Emperors of the Deep by William McKeever review – how sharks are misunderstood
America’s fear of sharks began in the summer of 1916. During a 10-day period four people were killed in the sea off New Jersey and one seriously injured. According to the conservationist and film-maker William McKeever, “the events triggered mass hysteria and the first extensive shark hunt in history”. The idea of a “deranged, man-eating great white on the loose” had been planted in the American psyche and it would eventually inspire Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel Jaws – which has sold 20m copies – and Steven Spielberg’s famous film.
The fallacy that “sharks as a species are nothing more than bloodthirsty man-eaters, apex predators with no other purpose than to kill” is widely believed. The reality is different. In 2018, there were four deaths attributed to a shark attack. The US, which is the country with the most attacks, had one that year. Ants kill 30 people a year there, and bees 478.
As McKeever shows, sharks have more to fear from humans than we do from them. We currently kill between 100 and 273 million a year for their meat, skin, fins, liver, cartilage and as collateral damage from tuna fishing, which Greenpeace describe as an “industry out of control”. For every 10 tuna caught, five sharks are killed. According to McKeever, the longline fishing method used to catch tuna (literally a line up to 100 miles long covered with hooks) is “sadistic”: the fishing ships “are truly weapons of mass destruction on the high seas”.
In this heartfelt plea to respect the life in our oceans and especially the much maligned sharks, McKeever describes how these “evolutionary marvels” are today facing the gravest threat to their existence in their entire 450m-year history. Their plight should concern us all, for as apex predators these “beautiful and majestic emperors and empresses of the deep” are vital to the health and diversity of the oceans: “Kill the sharks and humankind cripples the seas.”
McKeever focuses on four of out some 500 shark species: the mako, tiger, hammerhead and great white, “the ocean’s most mysterious and most misunderstood inhabitant”. He travels the world talking to scientists and conservationists, as well as getting up close and personal with sharks in their own element. In one shocking chapter, he meets Cambodians who escaped from working as slave labour on fishing boats, part of the true cost of supplying the world with obscenely cheap tinned tuna. According to Greenpeace, “slavery at sea is widespread”.
McKeever discovers many astonishing facts: the jaw of a tiger shark generates a force of three tonnes per square centimetre, equal to the weight of two cars; great whites travel staggeringly long distances – one was tracked travelling from South Africa to Australia in a straight line, 6,800 miles in 100 days, “the longest known trip of any fish in the world”. But the key message he wants readers to understand is that, despite their fearsome reputation sharks are actually now an extremely vulnerable species. The global population of the great hammerhead has declined by 80% in the last 25 years. They rarely attack humans; only one person has been killed by them in the last 400 years.
Sharks are nature’s great survivors, having withstood five extinction events. But numbers of great whites fell by 75% in the last 15 years. Charles Darwin wrote that “the love for all creatures is the most noble attribute of man”. McKeever argues that we need to extend our love to sharks, or one day the oceans will no longer be graced with their unique beauty and grandeur.
• Emperors of the Deep is published by Collins (RRP £20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
