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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

The Shark Scare

Aired September 03, 2001 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Tonight: the shark scare -- it started earlier this summer with a boy's brush with death and a rash of attacks off Florida beaches. But is it just a media frenzy? As the summer season winds down, another boy is attacked in Virginia, where shark attacks just never happen. This time, it's fatal. I'll speak live with the mayor of Virginia Beach, Meyera Oberndorf.

A quarter century ago, his book and subsequent movie set off a huge shark scare on both coasts and everywhere in between. I'll speak live with Peter Benchley, author of "Jaws." Should we be scared? I'll go live to the shark tank at Orlando's SeaWorld and ask shark expert Gary Violetta.

Good evening. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting tonight from Washington.

The statistics suggest shark attacks this summer are not on the rise. But don't tell that to the parents of 10-year-old David Peltier, who was attacked by a shark this past weekend in shallow water in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

His father began pounding the shark, eventually freeing his son. David was rushed to a hospital, but had already lost lots of blood. He died 10 hours later. He was the first person in Virginia's recorded history to be killed by a shark.

And don't talk statistics to little Jessie Arbogast, who in July had his arm severed by a shark near Pensacola, Florida. Surgeons later reattached it. And don't talk statistics to Wall Street banker Krishna Thompson, who had his left leg amputated following a shark attack in the Bahamas last month.

So what is going on? That's our focus tonight: "The Shark Scare."

Experts say you have a much better chance of being struck by lightning. Virginia, for example, has had only five unprovoked shark attacks in more than 300 years. This weekend's attack, which claimed the life of David Peltier, was the first ever for Virginia Beach. That doesn't make it easier for his family.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAROL MILES, MOTHER OF DAVID PELTIER: He probably told you over a hundred times a day he loved you. Every time he would pass you, he would tell you, "I love you."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And joining me now is the mayor of Virginia Beach, Meyera Oberndorf.

Mayor, thanks for joining us. I know this is a difficult time for you.

But tell us, first of all, have there been any additional shark sightings since this tragic incident this weekend?

MEYERA OBERNDORF, MAYOR OF VIRGINIA BEACH: This afternoon, late afternoon I am told that a shark was seen 600 yards off of Dam Neck, the Naval installation. That's the normal area where the sharks that -- generally live and swim. It did not institute any sort of a threat or the like. And so they just flew over it. And they're keeping a close eye on it.

BLITZER: How extraordinary is this situation that has just happened in your community?

OBERNDORF: Well, in our community, it is the first reported case of a shark ever attacking and annihilating a citizen.

BLITZER: Is the community in some sort of shock right now as a result of this?

OBERNDORF: The community is very, very concerned. Obviously, all of the children in our community, we want to be certain that they are safe. And in that vein, there's a special fund that has been set up in the memory of David Peltier to help the parents defray the cost of the funeral, and the like.

And, in addition, there is wonderful outpouring of food and assistance. We've had the Community Services Board director contact the family to offer counseling. And I stay in touch with a very close friend of Mr. Richard Peltier's, so that if there's anything they need and I can arrange, I'll be there to do it.

BLITZER: Mayor Oberndorf, thank you so much for joining us. And please convey our condolences to the Peltier family as well. Appreciate your joining us this evening.

OBERNDORF: Thank you. Thank you.

BLITZER: Thank you.

BLITZER: And so, are the sharks going wild this summer? Or are they just getting some bad publicity?

CNN Miami bureau chief John Zarrella has this background report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Three times a day, visitors gather half a dozen deep along Shark Channel at the Miami Seaquarium.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nurse sharks are not considered to be aggressive or man-eaters.

ZARRELLA: The shark-feeding show has always been hugely popular. But not since "Jaws" was making a splash has the show drawn such crowds. Steely-eyed sharks, their cold stare have always fascinated and frightened people. But this summer has been different.

SAM GRUBER, MARINE BIOLOGIST: This is the summer of the shark hype, not the summer of shark.

ZARRELLA: Sam Gruber, marine biologist, is considered one of the top experts on sharks. Gruber says the real feeding frenzy has been by the media, not the sharks. And it all started because the story of Jessie Arbogast was so compelling.

GRUBER: Because sharks have this inappropriate media image, this image of the death fish from hell, that fear was played upon by the media. And then when there was another similar incident in the Bahamas, well, all hell broke loose.

