A fair while ago I posted photos of myself and two or three friends in Oman, together with the Giant Trevally which we'd obtained spearfishing; one of the party was Dave, a blond muscular ex-Royal Marine helicopter pilot who was now flying for the Sultanate as a contract pilot (pretty good pay and no UK income tax). However, not long afterwards while the Dhofar war was still going on he was flying his Huey heli at 12,000 feet over the jebel when his wingman, only 20 yards to his left erupted in a ball of flame, hit by a SAM 7 Soviet-built missile fired by the adoo (enemy) from a height of about 5,000 feet. Subsequently, in Northern Ireland I used to painstakingly explain to people that although the SAM 7 has a theoretical maximum height range of about 7,000 feet, if fired from a height you had to add the height from which it was fired (the IRA had SAM 7 but initially couldn't get it to work, and then sent operatives to Libya to be trained by Gaddafi's lot - he having already provided large quantities of weaponry for our little Irish chums).
Anyway, Dave and I and another friend had done up a 15 foot dinghy, scrounged a 40-horse Evinrude outboard, and spent much of our spare time diving around Fahal Island, just a couple of miles or so off Muscat. We duly got Trevally and various other fish, and became more or less inured to the number of sharks we used to see every time we dived. They were mostly black or white-tipped reef sharks of 5 or 6 feet in length, and were generally shy, circling at the limit of visibility down on the bottom. I even had ideas about spearing one, just out of bravado, but there was no way that they would let one get within range (and I'm now glad that I didn't).
However, one day diving on my own (never a sensible idea) and just snorkelling in about 25 feet of water the most enormous shark (it seemed like 15-18 feet long) cruised directly underneath me, fortunately without taking the slightest interest. Had it wanted me for breakfast I wouldn't have had the slightest hope - it was huge, it was in its own element and I was 30 yards away from my anchored dinghy. Even now, all these years later, my blood runs cold at the memory and thoughts of what might have been ...
Not long afterwards I was talking (in my execrable Arabic) to one of the local fishermen. They fished at that time in a form of dugout canoe (known in transliterated Arabic as a hoori). He told me that not long previously his chum in a similar craft had caught his grapnel anchor in the coral at almost the exact spot where we did much of our diving. His chum had no goggles, no flippers or anything else - but over the side he went to pull himself down the anchor rope and then free the grapnel. Nothing but blood came up - and this was our exactly favourite spot for diving!
Eeek!!
I'm a bit of a baby about swimming in the sea. My dad stood on some nasty stinging thing once when we were in the sea together and ever since I have been worried about it!
Would LOVE to see sharks close up though, although I would prefer a shark cage between me and them!
When i was about 13 or so, i went swimming all the way out to the pier. When i reached it, a jelly fish went floating past me and i panicked and went back to the shore as fast as i could. I haven't been swimming in the sea since then and that was 25 years ago.
I was pretty glad too, Akita! And I never dived alone after that. The design of goggles restricts the arc you can view to about, say, 45 degrees so nasties can surprise you from behind. With two or three of you you're very much safer.
Just what type of shark got the poor wretched fisherman we'll never know but I very much doubt that it was a small reef shark. Just guessing, I think it might have been a tiger shark, which grow very large and are among the known man-eaters. The huge shark which swam directly under me will also remain unidentified since I only saw its back which was dark. Tigers have stripes along the side of their bodies, hence the name. I sometimes wonder whether they have "territories" and attack anything strange that they see as disputing their territory.
As to nasties in UK waters, we have our share of sharks but I don't think there's any record of them attacking humans. What we do have in the Western Isles are weaver (sp) fish, about 6 or 7 inches long with an erectile dorsal spine which injects the most agonising sting if you mistakenly touch it. For that reason I never wade barefooted in the Hebrides.
Tony (we also get killer whales, reputedly harmless to humans, but I wouldn't volunteer to swim with them myself in my shiny black wet suit, lest I were to be mistaken for a shiny black seal - their favourite prey).
Oh you guys! Jellyfish are not that scary. One of my favorite things to do is to swim with the moon jellies late at night over the summer. It's beautiful. Most jellyfish are relatively harmless, they just float around waiting for you to bump into them. It's the same with sharks, most of them have no interest in eating you unless they mistake you for a seal.
