Dangers of the Red Triangle

By Natalie Angier

Shark attacks off the Pacific coast show a disturbing rise

Before they plunged into the calm waters of Pigeon Point, just north of Santa Cruz, Calif., Chris Rehm, 33, and Omar Conger, 28, joked about sharks. The two men were experienced divers, and they had swum in that part of the Pacific before. Paddling out about 150 yds., they began diving for abalone, which they gathered in large bobbing buckets.

Suddenly, Rehm saw that Conger, only 20 ft. away, was in trouble. Something was shaking him violently. A moment later, Conger disappeared beneath the surface, then re-emerged in the gaping mouth of a 12-ft. shark. Says Rehm: "I don't know whether I saw the blood first or the shark." The monstrous fish swam toward Rehm, spat out Conger and then vanished. Recalls Rehm: "Omar said, 'Help me.' " It was too late: by the time Rehm had floated him to shore on a raft, Conger was dead.

The tragedy was the worst of a rash of shark attacks along the upper west coast of the U.S. since Labor Day. Paul Parsons, 33, another abalone diver, suffered puncture wounds and lost much of his left buttock when a shark mauled him in the waters north of San Francisco. Surfer Bob Rice, 25, watched in horror as a 12-ft. carnivore clamped down on the front of his surfboard before swimming away in the waves off Cape Kiwanda, Ore. Says he: "It missed my hips by about four inches."

According to records of the California department of fish and game, over the past 30-odd years there have never been so many shark assaults off the U.S. in such quick succession. Between 1950 and 1955, sharks attacked a total of three people in the U.S. Pacific; in the past four years that number has quadrupled. The center of the danger area runs from Monterey Bay to Point Reyes, Calif. This 90mile stretch of coastline together with the Farallon Islands to the west forms a perilous wedge now called the Red Triangle. John McCosker, director of the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, says, "It may be the shark-attack capital of the world."

The assailants in all cases are Great Whites, which can grow to more than 20 ft. long and weigh up to 3 1/2 tons. Many biologists trace the sharks' increasing aggression to recent rulings like the U.S. Marine Mammals Protection Act of 1972. That law makes it illegal to hunt pinnipeds like sea lions, elephant seals and sea otters, all staples of an adult shark's diet. Fifteen elephant seals lived in the Red Triangle area in 1961; by 1984 there were 5,000. The sea lion population has been increasing by 5% a year. As a result, Great Whites seem to be responding to boom times in their food supply by producing larger litters more rapidly. And though Great Whites normally avoid the risk of attacking humans, some scientists suspect that the fish may mistake humans in wet suits for seals. Says McCosker: "Sharks are dumber than goldfish."

Some shark authorities downplay the dangers of Great Whites, which they consider magnificent scavengers that have successfully lived through 30 million years of evolution virtually unchanged. Sharks, they declare, play a necessary role as the garbage collectors of the sea, indiscriminately devouring flotsam ranging from fish carcasses to old tin cans. Most important, say shark admirers, the number of people killed by Great Whites over the centuries is small, far less than those who die from lightning strikes or snake bites. But in the Red Triangle, at least, it is still not safe to go back in the water. --By Natalie Angler. Reported by Jeff Gottlieb/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeff Gottlieb