharks is etched into my memory. Slipping into the water at Aliwal Shoal, a famous sharky hotspot off South Africa’s east coast, I looked down into the blue, breathing deep and slow through my snorkel as a good freediver should. I took a final big breath and kicked down, hanging suspended at depth I waited and watched, when suddenly there she was. Seven meters of pure muscle, graphic stripes running down her sides and a square jaw. A large tiger shark. With slow swishes of her long tail fin she slowly cruised over - my heart rate spiked, my mind went blank and only the thought “I am going to die!’ remained. Despite all my knowledge, the in depth briefing, my super experienced buddy beside me - in that split second of first recognition of that shape of shark, years of conditioning to fear kicked in. I carefully reined my runaway mind back in, relaxed my shoulders and blinked my eyes, and then I saw her for real, not as the scary killer I’ve been shown on TV and in the media. She swam right up to me, curious but not aggressive. I held eye contact and swam alongside her, marvelling at her streamlined elegance. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
In the decade since I have spent countless hours in the water with sharks; makos, tigers, hammers, bulls, small cat sharks, various flat sharks and some whites too. I am always aware and always respectful… but I am never afraid. With years of knowledge and experience I’m now able to share this with others and help grow an army of lovers in a sea of haters. All my work with I AM WATER and freediving coaching circles around the ethos of ‘we protect what we love’. Without a rapid perception shift, what will happen to those we have chosen to hate? If the opposite of love is hate and of protect is destroy, I say bring on the viral haters, let’s engage and explain - an ocean without sharks is not a reality I am willing to live with.
Empty Ocean Image Photographer: Jean Marie Ghislain
First published as one of my regular columns for Oceanographic Magazine.
