What Were the Shark Attacks of 1916? July 11, 1916—-Matawan, New Jersey Fourteen--year--old Rensselaer “Renny” Cartan Jr. was sweating. It was almost two o’clock—-the hottest time of day, and Renny had been working at his dad’s lumber and coal business since morning. Usually around now, the factory owners and shopkeepers of Matawan, New Jersey, allowed their young employees a quick break to cool off in the creek. Soon enough, Renny was released from his work duties.
He met his younger cousin Johnson, who stocked shelves at his dad’s department store. The boys met some friends and headed down Main Street.
The factories along Matawan Creek manufactured a wide variety of goods, from candy and matches to pianos and pottery. The creek was also used to transport fresh produce to New York City, thirty miles away.
But for Renny and his buddies, Matawan Creek was a place to have fun.
The boys headed down the creek’s muddy embankment. Their favorite spot was a small cove at a bend in the creek, a sort of private swimming hole. It was next to the old limeworks, a processing plant where mountains of oyster shells had once been crushed into powder. But industry and pollution had killed off the area’s oysters, and the limeworks had closed.
Within seconds of arriving, the boys had tossed their clothes into the grass and leaped naked into the water. Recent heavy rains had kicked up sediment from the creek bed, making the water murkier than usual. But who cared how muddy the water was, as long as it was cool?
Renny climbed onto a dock piling. As he joked with his friends, he began to lose his balance.
He had no idea as he fell what awaited him beneath the surface.
The water was neck--deep. Suddenly, Renny was clipped by a huge, hard object whooshing in front of him. Sharp pricks of pain bloomed across his chest. The water around him turned red.
Panic washed over Renny. Wide--eyed, he spotted the largest fish he’d ever seen.
It was a
shark ! Swimming in the creek among his friends!
Renny screamed and rushed out of the water. His chest was bleeding from wounds caused by the shark’s abrasive skin.
Sharks’ bodies are covered by V--shaped, toothlike scales called denticles that help them swim quickly and quietly. Sharkskin is so rough, it was once used as sandpaper.
On shore, Renny’s friends tried to calm him. No one
else had seen the shark. Maybe a branch had scraped Renny.
But Renny
knew he’d been struck by a shark, just like those two men at the Jersey Shore.
Five days earlier, in the seaside resort town of Spring Lake, a man was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean when he was brutally attacked and killed by a shark. Five days before that,
another man had been killed in Beach Haven. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the United States, and it was all over the nation’s newspapers.
But Matawan was a mile upriver from the closest body of salt water. How could a shark have traveled this far inland?
Renny’s cousin and friends returned to the water, as Renny pleaded with them not to. They wouldn’t listen. No
way had Renny seen a shark! His imagination must’ve gotten the better of him.
Renny walked home to get his cuts bandaged. He feared for his friends. But they were lucky that day.
When a shark made its way up the creek the following day, the people of Matawan wouldn’t be so lucky.
Chapter 1 Apex Predator Some believe the shark that slashed Renny Cartan—and the shark or sharks that killed the men on the Jersey Shore—was a young great white shark.
Also known simply as
white sharks, these fearsome predators get their name from their white bellies, which help camouflage (or hide) them when viewed from below. The white color helps the shark blend in with the sunlight. The top of a white shark is dark, making it harder to spot from above.
The white shark’s scientific name,
Carcharodon carcharias, means “biter with the jagged teeth”—and the name fits. Its razor-sharp teeth are serrated, like steak knives. These two-inch-long triangular chompers are designed to slice through flesh and bone. And with jaws so strong, they can exert four thousand pounds of pressure per square inch—six times more powerful than a lion’s jaws. A single white shark bite is often deadly.
About twenty-six teeth line a white shark’s top jaw, with around twenty-four along the bottom. Behind the front set of teeth lie up to six additional rows of softer “baby teeth”—that’s as many as 350 teeth! Every ten to fourteen days, each set of front teeth falls out and is replaced by the next row.
