Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [70]
Rogue attacks began, Coppleson believed, with the rising popularity of beaches for recreational use at the turn of the century. Coppleson's ground zero for investigation was Sydney, where rogue attacks were unknown until the sport of surfing arrived in 1919. Then, on February 4, 1922, Milton Coughlan, a surfman, was “cracking a few waves” on Coogee Beach when a large shark “struck with such terrific force that he was lifted from the water,” whereupon a crowd watched a large pair of jaws snap off Coughlan's arm. He died shortly afterward at a local hospital. Coppleson suspected a pattern when, less than a month later, twenty-one-year-old Mervyn Gannon was struck and killed at the same beach. During the next three years, Nita Derritt, a saleswoman, lost both legs in a shark attack, and Jack Dagworthy, sixteen, lost a leg when a shark leapt out of the water at him, mouth agape. The work of a single deranged shark, Coppleson concluded in such cases, was the only logical explanation. It seemed to him far-fetched to believe that a beach swimming area, free from shark attack for decades, would suddenly be invaded by groups of man-eating sharks, then, just as suddenly, be free of attack for years to come. Often, the “rogue series”—a reign of terror lasting several days or years—ended when a single man-eater was captured.
In a pattern eerily similar to that of great whites in California observed hunting sea lions on or near anniversary days, the rogue sharks in Australia often took human victims in the same area near the one-year anniversary of an earlier killing. What Coppleson considered “the most spine-chilling . . . attack known in Sydney waters” was part of an “anniversary” pattern. Zita Steadman, twenty-eight, was swimming with friends near Bantry Bay in January 1942, standing in waist-deep water, when a friend named Burns warned her not to go too far. Zita had just turned to go back, when she suddenly shrieked, and a huge shark was clearly visible to her friends, mauling the young woman. Burns grabbed an oar from their rowboat and began smashing at the attacker, but to no avail. Burns then rammed the shark, which shrugged off the boat and kept attacking. The shark struck Steadman “with such ferocity that it was throwing itself into the air” and began to draw its prey into deeper water. In desperation, Burns pulled Zita Steadman away from the shark by grabbing her long, dark hair; Steadman had been bitten in two. Less than a year later, while standing in the same waters, fifteen-year-old Denise Burch was torn apart by the same shark that killed Zita Steadman, Coppleson believed.
In twenty-five years, Coppleson discovered the work of rogue sharks all over the world. In December 1957, in Durban, South Africa, during the three weeks known as “Black December,” three swimmers were killed, one was severely mauled, and another lost a leg. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the 1920s, he investigated five attacks on the same beach during three years, including that of an American schoolteacher who died almost instantly as a shark removed most of her hip, thigh, and related bones in a single bite, and that of a Professor Winslow, found with both arms and legs almost severed from his body, his hands gone. In Africa and Australia in the 1950s, Coppleson's theory was useful to people seeking an understanding of shark attacks, and led to the erection of shark nets to combat rogues. Only in the United States, where “writers for many years . . . have labeled most stories of shark attacks on humans as ‘fish yarns,' were scientists skeptical,” Coppleson found. Such skepticism was ironic, since in Coppleson's research, the United States trailed only Australia and Africa in shark attacks and “one of the most remarkable series of shark attacks in world history” occurred on its Atlantic coast,