Hey, yourock, being stupid I'm still trying to work out just what I said that actually punned (6 letter words are getting a bit beyond me!) But the SAM 7 threat was high up in the minds of those flying in both the Dhofar War and also those, later, in Northern Ireland.
In Dhofar the Army and the Air Force lived in the same Officers Mess together and, before an operation, both the pilots and the Company Commanders who would be on the ground, shared a beer or two together. They had a common radio link, the infantry being able to call in supporting fire from the Air Force's Strikemaster fighter-bombers when things got hairy on the ground.
But, a bit later, when the adoo (enemy) started using SAM 7s, the Air Force found that the soldier on the ground could provide an essential early warning of the deadly missiles. At ground level the "whoosh" of a missile being launched could be easily heard, which of course it couldn't from a jet aircraft's cockpit with the engines running.
So, whenever the Brit Company Commander on the ground heard one of these bloody things going off he would, regardless of orthodox radio procedure, simply yell into his handset "SAM, SAM, SAM" and the Strikemasters and Hunters would all do an upward twizzle (at their very best speed) and escape to safety. But brown trousers were no doubt the order of the day ...
Hey, yourock, being stupid I'm still trying to work out just what I said that actually punned (6 letter words are getting a bit beyond me!)
Well, chum is also a word used to describe bait that you throw into water to attract sharks/fish. It's a bit of a morbid pun to describe this fisherman as chum!
Just what type of shark got the poor wretched fisherman we'll never know but I very much doubt that it was a small reef shark.
Maybe it was a bull shark. They can be a lot nastier than given credit for (as it is they are considerd third most aggressive shark after the tiger and GW). Experts think the shark attacks in 1917 that the movie Jaws was based on involved a bull.
When I was 13 I used to snorkel off the beach in Ft Lauderdale Florida. I used to swim out 2-300 yards where there was a reef. I didn't realize how many sharks there were at the time. I saw a barracuda one day and made it back to shore in world record time. I went back out the next day though. 4 years latter I caught a 12 ft hammerhead from a boat near the same reef.
Thanks, yourock, I get it now. No morbidity was actually intended. In Scotland I've taken out a mincer and put minced mackerel into a net over the side of the boat to produce an oily trail to attract sharks - so far without success 'cos we've never really persevered. We'll certainly get porbeagles up there and a local tells me he's seen threshers. Oh, and we call our minced mackerel "rubby-dubby".
And Jack, as I said we'll never know what got the poor wretched fisherman. One evening out in a 5 metre inflatable off Salalah in southern Oman the sea went eerily calm and suddenly there were shark fins up on the surface everywhere. I was driving the boat and saw us go past a big Hammerhead less than a yard away. One of the two rods fishing was a small excitable Bedou and as his sardine bait went over the spot there was an explosion as the shark took. An hour later we were about two miles further out with darkness falling and Mohammed clinging on for dear life. Then, thank God, his line parted - frayed against the shark's skin. There was no way I wanted to be dealing with a ten-foot Hammerhead in pitch dark in a rubber inflatable! We often caught barracuda but found that any under about 20 pounds fought like wet flannels. Much more sporting were the Spanish Mackerel ("canaad" in Arabic) which invariably came on to feed at dusk and which the locals, fishing at night, got up to easily 100 pounds or more. And fishermen in Salalah were sometimes taken by sharks off the beach while launching their boats - not nice!
Tony (perhaps we should start a fishing forum on RYL!).
Do be very aware Rainbow, that sharks have primitive brains and their recognition of you will probably be limited as to whether or not you might be lunch. They are magnificent creatures in their own right, but definitely not to be messed with.
There is a probably horrible story, which I've never read an account of, about a US ship which was sunk in the Pacific War against Japan, where hundreds of US sailors, having ended up in the sea, were then devoured by sharks. What a horrendous way to go! No doubt Jack may be able to enlighten us, if he possibly can? Not that I'm looking forward to the details!
The ship you mention was the USS Indianapolis. It was torpedoed just after delivering parts for the first atomic bomb. 300 of the 1200 crew went down with the ship. The other 900 were left in the water where a shark feeding frenzy picked sailors off. Only 317 would survive. Its biggest single loss by the US Navy and largest mass shark attack. The captain in Jaws mentions the attack which he was part of (as written in script)
One thing about sharks I learned first hand was that their colours are different from photos of captured sharks. My hammerhead wasn't grey in the water but a beautiful light green-yellow. I also saw captured dolphins (not porpoises but dolphins) lose their colour when taken into the boat. When they jumped out of the water while on the line they looked like rainbows. That all went away once taken from the water.