Great whites are truly great in size. Males grow up to fourteen feet long. Females can be more than twenty feet and weigh five thousand pounds! They are even
born big—up to five feet long and eighty-five pounds.
White sharks don’t lay eggs; they give live birth. Females carry two to twelve pups in their womb for up to fourteen months. Sometimes pups will eat one or more of their siblings before they are born. The surviving pups must swim away quickly, so they don’t become a snack for their mother!
A white shark never stops swimming. Unlike other fish, it has no swim bladder (an internal expandable sac) to help keep it afloat. If it stops swimming, it sinks.
Young white sharks feed mainly on fish, rays, and other sharks. As they grow, they begin to eat sea mammals, like seals, sea lions, and dead whale carcasses. These animals are rich in blubber, which the sharks store as energy in their livers. After a big, fatty meal, white sharks can go a month or two before feeding again.
When it’s hunting, a white shark goes on high alert. It can smell a meal one-third of a mile away. It can also detect electromagnetic pulses in the water. This sixth sense is called electroreception. A special organ under the nose receives signals from these vibrations from miles away and guides the shark toward its prey.
Great whites are ambush hunters that surprise their victims from below. When a shark spots a potential meal, it waits for just the right moment. Then, in a burst of speed up to forty miles per hour, its torpedo-like body rockets toward the surface.
The shark rolls its pitch-black eyeballs back into its head to protect them from thrashing flippers. After catching its prey in its jaws, the shark will sometimes breach—break the surface—flying up to ten feet in the air.
After that first ferocious bite, white sharks often swim away and wait for the animal to bleed to death. This saves the shark’s energy and prevents injury by its struggling prey. White sharks are careful, practiced hunters, not mindless killing machines, as often portrayed in the movies.
They are also world travelers. White sharks have been known to swim from the Gulf of Mexico to Massachusetts. Some migrate between California and Hawaii, more than two thousand miles! They usually spend colder months in temperate or tropical areas. (Some scientists believe white sharks are born and grow up in these waters.) When the weather warms, they move to cooler zones.
Why travel such distances? For food, of course! And where there are seals, there are sharks. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is home to a large and growing seal population during the summer months. The Farallon Islands, thirty miles off San Francisco, California, host thousands of seals and sea lions, attracting hungry white sharks every autumn.
White sharks have been stalking the oceans for up to ten million years. (Humans have existed for only about three hundred thousand.) In that time, they have evolved to become apex predators.
Apex means “the top.” An apex predator has few natural enemies.
Sharks have been worshipped as gods—and feared as demons—since ancient times. Native Hawaiians offered human sacrifices to appease the shark gods. Workers building the US naval base at Pearl Harbor discovered the remains of a four-acre underwater pen, enclosed by lava rocks. This marine arena is believed to have hosted death matches between men, armed only with short spears, and sharks. (The sharks usually won.)
Shark attacks on humans today are extremely rare. Worldwide, between fifty and one hundred occur annually; five to ten are deadly. A person is thirty times more likely to die from a lightning strike—and
one thousand times more likely to drown.
Still, attacks happen—and they follow patterns. Attacks come from below or behind. Surfers in dark wet suits are sometimes targeted, because they resemble seals. A person swimming solo--like a lone sea lion, separated from its pack—is also more likely to attract a shark’s attention. More than eight out of every ten attacks occur when there are no other swimmers within ten feet.
Megalodon Sharks have been around since before the dinosaurs, and the great white has not always been the ocean’s apex predator. It once shared the seas with a much larger shark known as Otodus megalodon.
Megalodon evolved about twenty million years ago. Its name means “big tooth”—-its teeth were more than six inches long! Megalodon was the largest predatory fish to ever exist. It was sixty feet long—-three times longer than a white shark!—-and it weighed more than sixty tons. It fed on dolphins, whales, and other sharks—-maybe even great whites! Recently, megalodon has been the subject of big--budget action movies, but that’s just science fiction. This ocean monster has been extinct for 3.6 million years.
Often, the shark strikes fast and swims away after one bite. But that is not what happened in New Jersey in 1916.
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