ZARRELLA: Everywhere you turn, sharks are the cover story. And since covers sell, sharks on the cover or petrified people are good for slow summer sales. One supermarket tabloid even found a way to tie Fidel Castro to the summer shark attacks. But did the mainstream media too blatantly disregard the reality of a much bigger picture?

(on camera): This summer's all-too real attacks, including the weekend death of a boy in Virginia Beach, may appear frequent. But those who keep tabs on shark bites say, if anything, the numbers this year are down.

(voice-over): According to International Shark File, there were 79 shark attacks worldwide last year. This year, there have been 49, 28 of them in Florida. Many are surfers who disregard warnings.

JOHN DEAN, SURFER: I've been surfing so many years. And it's a pretty strong part of my life. So I'm not going to give that up.

ZARRELLA: Despite the hype, it's not the sharks that worry Florida's tourism-conscience governor.

GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: I think recession is in other parts of the country will impact tourism a lot more.

ZARRELLA: In fact, state tourism officials say they have gotten hundreds of calls from reporters, but only one from a concerned tourist.

John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Inspired by a tale of the fisherman who caught a 2 ton great white shark, Peter Benchley wrote a novel about terror in a coastal town. He called it "Jaws." Benchley says his runaway bestseller inadvertently tapped a profound, subconscious fear in the public.

A young director named Steven Spielberg also tapped that fear, turning "Jaws" into a blockbuster movie. Peter Benchley has made the sea his love and his life's work. And he now takes a different view of sharks. He joins me from Princeton, New Jersey.

Mr. Benchley, thank you so much for joining us.

And how concerned, how frightened should Americans be right now about shark attacks?

PETER BENCHLEY, AUTHOR, "JAWS": Not at all.

It's still -- the statistics are, you're much more likely to be attacked by lightning or by your own toilet than you are by a shark. But, as was pointed out earlier, an attack is so spectacular that, rare as it may be, it grabs headlines.

BLITZER: And you're writing a book right now, though, about how to take some precautions to avoid being attack by a shark. What are some of your recommendations?

BENCHLEY: Well, it's actually a book about my experience in the ocean, along with some tips on how to swim safely and how to avoid shark attacks. One thing you don't do is, you don't swim at dusk, which is when sharks tend the feed.

And you don't swim if you see birds working or fish feeding. There are a great many things that one can do to avoid the unlikeliest chance. But what's been happening this summer is, once poor Jessie Arbogast got attacked and the media got hold of it -- and "TIME," especially, called it "The Summer of the Shark" -- it sort of became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And attacks that would not normally get any attention at all, the small bites on the surfers who ignore the warnings and ignore the very sight of sharks, suddenly get all the news. So it has been a slow -- a combination of a slow news cycle, a lot of hype. And, as you pointed out, there have been fewer attacks this year than in the past. But never mind. It's in everybody's consciousness.

BLITZER: What do you do if you're in the water and you're attacked? Obviously, there's not much you can do. But what should you attempt to do?

BENCHLEY: Well, generally, strangely, the word "attacked" is misused, in that sharks, almost 100 percent of the time, are curious. And they're biting to see if whatever it is is edible. Now, in case of Jessie Arbogast, he lived. In the case of the poor young man over the weekend, he did not, because an artery was severed.

If you are bitten by a shark, more often than not, the shark will discover that you are unsuitable prey and will disappear. If he doesn't, then anything you can do is fair game. Punch him in the nose. Stick your finger in its eye. Do whatever you can.

I had an occasion at one point to try to stick a finger in the eye of a shark and instead put a billy club in its mouth. And you can make a lot of mistakes. But if you're being bitten, anything you can do is fine.

BLITZER: And if you see someone being bitten, you swim out there or you run out there, and I assume you do the same thing if someone is in the grip of a shark at that particular moment.

BENCHLEY: Well, yes. You have got to assume that the shark has made a mistake. It has assumed that this human being is its legitimate prey. And, usually, as I say, it will go away.

If it doesn't go away, it is going to concentrate usually on the prey and will not pay any attention to anybody coming along and trying to grab it. Now, to try the wrestle a 200 pound shark to shore is a very difficult task. But beyond that, I think, as Dr. Gruber pointed out, the amount we don't know about sharks vastly exceeds the amount we do know about sharks. So there really are no rules, except stay away from them. Any shark over 3 feet long is potentially dangerous to human beings.

BLITZER: You said last year in a speech in Hong Kong -- and I'll put it up on our screen -- you said this.

