The sea is still an unknown environment and the dangers are often not where you imagine them.
A 36-year-old Italian surfer, Giulia Manfrini, died when a shark jumped out of the water and pierced her in the chest.
.
The poor girl did not dream that she would have this risk and in fact she was particularly unlucky.
Anyone who goes surfing is a potential target for large sharks that mistake humans for turtles or seals, but an accident with Giulia’s angler fish did not add to the potential risks because it did not happen ever.
I’ve been afraid of flounder since I had close contact with a grown man. In 2002 in Carloforte in Sardinia I went into a tuna fishery to see it from “below” as the tuna see it.
The tuna net is a sequence of parallel nets that lead the tuna towards their final destination: the chamber of death, where 4 nets block their escape and the fifth net rises. At that point there is no escape from the tuna, closed on all sides, they come to the surface where many fishermen are waiting for them who pull them up with harpoons.
A tuna, the size of a door, went over me, swept over me. If someone hit me it would crush me. A torpedo-shaped ton of flesh thrown at 50 km per hour hurts.
At a certain point I see the silhouette of a bellyless fish. It’s longer than the tuna and longer than me. It’s a hollyhock. His sword is longer than my hand. He uses it like a whip to stun fish and fight in comrades, certainly not to spear divers, but I was afraid of this sword, I knew it could pierce me with ease.
I stay away. Unlike tuna, it does not swim in groups, it goes alone. He stands on the other side of where I am and every now and then he leans his head towards the net looking for an opening between the meshes, but he doesn’t find it. He knows he is in trouble. Where he goes, the tuna is shy. They are too big to be his prey, but they can also see his sword and it scares them.
I am still, respectful and fascinated by this big silver fish.
He stays away until the tuna carousel ends because all the fish have entered the death chamber. But the goshawk does not enter and remains studying the distant scene. I think he realizes that he is trapped and jumped out of the water a few times. He can not find out. Now in the last number it’s just me and him.
What is going on? Really, what do I do?
As I think about what to do, he turns and comes to me. It is very fast. He points at me, then stops half a meter away from me. His black eye is like a plum. We look at each other. I put the camera between me and use it as a shield, but it’s no use. He doesn’t attack me and continues to stare at me while still.
I am facing a familiar fish, but I don’t know him. I’ve met and studied sharks all my life, but the shark is a real stranger. I don’t know anything about it. We know very little about these fish, for centuries the only thing that interested us was understanding how to kill them.
If you search for sausage online, you will find it pan-fried, baked, Sicilian or breaded. And really, despite the fact that he is half a meter away from me, I feel like an alien. I don’t know if he can hear my heartbeat, I don’t know if he realizes he’s caught, I don’t know what he’s thinking.
The idea comes to me to put the camera between my knees so that it does not fall and I remove two links of the net with my hands. I pull them and spread them, I managed to create an opening. It’s a moment, he sees it, he understands immediately and with a flick of his tail he runs away.
From the surface a fisherman with a bathyscope sees the whole scene and when I surfaced he is not tearing it to pieces either. I had taken a nice booty from him.
I try to defend myself by saying that those big eyes seemed smarter than tuna eyes and that they seemed to be begging me, but I get nothing. He tells me that it was wrong to let me into the trap and anyway I would never go in again. I realize he was right, I compensate everyone for the lost sword and harmony is restored.
In the evening we all have dinner together. Menu: smoked kolgan, tagliolini with kolgan and grilled kolgan. It was very tasty, but today I wouldn’t eat it anymore because, even though I’m not vegan or vegetarian, I don’t feel entitled to eat everything like I did then. Today I always ask myself: up to what point is it permissible to kill to eat?
Of course, nature is all about eating each other. Only plants do not kill other living things, but they are happy with water and light, but we humans are the loudest and most unscrupulous eaters in the world. We were always like this. We have extinct large animals in Australia, New Zealand, North and South America. Everywhere we have reached we have made a clean sweep. For California grizzly bears or the dodo, a tall but not very agile wood pigeon, our absence was enough to survive.
And it is like this at sea too.
Science tells us that voles are an endangered species and I work to ensure that they are not killed and eaten because they are top predators and it is like eating voles.
I’m sorry today for poor Giulia who lost her life killed by a wasp, but I haven’t changed my mind: we have to ask ourselves what is the point in life that goes from plants to primates, where we have to stop to kill? Where does the no kill zone begin?
Unlike the tuna, the swordfish had an edge from the tuna fishery. He was a loner like a bear, not gregarious like sheep and I always believe that he should be protected.
It’s possible that that mullet, maybe a marlin, did the surfing for a school of minnows he was trying to stun. Or he felt that surfing was a predatory competitor to be chased. However, I don’t think it was protecting the territory because it is a fish that migrates from one territory to another.
We don’t know how it went, Giulia Manfrini was certainly very lucky. And there is nothing you can do about bad luck.
* Alberto Luca Recchi is a sea explorer. The only Italian to make a photography book for National Geographic. He made the first expedition in search of sharks and whales in the Mediterranean. He has written many books, including 5 with Piero Angela. Author of the podcast “A sea of Stories by Alberto Luca Recchi”