Friends Not Food

In the fall of 1997, freshly graduated from high school in June, Mike Coots was enjoying the start of the surf season. For Coots, this was just another day catching waves on the stunning coast of Kaui, Hawaii.

Coots was off the shore in about 30 feet of water, bodyboarding with his friends. He waited patiently for the right wave to come in. As a suitable wave approached, Coots began to paddle, but he was interrupted by a sudden explosion from beneath him.

Unbeknownst to Coots, a large tiger shark had been lurking beneath the shadows of the waves watching the surface as he bodyboarded. Coots was thrashed through the water by the shark which had a grip on his right leg. As instincts kicked in, Coots reflexively attempted to pry its jaws open with his right hand to no avail, only splitting his finger on the shark’s razor-sharp teeth. With his left hand, Coots began to punch the shark in the snout, a few punches connecting before the shark finally let go.

Coots remounted his board, but began to feel a twitching pain in his leg. He looked back expecting to see the tiger shark back to finish him, only to see that his leg had been bitten off, the bite so clean, as if a surgeon had amputated his leg. His leg spewed blood with each painful twitch, but Coots had no time for fear as a wave pushed him back to the shore.

Everything felt surreal, almost as if he was “watching it happen to somebody else.” Given that there was no sign of an impending attack, Coots had no cause for alarm, and throughout the attack—which lasted about five seconds— Coots never felt an ounce of fear as the clear water turned red with blood.

“I didn’t see a fin breach,” recalls Coots. “On the surface, there was nothing. I was completely blindsided. So it was completely unexpected. So I didn’t really have time to get scared. It just happened. It wasn’t painful, which is kind of crazy to think, but I didn’t feel any pain… I thought I was gonna die, but it wasn’t scary.”

Luckily, his quick-thinking friends made a makeshift tourniquet out of the leash from his bodyboard that would later prove to save him from bleeding out. They said a prayer for him before loading him into the back of a truck, where he was raced to the emergency room as everything started to blur.

About 24 hours later Coot’s eyes flickered open, a movie-like brightness filling his vision as he was surrounded by his emotional family. As he began to process his new state, a wave of realization washed over him; the dream-like events that had occurred were in fact a reality, but Coots remained optimistic. “I wasn’t sad that my leg was gone because I was just happy to be breathing and to have my family around me. I wasn’t in any pain and I just felt grateful to be alive.”

Post surgery, Coots lost the lower part of his right leg around low calf. After a few days in the hospital, Coots was released back to his home where he attempted to adjust to life with only one leg.

While recovering, Coots began questioning why he was attacked. “Was it the tide? I smelled something stinky that day. Was it that smell? Was it the moon phase?” With limited sources for information, the answers to his questions would have to wait.

A month and a half later after the attack, Coots was fitted with a prosthetic allowing him to return to what felt like a normal life again. One of the first things Coots did was get back in the water, and to many’s surprise he had no fear of doing so. For Coots, the month-and-a-half from the water was the longest he had been out of the water, and the hardest part of the entire ordeal.

Once again mobile, Coots scoured libraries for books on shark attacks. Despite extensive research, none of the answers satisfied his questions.

Shortly after the attack, Coots relocated some 2,500 miles to attend the University of

California in Santa Barbara, California, majoring in art and photography. After graduating college, Coots commenced a professional photography career.

Some years later in 2009, still without satisfying answers to his shark attack, Coots received a call from a fellow shark attack survivor named Debbie Salomone. Salomone herself was attacked in 2004 while wading in waist high water where she was left with a severed Achilles tendon. At the time of the attack, Salamone had been working for the Orlando Sentinel as a reporter who specialized in environmental reporting. Believing her attack was a turning point in her life to help the environment, Salomone left her journalist job of 21 years and pursued a degree in environmental science and policies in hopes of finding a solution to the mass finning of sharks.

Salamones goal was to collect a group of shark attack survivors and go to the US congress and attempt to close loopholes regarding a bill on finning. Believing that shark attack survivors “would be the ultimate spokespeople for sharks,” Salamone composed a team of survivors from all around the world to join her movement.

Though, there was a large problem for Coots. He knew nothing about sharks, let alone shark conservation.

“Up to that point, I knew a lot of what sharks were doing to humans,” says Coots. “I almost died from one. I had no idea of their importance in our oceans and importance on our planet and what was happening with their demise and shark fin soup.”

Coots only knew what sharks were doing to humans, but Salamone offered a long sought answer to his questions. An answer that contained valuable information, information that would greatly alter his life. That answer was

Harvesting shark fins is often a brutal and destructive process with quite a complex history. Similar to turkey on Thanksgiving for Northern Americans, the consumption of shark fins in Asian countries are mainly for special occasions such as weddings and banquets. Shark fin soup has a history leading back to some thousand years ago to the Chinese Sung Dynasty. However, it was not popular until the Ming dynasty when it was only served to the imperial family and nobles as the soup resembled a sign of luxury and delicacy. With the shark’s resilience to disease, it is believed that consuming the shark’s fins would pass on its qi (or energy) and its resilience to fight off old age, cancer, amongst other diseases.

As dynasties fell and new ones took over, shark fin soup slowly gained popularity and found its way to the masses. However, as the modern Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, its popularity began to decline as the CCP believed that shark fin soup was an unnecessary luxury. As awareness regarding sharks increased in the 21st century, the Chinese government eventually banned shark fin soup from wedding banquets in 2012. With the ban, China’s consumption of shark fin soup decreased by 80 percent, but neighboring countries–Taiwan, Hongkong, Thailand, and Vietnam–in Southeast Asia saw a dramatic increase.

