Safe Shark Rescue Theory ‘Dangerous’

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 14

Safe Shark Rescue Theory ‘Dangerous’

(From Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON, February 14.

Dr. George A. Llano, a scientist with the United States National Science Foundation, who said recently in Christchurch that the person who went to the aid of a shark victim was the safest man in the. water, can find no supporters for his views among scientists and fishermen in Wellington.

Departmental sources say that his remarks as published could be dangerous, in that they could lead to a false sense of security. Scientific experts and fishermen agree that a shark becomes rabid when it scents blood, and that under these circumstances it will attack, anything ‘ or anyone in th’ vicinity, including other sharks. One authority refers. all questioners to • the two conclusions reached by Jacques Yves-Cousteau, author of “The Silent World,” written after more than a hundred underwater encounters with sharks: “The better acquainted we

become with sharks, the less we know them; and one can never tell what a shark is going to do.” The “Life Nature Library’s” heavily-documented publication on “The Sea,” . issued only a few months ago, concludes that “of all the large creatures in lhe sea, only the shark is a real menace to man.” It adds: “Though wanderers such as the mako, the white-tipped and the blue shark normally hunt alone, the smell of blood is enough to bring them together. Maddened, they go into a socalled ‘feeding frenzy’ in which they slash at anything, including each other.”