You said: "In the 25 years since 'Jaws' was first released, sharks have experienced an unprecedented and uncontrolled attack. Sharks are much more the victims than the villains."

Tell us what you mean by that.

BENCHLEY: Well, because of commercial fishing and the sudden rise in the middle class in China, there's been an enormous rise in demand for shark fins. So sharks that used to be let go or allowed to live are now being killed at a rate of roughly 10 million fatalities in sharks for every one human fatality.

Nobody shows the specific figures, but the guess is that around 25 million sharks a year are being killed for their fins, for their meat, for their skin. And there is no shark management by any government around the world. And so what's happening is that the shark species are being depleted to a point of unsustainability. Some of them are in real danger of extinction.

BLITZER: All right, Mr. Benchley, stand by. We have a lot more to talk about. We are going to continue with Peter Benchley, who has had his own -- as we just learned -- his own very close encounters with sharks.

And we will also go live to the shark tank at SeaWorld to learn additional information about how to avoid sharks in the sea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. We're continuing our conversation with the author of "Jaws," Peter Benchley.

Mr. Benchley, tell us a little bit more about your own personal encounters, your own experience over these years with sharks.

BENCHLEY: Well, as soon as "Jaws" was published, ABC came to me and asked if I would go down to South Australia and swim with great white sharks in a cage. And nobody had done that but the crew of Blue Water White Death.

And I said I would go if I could take one of the great people from Blue Water White Death with me, Stan Waterman, which they let me do. Since then, I've done God knows how many hours underwater with sharks and have had my share of close calls, but have never been attacked, never been actually bitten. I have been frightened to death many times. But I spend a lot of time being the so-called talent in documentaries. And I think talent in this case may be being rather stupid.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: How do you feel about the fact that so many millions of Americans -- so many people, indeed, around the world, their perception of sharks is the result, in large part, of what you wrote in the book "Jaws" and, of course, the motion picture that followed?

BENCHLEY: I certainly didn't create the fear of sharks. The fear of sharks has been on since man put a toe in the water thousands and thousands of years ago. What I did was tap, completely inadvertently, this pulse of primal fear in people that I don't think they knew they had.

And, commercially, of course, I was very lucky that nobody had done it before me. It caused no real damage to sharks. What it did do was spark a lot of interest, which -- now, this is self-serving -- but it caused a lot of research to happen and a great deal of interest to occur.

I get a thousand letters a year from children who were not alive when the book was published or the movie released. And they're just fascinated. They're not afraid. They just want to know more. So there's been an enormous increase in research. That's why I couldn't possibly write "Jaws" today, because we know now what we didn't know then.

BLITZER: As we're speaking, Mr. Benchley, we're now getting confirmation that, only today, another report of a shark attack. We have now confirmed that one person has been killed in a shark attack off the coast of North Carolina in Cape Hatteras. One is critically injured.

When people are going to be hearing these reports, and they hear you and other experts say this is not unusual statistically speaking, of course, no is going to believe us when we say that. Do you understand the emotions out there right now? BENCHLEY: Of course you do. It is exactly the same as the people who went down on TWA 800, which exploded in midair taking off from Canada. You can't very well talk statistics to those people who died in the air.

A person who has been attacked by a shark, it's a ghastly, ghastly experience. And it does generate headlines. And well it might. It's just that it's unfortunate because it is so rare that it causes this kind of hysteria. I don't mean for a second to suggest that it is not a ghastly way to die. It is. But it's not happening more than it used to.

BLITZER: Peter Benchley, I want to thank you once again for your expertise. We'll look forward to your next book on sharks and everything else you write. I appreciate it very much for joining us tonight.

BENCHLEY: Thank you.

BLITZER: And up next: What do other shark experts have to say about all of this? We'll talk to Gary Violetta. He'll joins us live from the shark tank at SeaWorld in Orlando.

And later, the United States and Israel walk out of a United Nations conference.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. There has been another shark attack, this time off the coast of North Carolina, some 135 miles south of Virginia Beach, Virginia, where there was a shark attack over the weekend.

CNN has now confirmed that one person was attacked and killed off the coast of North Carolina today. Another person is now described as being critically injured in an attack by sharks off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.

We will continue to monitor this situation and have details as they become available.

But the statistics, they tell us that we have nothing to worry about. Still, can we improve our odds if we do meet up with a shark? Gary Violetta is a shark expert. He joins us now from his habitat in SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida.

Gary, thanks, once again for joining us.

