Shark yarns make me yawn

By LINLEY BONIFACE

OPINION: I never thought I'd say this, but I am bored with sharks. This summer, it has been impossible to open a newspaper or turn on the TV without being subjected to yet another daring shark escape story.

On closer inspection, these yarns have invariably turned out to involve nothing more thrilling than an exceptionally timorous surfer paddling for safety after spotting a fishy shadow pottering quietly along the shoreline, minding its own business.

While sharks in Australia do, as the Australians rather wonderfully say, "take" the occasional swimmer, Kiwi sharks are about as predatory as a newborn ladybug.

Occasionally, a shark will accidentally graze a surfer's calf with a tooth, while yawning: cue national panic and the mass closure of beaches.

Silliest of the many absurd shark reports the media has pestered us with this summer was one from Radio New Zealand. The national broadcaster quoted Constable John Paul Tremain as urging people to stay away from beaches near Dunedin because a large shark had allegedly chased a couple of surfers from the water.

RNZ said Constable Tremain did not know the "exact size or breed of shark" - terrifying news in itself; someone is breeding the things! - but was convinced it was "lurking with intent". Lurking with intent? Intent to do what? The sea is where sharks live: sharks no more lurk in the sea than I lurk in my house.

I would have thought the fact that the shark didn't bother eating the two surfers was sufficient proof of its benevolent intentions, but it would have had to have been waving a white flag and making a peace sign with its dorsal fin to alleviate Constable Tremain's suspicions.

Second prize for loopy sharkophobia goes to Sky TV, which has designated this week Shark Week on its Discovery Channel. Sky prattled on about the week being aimed at understanding shark behaviour and encouraging conservation, blah blah blah, but then ruined it all by describing the event as "everyone's favourite week of ocean terror!"

Even Auckland Museum and DOC rode the zeitgeist by conducting a live public necropsy of a shark. Frankly, I was deeply disturbed to hear about it - I'd always understood that necropsy involved having sex with dead people; the thought of DOC- sanctioned necropsy with the corpse of a great white seriously freaked me out.

Necropsy turned out to involve nothing dodgier than examining the shark's stomach contents, but, far from uncovering the mummified remains of Harold Holt, the operation turned up a dull assortment of fish bones, intestinal parasites and fishing line. If only the museum staff had planted a few extra objects to make the exercise less tedious: I'd have suggested an engraved set of lawn bowls, a week's worth of Weight Watchers' ready meals, a "Honk If You Love Chihuahuas" bumper sticker, a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the still-warm body of James Blunt.

NOT to be outdone, I can reveal here that I once had my own shark encounter. A decade ago, my husband and I were snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef when I saw a fish shaped exactly like a shark. "A shark- shaped fish!" I exclaimed to myself, with the lightning-fast thinking of one of the lesser species of hamster. "I wonder what it could be?" At which point it dawned on me that the shark-shaped fish was, in fact, an actual shark.

I resolved to swim to my husband, calmly tell him that there was a shark nearby, and then swim back to shore with him. It was an excellent plan, and yet somehow minutes later I found myself standing guiltily on the sand without having warned my husband that a large fin was slicing up and down the water.

"Excuse me!" I bellowed. We are always polite to each other, even in moments of crisis. "Perhaps you should know that there's a - a - a sort of sharky thing over there!"

My husband bobbed up and gave me a cheery wave.

I raised my voice slightly. "Sorry to bother you, but - shark! SHARK! SHAAARRRRRRK!"

He shook his head to show he still couldn't hear, and ducked back down to look at what he later told me was a particularly attractive starfish.

Thankfully, the shark was obviously not lurking with intent. My husband survived and, rather more surprisingly, so did our marriage.

- © Fairfax NZ News