Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark Book

Peter Mathiessen' Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark provides as useful antidote to the excesses of both sides of the debate. Mathiessen is one of our great nature writers and an environmentalist from the days before it became fashionable. Peter Gimble invited him along on a trip to South African waters to see if they could get some film footage of great whites from the inside of free-floating aluminum cages. The plan was to follow whaling ships out of Durban who, after harpooning the whale, inflate them with air so they will float and can be towed into shore later. On occasions when many sharks have been present, attracted by the blood, a frenzy has erupted that, after six or seven hours, might leave only the backbone. C. carcharias has a fearsome reputation. In Australia the great white is known as the " death" and numerous documented accounts exist of them attacking small skiffs and dories. A good friend of one of the divers on Gimble's trip had been bitten in half by a great white. His diver companion had hauled the top half back to shore where he took some photographs (which could never be sold because of their gruesome nature) before reporting the incident.

One great white that had been harpooned by a whale boat had a jaw measuring a vertical opening of three feet. While in South Africa, the team experienced the lunacy of apartheid. Two shipmates from the Cape who had been hired to work on their boat were formally classified as "" by the South African government, but they were light enough to pass as white and often went to European bars where they were rarely challenged. On one evening they were accompanied by the second engineer who looked so "black" that he was told to leave even though he was officially classified as "white" but he had forgotten his card that proved it. " In other words, this weird classification of human beings isn't even efficient, so that in the end all the dull cruelty it has meant for millions will have been in vain."