What do you make of what's going on in Virginia Beach, Virginia over the weekend, right now today in Cape Hatteras off North Carolina?

GARY VIOLETTA, SHARK EXPERT, SEAWORLD: Well, I'm going to have to agree with what Dr. Gruber and what Mr. Benchley kind of said already, is that I think the media has really picked up on this quite a bit. And that's what we're seeing right now, is more media attention going towards these shark attacking than anything else.

BLITZER: Is it just a coincidence that there have been these two deaths now almost within as many days?

VIOLETTA: Coincidence? Boy, that's a tough one to say.

Again, when you look at statistics -- and understanding that statistics doesn't really help the families at all -- it's too personal. But we're still tracking at or below what a normal year would be.

BLITZER: But is there any evidence out there that, with the growing population, increased fishing going on, going into the normal habitat, the oceans, the water of the sharks, that sharks are moving closer to shore and perhaps looking for additional food, as other fish, their normal food, evaporates or goes away?

VIOLETTA: I think that sharks will easily go toward their food sources. But it's important to remember what their food source is. And their food source is usually fish for the type of sharks that we are talking about. And then you add that other complication, where more and more and more people are going into the waters, and they are becoming in contact with these animals, your chances of getting attacked or bit by a shark will increase.

BLITZER: The speculation is that David Peltier, the 10-year-old who was killed over the weekend in Virginia Beach, was attacked by a sandbar shark. What do you know about a sandbar shark?

VIOLETTA: Sandbar sharks are common along the East Coast of the United States. In fact, they are found all over the world in temperate and tropical waters. And sandbar sharks are also sharks that migrate up and down the coast, depending on water temperature.

So, as the temperatures get warmer, you will see them start migrating a little farther south -- I'm sorry -- north. And as they get cold in the north, they will migrate a little farther south.

BLITZER: And we know that David Peltier was attacked in water that was only 4 feet deep. How unusual it is for a shark to come into such shallow water?

VIOLETTA: I don't think it's unusual at all to see a shark in that shallow water. And, again, you have got to remember that these animals are probably going to where their food source is. And if the bait fish or the fish that they are feeding on are in shallower water, that's exactly where these animals are going to be.

BLITZER: Is there any sort of shark repellent that people can put on their bodies that actually work?

VIOLETTA: I am not aware of any shark repellent that is actually foolproof. I think what people need to really do is kind of use a little bit of common sense, observe what's around them, look for signs that these animals are in the area, not necessarily have any jewelry on when they're swimming, not being in any of these sandbar areas where sharks might accumulate, because that's where their food source is.

There are certain things like that. Don't swim at dusk and dawn.

BLITZER: What about -- how practical would it be to put big nets out there at popular beaches so that sharks wouldn't get too close?

VIOLETTA: Well, I'm personally not a fan of using a lot of these nets. Unfortunately, when you put a net across the water, whether it's for shark protection or if it's for gill-netting, there a lot of bycatch that gets caught in these things.

A lot of animals die when you put a net in the water -- dolphins, sea turtles, sharks. It's a tremendous amount of animals die when that happens.

BLITZER: So that would obviously not be a good idea.

Gary Violetta, once again, thank you so much for joining us and sharing some of your expertise.

We love that tank right behind you. I assume millions of tourists eventually will show up there as well to see it up close and personal. We appreciate it very much.

VIOLETTA: Thank you for having me.

BLITZER: Thank you, Gary.

And things may be heating up in the Sunshine State's race for governor. Up next, I'll have the latest on Janet Reno's plans for a possible challenge to Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

In other top stories, American and Israeli representatives are leaving a U.N. conference on racism early after they had no luck getting language condemning Israeli actions against Palestinians off the meeting's final statement. Norway and Canada had been trying to work out a compromise between Israel and the Arab nations.

Former Attorney General Janet Reno is wearing a hat today, but tomorrow, she's expected to throw one into the ring and announce she's taking the first steps toward running for Florida governor. If Reno earns the Democratic nomination, she'd square off against the Republican already in that post, Jeb Bush.

And just to update once again on our breaking story that we've been reporting over these past several minutes, off the coast of North Carolina in Cape Hatteras: another a shark attack -- CNN has confirmed that one person attacked has been killed. A second person is critically injured. Stay with CNN throughout the evening for additional details as they become available.

And that's all the time we have tonight. Tomorrow night, Congressman Gary Condit gets ready to return to Washington. What kind of reception will he receive from his colleagues?

Until then, thanks very much for watching.

I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

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