Shark and awe — lessons from the sacred world of the ocean’s silent predators

Human history roars and explodes all around us at this moment. The skylines of cities in the Middle East are outlined against an apocalyptic background of smoke and orange flame.

I have to turn away from it all, powerless to stop it. Like many people, I turn to find a way out of the dull ache of despair over our human cruelty.

It is to sharks my mind turns. Recently, I made a short film on why great whites are no longer found in False Bay. There are several reasons: climate change, reduction in their food source, and, most eerie of all, the fact that orcas prey on great whites. There are two orcas in particular, nicknamed Port and Starboard, that are probably responsible for the sharks fleeing the bay. There is even a video of them attacking the sharks.

In contrast to the human horror occurring around us, there is something elemental, even sacred, about this natural predation. It’s not pleasant to see, but it is a glimpse of the deep, ancient patterns of our planet. A vision of our world beyond human limitations and comprehension. It is not cruel, like humans are. It is the unavoidable truth of the paradox of survival — one consciousness must surrender to another for energy to pass from one form to another.

Sharks are effortlessly beautiful animals, shadows in the water, with streamlined snouts and rows of teeth, hunting prey across the ocean and communicating with one another through the movements of their bodies. Their presence is as silent as bone, inhabiting a language of extreme quiet — a purity of existence beyond our perception.

Their consciousness is largely hidden from us. Some scientists say we know more about outer space than about the depths of our oceans.

The core of mystery

To see a shark on its own terms is to look beyond fear, into the core of mystery and natural power. This was something I sensed as a child. They fascinated me when I went fishing with my dad on the Transkei coast. I remember feeling sad and guilty when someone caught a shark and killed it on the rocks, throwing its bleeding corpse back into the foaming swells of the Indian Ocean.

My understanding of the beauty and grandeur of sharks was inarticulate. I was a child and could not speak truly of my instincts. I knew that a shark in the water was deadly dangerous, that it was powerful beyond our soft, warm-blooded limits. And yet, that power took my childish mind beyond rationality and opened my mind to awe. I knew that a world without sharks would be a diminished world.

I remember arguing with my grandfather. Sharks to him were merely a menace, one that threatened humans.

“But if we kill them, then one day there will be none left,” I pleaded with him, dismayed that someone I loved so much could not see the wonder these animals embodied.

“There are so many sharks in the sea,” he replied softly. “We can never kill them all.

“But Grandpa,” I replied. “That’s what everybody thought about the passenger pigeon.”

He looked at me through his glasses and smiled wryly. “That’s true.”

Out of the mouth of babes. A generational divide over the bitter reality of our threatened planet had been bridged.

The truth is that very few humans are actually attacked by sharks. Last year, there were 65 attacks on humans across the entire globe, and nine people died. But sharks are so unparalleled in their hunting power that we fear them way beyond the actual threat they pose.

Sharks exist free of the possibility of self-betrayal. A shark simply does. I am reminded of Ted Hughes’ hawk hanging in the rain and “the diamond point” of its will — to fly, to hunt and to survive. A shark’s existence is an unadmitted parable of the human yearning for such a life, for such purity of consciousness where nothing mediates between the will and action.

Otherworldly divide

We encounter sharks naturally only near the surface of the sea, in a boat, or more commonly at the beach. We find them at the borderland between air and sea, between our land-based reality and their deep ocean unknown. Modern science and diving technology tell us much about these creatures, but in our day-to-day life we can bridge this otherworldly divide only through the imagination.

Our history as a species at this time is defined by acts of deliberate, conscious, wilful cruelty. We don’t know how long this will last, or where it will end. We only know this is our time now.

How, I wonder, does a shark experience time? We know it perceives dusk and dawn, as we do, that it speeds to catch its prey, and swims more slowly when it is not actively hunting, that it sleeps in short bursts. Many people who study sharks in the ocean seem to develop relationships with sharks that reveal deep sentience in the animals.

What lies in their purity of intention? They must kill in order to exist. We need not kill, and yet we do. To meditate on a shark and its perception of the world around it is to meditate on our human limits, to peer into the physical and moral boundaries that define us. A useful, even necessary, thing to do at this terrifying moment on our planet. DM

Hamilton Wende is a South African writer and journalist who has worked on a number of television projects and films for National Geographic, CNN, BBC, ZDF & ARD, among others. He has published nine books based on his travels as a war correspondent in Africa and the Middle East, and two children’s books. His latest thriller, Red Air, reflects his experiences with the US Marines in Afghanistan.