Last edited by Isoverity : 19-02-2013 at 07:10 PM.
Thanks Jack, I knew you'd come up with an answer. It would have been appalling to have been in the water with your chums (sorry, akita) being taken around you, and wondering when your turn would come.
When I was invited to bang out of a Strikemaster over a fringe of the Indian Ocean (a story I've told on here before) my second greatest concern was not landing in the sea with all the bloody sharks - I'd have shot myself with my pistol rather than be eaten alive. (My greatest concern was whether the parachute would actually open - just how alert/asleep might the packer have been when it was being done). Happily I didn't have to test it!
In the Indian Ocean sharks are myriad in their numbers. I was once hoping to catch red snapper just for the pot but we couldn't get out baits down to the bottom without taking small sharks on the way down. Lest anyone doubts it, in the sea, everything eats everything! Including even you!
Jack, I've now read the accounts of the loss of the Indianopolis which you referred to - a horrendous story, described as the greatest loss of life ever suffered by the US Navy.
However, I regret to report that the Royal Navy can beat that. In May 1941 the battlecruiser Hood was engaging the German super-battleship Bismarck, which had been let loose into the north Atlantic to attack the convoys from the US which were so vital to Britain's survival (she had by then been totally on her own in holding out against Germany, for 18 months). Hood was one of the most famous ships of the Royal Navy but a between-wars refit had still left her upper decks horribly under-armoured. The latest German fire-control was also much superior to the British and Hood duly got hit by a plunging shell which penetrated to her magazine (where all her ammunition was stored); the result was a massive explosion and the ship went down with only 3 of her crew of over 1000 surviving.
Meanwhile, another Royal Navy battle-cruiser, the Prince of Wales, had scored enough hits on Bismarck to cause her to leave a trail of oil which subsequently helped the Fleet Air Arm, flying antiquated Swordfish biplanes at about 90 mph, to attack. Bismarck was firing her main armament into the sea in front of them - huge spouts of water erupting in front of them while trying desperately to maintain the correct height and speed for torpedo release. Out of 15 Swordfish attacking only one got a hit, despite all their gallantry, but crucially it did for Bismarck's steering. She couldn't get back to the French west-coast ports (now of course in German hands) and the Renown (16" guns) and King George V closed in and battered her to pieces.
The cruiser Dorsetshire then tried to pick up as many of the German sailors as possible but had to give up when there was a submarine scare - no way could a ship be hazarded just for helpless human lives, so they were left to drown. Life was very hard indeed for those serving in WW2 ... And we should never forget it.
Tony (not for a moment trying to cap anyone else's stories)
Yesterday, when I read the Indianapolis represented US Navy's greatest loss of life it seemed odd to me compared to events like Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway etc. I looked those up and the USS Arizona lost 1,177 in Pearl attack so I'm not sure about the Indianapolis. Maybe it was largest loss "at sea" or something like that. What people remember (IF they remember) the Indianapolis for the most is the sharks. I recall seeing a survivor on television who decribed hanging on the side of of a capsized life boat all night while hearing the screams and seeing men next to him suddenly get yanked down under the surface - with body parts floating back up. With stress and horror like that some guys just let go and sink to get things over with.
At this distance, over 70 years ago, numbers are now merely numbers, but one has to feel sympathy for the poor buggers who died so horribly. I don't know the worst losses that the Royal Navy ever suffered but, not long after Pearl Harbour, the Japs sank both the Prince of Wales and the Repulse off the coast of Malaya - they were trying to stop the Jap invasion, but had no aircraft-carrier escort and were therefore hopelessly vulnerable to air attack. I suppose it likely that well over 3,000 men were lost when they went down.
On a different subject, Jack, referring back to your remarks on the colour of fish, we used to get dolphin-fish in Oman. We could catch them using light spinning rods and whenever there was any floating debris there would be "falusi" as they were known, lurking beneath. They were spectacular fighters on light tackle and their colours were brilliant - though these faded rapidly when landed. Good eating, too! I've also caught sailfish off Oman and off the Kenyan coast - wonderful colours while still in the sea, but fading similarly once caught.
