Post #42915 by Kailuageoff on Mon, Jul 14, 2003 9:36 AM

Sorry for the Hukilau hiatus.... here's something for you surfers:

pg 122, SHARKS AND SKIPPERS -- Local Blacks have no fear of sharks. They take every care to avoid crocodiles, exercising great caution and circumspection when crossing inlets and tidal creeks. So shrewd are their observations that they will describe distinctive marks of particular crocodiles and indicate their favorite resorts. Their indifference to sharks is founded on the belief that those which inhabit shallow water among the islands never attack a living man. Blacks remain for hours together in the water on the reefs when beche-de-mer fishing, and the record of an attack is rare indeed. They are far more fearful of the mounstorous Grouper, which, lying inert among the coral blocks and boulders of the Barrier Reef, bolts anything and everything which comes its way, and will follow a man in the water with dogged determiniation, foreign to the nervous, suspicious shark. Recently a vigorous young black boy was attacked by a Grouper while diving for beche-de-mer. The fish took the boy's head into his capacious mouth, mauling him severly about the head and shoulders, and but for his valiant and determined struggles would doubtless have succeeeded in killing him.
Even such an incident as the following does not convince the blacks that the sharks of the Barier Reef are dangerous. The captain of a bech-de-mer cutter (editor's note: what the heck is a beche-de-mer?) was paddling in a dingy along the edge of a detatched reef not many miles from Dunk Island, while several of his boys were swimming and diving. Suddenly one of them was siezed and so terribly mutilated that he died in a few minutes. Although the captain was within eight or ten feet of the boy, and three of his mates were not more than a few yards off; though all were wearing swimming goggles which enable them to see when diving to distinguish objects at a considerable range; though the sea was calm and clear and the water barely ten feet deep, no one saw a shark or any other fish capable of inflicting such injuries as had caused the death of "Jimmy", nor was there any disturbance of the surface of the water.
Years before a countryman of the unfortunate Jimmy was mauled by a small Black Shark, but got away, though crippled for life. By some quaint process of reasoning the companions of the boy who was killed connected his death with the attack upon the other, the scene of which was two hundred miles distant, and became convinced that he had become the victim of "nother kind altogether"-- a sort of mysterious marine "debil-debil" not known to entire satisfaction by the best-informed black boy, and quite beyond the comprehension of the dull-witted white man. Having thus conclusively to their minds set at naught the theory that a shark was responsible, it was absolutely unreasonable to fear sharks generally. Why should they blame a shark when it was established beyond doubt that nothing but a "debil-debil" could have killed Jimmy? Their opinion was founded on this invincible array of logic; if a shark had killed Jimmy, it must have been seen. Nothing was seen, therefor it must have been a "debil-debil". And the incident was accepted as a further and most emphatic proof of the contention that sharks do not "fight" live black boys. The single incident at Princess Charlotte Bay was an exception.