The woman who dorsal rides with sharks says we’re not acting fast enough to save our own.
Somewhere deep in the ocean amongst a school of fish and a playful seal swims a huge great white shark into frame. From the surface above, an outreached hand dives down and grabs onto the fin of the giant predator. The great white barely reacts. It cruises gracefully through the water as Ocean Ramsey strokes its body, holding on as it tows her into deep. She turns around, gives the camera a couple of waves, then turns back as the shark swims on into deeper water.
“It’s really hard to describe what it’s like to be there and have a great white lock eyes with you, and really look you over,” says Ocean. “You can tell how intelligent and how calculated they are.”
Video footage of Ocean’s dive with the great white is mesmerising, exposing viewers to a calmer side of the animals so many view as monsters. And she’s using the video going viral to spread the message that sharks really aren’t that bad.
“I tend not to go out there and dorsal ride on every shark,” she says, “and I wouldn’t encourage anyone to just go jump in with a great white. But 99 per cent of the time, these animals don’t really care about you. They identify that you’re not their natural prey. In my personal experience, when a shark swims by me, it’s really curious and at the same time, it’s very scared. They’re just as concerned about being injured by us as we are by them.
“I’m in a very unique position to be able to speak up for them firsthand. What kind of person would I be if I didn’t stick up for them? We don’t need to love them like people love dolphins; just don’t fear them.”
We don’t need to love them like people love dolphins; just don’t fear them
The 28-year old marine biologist and avid surfer, scuba instructor, and free-diver from Hawaii has swum with more than 32 different species of sharks on thousands of dives around the world. And she’s angry. She can’t understand how something like the shark cull currently happening in western Australia can go ahead.
“From Canada to Hawaii to Mexico to California, that entire massive piece of Pacific Ocean, we have less than 350 great white sharks there. It’s shocking. If it was 350 lions, of course they’d get protection, right? But because it’s a shark, and there’s this perceived fear, this hysteria... it’s so disproportionate to what it should be. People who say ‘kill them because they’re going to eat us’, that’s pretty ridiculous. Fingers crossed that with the rallies in WA, the government will actually listen to the people there.”
She’s also critical of how slow the government is moving to protect blue sharks from shark-finning in our waters, something she wants to address, along with Auckland-based shark scientist and PhD student Riley Elliott, during her visit to New Zealand.
“We believe New Zealand is a pupping [birthing] ground for those sharks. If you’re hunting in a pupping ground and taking out females and babies, what happens to that population? We need to stop allowing them to be finned and killed, and change fishing methods so they’re not caught as bycatch. I mean, finally they’re passing that law to ban finning in New Zealand, but unfortunately the number [of blue sharks] is already so low, that to wait until 2016, it may be too late.
“So we’re going to do a bit of research around Great Barrier Island and go to a couple of other spots. I’m really looking forward to Stewart Island with the great whites, because they have a very special place in my heart. Then we’re going to go around and campaign, do a couple of speaking events and meet with politicians. If we could get that finning law to come in earlier, I would feel like... job done, great success.”
Ocean Ramsey’s tour of New Zealand begins on February 10. She’ll be holding a free public talk with shark expert and PhD student Riley Elliott at the Maritime Museum in Auckland's Viaduct on Sunday February 16 at 4pm.