REVIEW: The Devil's Teeth

I firmly believe I am going to die in a violent Great White Shark attack. Doesn’t everyone? No, just me?

I think my irrational fear really took root when I moved to San Francisco and I started hearing about and reading about all the sharks that just chill out on our coastline…..waiting to take a chomp out of me. In fact, when I’m at Stinson beach, I don’t see how pretty our coastline is, or how beautiful the waves are, or how cute the surfer boys are……I see Great White Sharks ……lined up……….looking right at me. And they look hungry.

I have a reason to be worried. Boyfriend surfs. And he tries to convince me that surfing is safer than driving in a car. Some nonsense about the odds of being hit by a car is greater than being eaten by a great white shark. Whatever. I don’t want to hear it. All I know is Boyfriend looks a lot like shark bait when he is sitting out on his board in Bolinas (where Great White Sharks are frequently seen, by the way) and I just don’t need that added stress in my life.

So, it was with sick fascination that I picked up this book about the Great White Shark project on the Farallon islands. The Farallons (pronounced Fair Alons) are chain of islands just a mere 30 miles off the San Francisco coast. The islands are usually socked in with fog, but on an exceptionally clear day, you can see the islands from the Golden Gate bridge….and they do, in fact, resemble big giant devil’s teeth.

Here’s the nutshell: The author is a reporter who becomes obsessed with a team of researchers who live on the island year round to monitor the behavior of the two groups of Great White Shark: the Sisterhood (sharks ranging from 16 to 20 feet long) and the Rat Packers (“smaller sharks” ranging 12-16 feet long). Susan (the author) gets to know the two main researchers on the island, sweet talks them into letting her follow them around for a while, secures herself a yacht to live on for six weeks outside the island (only a handful of people are actually permitted ON the island), straps on a camera and goes on Shark Watch.

Now, Shark Watch includes sitting in a small fishing boat while 16-foot sharks swim aggressively around the boat. Sometimes the sharks attack a seal…..sometime they attack the boat. Wow, sign me up!

What’s really good about the book: The author is a really good writer and you can tell she has done her research. There are plenty of stories about encounters with Great Whites and their feeding habits, their personalities and their preference for surfers as an afternoon snack (Boyfriend, ARE YOU LISTENING?). She provides a lot of history of the island and its previous inhabitants. Plus, if you are familiar with the Bay Area, there is a lot of local flavor to enjoy.

What’s bad about the book: About ¾ of the way through, the book turned into a really sad commentary about how ill prepared the author was to man a borrowed yacht by herself. She admits freely that she lied about her boating experience to the boat’s captain. After bad weather forces her to abandon the boat, which becomes lost at sea for several months, she illegally stays on the island, which eventually costs one of the researchers his job. There’s also a lot of discussion in this book about bird poop, which to be honest…..just doesn’t interest me in the slightest.

Still, if you can get past her arrogance and the disappointing ending…..it’s a fun little read. I enjoyed it, although it will give me nightmares for days.