No longer just for the rich, the shark finning industry saw a boom, and according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium of California, annually pulls in an estimated $400 million. With the value of shark fins, fishermen all over the world are trying to get a hold of the profit for themselves, but in a blind craze for profit, these fishermen attribute to the degradation of the environment.

The brutal process of getting the fins that caused the death of sharks in mass has become engraved in Coots’ mind nearly a decade later. According to Sharkwater at the time of its production, there were over 70,000,000 sharks killed a year for their fins.

“Just, that number alone, I thought that was a typo,” says Coots. “I had no idea. And I think most people in the world have no idea what’s happening with sharks and their important role as an apex predator and a keystone species. I love the ocean… I never had any hatred for sharks… to help protect them, it’s just a little way of giving back for how much the ocean has given me.”

Although the original species of sharks have been long extinct, species of modern day sharks, such as the goblin shark, have been around for nearly 125 million years.

Since the beginning of their existence, sharks have served as a keystone species of the ocean. Keystone species are of crucial importance, meaning that if they were to be wiped out, the ecosystem that it supports would be severely damaged or wiped out itself.

Sharks, as apex predators in most food chains, play a key role in keeping the population of fish and other marine species from overpopulating. In a scenario where sharks were wiped out, or severely reduced, there would be a sharp increase in fish and other marine species, which could result in the increased consumption of coral, algae, krill, plankton and other marine foods, perhaps leading to a large domino effect, one in which some marine foods completely disappear.

As the situation of sharks became more clear to him, something clicked in Coots. The decline of sharks means an exponential decline of ocean health and balance. And with the ocean being closest to his heart, Coots was empowered with a new resolve. Despite the loss of his leg, Coots wanted to advocate for the well being of sharks and the ocean.

Having more than a decade of professional photography under his belt, Coots didn’t have to resort to any unconventional ways of spreading his message, instead, he used the “most powerful weapon in the world,” his camera. Already having several years of underwater photography experience, all Coots had to do was to dive with sharks, and his first choice of species of shark to swim with was the very species that he lost his leg to, the tiger shark.

Tiger sharks which live in tropical to subtropical waters, are one of the largest species of shark and are typically around 10-14 feet and weigh up to 1,400 pounds. Coots’ choice of location was at Tiger Beach located in the Bahamas. Originally known as “Dry Bar,” Tiger Beach consists of several shallow reefs and sandbars, and got its name from the large collection of tiger sharks that gather there.

Being his first time seeing a tiger shark after the attack, Coots admits that he “was a little nervous at first.” Some 20 miles offshore from West End, Grand Bahama, Coots grew tense as he watched tiger, reef, and lemon sharks circle his boat. But to his surprise it was just the opposite.

“When I got underwater I was just kind of like completely engrossed by the moment… you’re just in awe that these animals are so big and so powerful, but they also seem so intelligent. And that’s what I saw.”

Coots adds, “they know you’re there, they’re not being aggressive. And it was really beautiful. After about half an hour… you’re just in a trance… everything is mesmerizing and beautiful.” sharks, rather humans are taught to fear sharks.

Furthermore, Hancock says the fear of sharks is rather emotional. The likelihood of a human being attacked, or killed by one is extremely rare. The fear of being mauled by a hippo is most likely not as dreadful as being attacked by a shark, however, according to BBC news, there’s an average of 500 people killed by hippos compared to just nine shark fatalities.

Likewise, Coots says that the image of sharks is exploited for views. Whether it’s the suspense built by the dramatic music, camera angles, and gruesome screen effects, the negative portrayal of sharks is all to “sell product.”

“People are glued to the TV when sharks come on,” says Coots. “The more menacing, the more scary they can make it look, the more dramatic, whether it’s shark reenactments, whether it’s dramatic music, whether it’s only clips of sharks attacking something with their eyes rolled back gets people stuck and glued to their screens. The media loves to portray that Hollywood myth, that sharks are these mindless, crazy animals that’ll kill you [given the chance].”

With his awe-inspiring photos, and his conversation starter that is a prosthetic, Coots hopes to slowly break the stigma of sharks as bloodthirsty creatures one photo and conservation project at a time. He recently released his first book, Shark Portraits, a 240-page photo book that captures the beautiful brawn of sharks.

Coots believes the unrealistic fear of sharks was first created by Hollywood, referring to the “Jaws effect.” Steven Spielberg’s movie sold hundreds of millions of tickets in 1975 when introduced to the box office. Now an iconic and timeless franchise, Jaws has left quite the impact, especially on the environment.

The “Jaws effect” was a term first created by University of Sydney senior lecturer Dr. Christopher Pepin-Neff. The belief is that sharks are a threat to humans, intentionally attacking them, and therefore sharks should be killed.

According to psychologist Gabriella Hancock, this fear of sharks is not innate. Hancock states that humans are not born with the innate fear of

With a quickly expanding number of sharks dying each year–estimated to be over 100 million–more notoriety is the last thing they need, so Coots hopes that his story will inspire others to start their own conservation journey. According to Coots, with marine ecosystems already suffering from increased temperatures and bleached reefs, losing sharks is the last thing we need.

“Without our oceans, humans will not be able to live on this planet,” he says. “Sharks really are an integral part of the health of our planet. And to be able to shift that narrative… the ocean, it’s much more scary without sharks than with sharks in them. And as a storyteller, I feel [like] sharing that message.”