Transcript of Episode 4
Campbell Island
The world below him glows blue-green through the dive mask. In tranquil immersion, sea grasses sway, side to side. Gliding gently over, the seafloor slides by, far below the reach of dangling arms. He listens for the sound of whale song. But there’s only the steady burble of snorkel breaths.
Lifting, rising above the surface now. A rush of senses. Breathing cold, clear air. The chilling breeze on wet skin. Treading water. Seabirds cry. Sunlight dazzling, almost blinding.
From behind a sudden enormous impact, crushing into the shoulder. It must be a bull sea lion. A tonne of weight. What else could hit with such force?
Propelled under. Gasping through gushing water and flooding bubbles. Then rising again, unmasked.
Blink, blink.
What is it? Turning, gazing into a round porthole, glassy black.
Not a sea lion. A fishes’ eye.
I must be dreaming, It can’t be a shark… there are no sharks here.
April 25th 1992 was an exceptionally mild and pleasant day on Campbell Island, an outlying territory of New Zealand. The clouds that usually covered its mountainous peaks were for once absent, revealing a brilliant blue morning sky. For most of the year the subantarctic island would be pounded by strong gales and near constant drizzle, averaging only an hour’s sunshine a day for much of the year. Since 1958, a meteorological base had been operating at Beeman Cove, where recruits would serve a 12 month stint. Almost 700 kilometres south of New Zealand’s South Island, the isolated posting was not for the faint hearted. The harsh climate and the psychological sense of remoteness could be oppressive and lonely. But for the island’s sole inhabitants in Spring 1992, it was the experience of a lifetime. Mike Fraser was the team leader. Deeply passionate about his role and the biodiversity of the island, Mike was a quietly commanding and reassuring presence, admired by colleagues. His second-in-command meteorologist Linda Danen worked alongside him, recording three hourly weather reports, taking atmospheric readings and measuring the earth’s magnetic field. They were assisted by electronic technician, Robin Humphrey, and mechanic, Gus McAllister. Jacinda Amey, made up their fifth member, sent by the Department of Conservation to study the island’s rare yellow-eyed penguins and carry out a census on their numbers.
Over the five and a half months at Beeman Cove, the group had grown incredibly close, the sense of shared purpose and the distance from civilisation binding them together. On that Friday morning they decided to take advantage of the unusually gentle weather conditions, rewarding themselves with the afternoon off to go snorkelling. They made the hour and a half trek to Middle Bay on the Western side of the island with a soft, cool breeze on their faces. It was rare to have time off together to enjoy the outdoors and they were excited to explore the beach, where sea lions would often relax on the rocky shore. Changing into snorkelling gear, wetsuits were essential, the water temperature had been clocked at a frigid 7 degrees Celsius. On arriving, the team found there wasn’t any large wildlife to be seen in the bay that afternoon. Nonetheless, in the coming days they hoped to dive from that beach with the southern right whales that once a year visited the island to breed. Swimming out tentatively in their neoprene suits, and snorkelling gear, they noticed it got deeper sooner than expected, falling to a sudden drop-off about 20 metres from shore. For a bit of fun, they decided to dive all the way down to bottom. Robin was the first to attempt it. Twenty seconds later he emerged, challenging the others to touch the sandy seafloor too. One after another they did so, holding their breath as they descended. After about twenty minutes, Mike Fraser decided to explore the bay a bit more in preparation for the coming of the migratory whales. Ducking under and with a few kicks of his flippers, he pushed out past his friends.
When Mike burst up to the surface a few minutes later he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He was staring sidelong into the eye of a 4 metre great white shark. He felt the impulse to cry out, a plea, or a warning, but the five letter word never sounded, his voice silenced in a burst of bubbles as he was pulled back below the surface between its jaws. When he re-emerged, the shark’s teeth were clasped around his right arm, so wide that they encircled it from just below the shoulder right down past his hand. Facing him, its head was lifted out of the water inches from his own, eye to eye. The shark was trying to saw through his right arm, jerking its head roughly from side to side. Unable to get free, Mike’s fight response ignited and he swung around to use his free legs to strike back, kicking and kneeing the huge white underbelly.
Closer to shore the team heard a yell and looked out to see their leader thrashing around with something at the surface of the water, obscured by white spray. When for a moment the splashing died down, they glimpsed a horrible sight- Mike’s not insubstantial frame, outlined by the pointed nose of a huge shark that dwarfed him as it shook his body like a rag doll. ‘Even the bravest are frightened by sudden terrors’, and faced with this deathly scene, Linda, Gus and Robin instinctively turned and raced for shore, feeling there was nothing they could do to save Mike. ‘I mean you don’t attempt to drag someone away from a shark’, Robin Humphreys recalled.
In fact, one thing that differentiates human beings from most species the white shark encounters, is that they occasionally, against the odds, come to the rescue of one another. Though great whites generally don’t want to eat humans, it would be false to say that they never do. While they avoid hunting human beings, the fact that solo divers are more often consumed than those with buddies or surfers and swimmers, suggests that the intervention of an exceptionally brave person may prevent an initial bite turning into something much, much worse.
Jacinda Amey didn’t budge, transfixed but standing her ground against the horror in front of her, as her colleagues retreated. She knew it probably would’ve been sensible to follow but she couldn’t leave Mike to that awful fate, feeling acutely his pain and terror, as he struggled and screamed. Suddenly there was silence and Mike was left floating on the water. As he edged towards shore with slow, tired kicks, Jacinda swam out to his side. Keeping Mike afloat, she kicked in tandem with him, unaware of where the shark was, not knowing if it would come back. The other team members waved them to a rocky outcrop, watching in anguish as they drifted closer and closer. With great relief they pulled the pair onto the rocks, laying Mike on his back. He was gasping for air and they tried not to linger on his obvious injuries as Linda attended to him. She’d taken First-Aid courses in preparation for her role on Campbell Island but had never dealt with anything more than cuts and scratches and this was a whole different story. Jacinda tried to keep Mike from looking at his missing arm but he turned to her and whispered ‘I’ve seen it. I know it’s gone’, an air of stoic acceptance in his voice surprising her. He’d felt the wrench as it severed just below the elbow and he managed to roll away. Wisely, in the moments after amputation, he’d deliberately eased his kicking motion in order to slow the pumping of arterial blood from the open wound.
On the rocks Robin grabbed the strap from the dive mask and made a cleverly improvised tourniquet, tying it around the stump to stem the flow. Yet the situation was looking dire- with such a serious injury to deal with, they were ill equipped, and the remoteness of the island’s location suddenly hit home. Not even a small plane could find a strip of suitable ground to land. To get off the island would take a 36 hour boat journey and Mike just didn’t have that much time. Still, they needed to at least try keep him alive as long as possible. They had to do everything they could. Gus took off running the 8km trail back to their base at Beeman Cove to radio for help. Linda also ran to a nearby supply hut and grabbed a first aid kit stored inside. Thinking ahead, she knew she’d have to replace the tourniquet with bandages soon for fear of losing even more of Mike’s arm. To try preserve the severely lacerated limb, Linda made a splint for support out of a spare scuba tube. After hoisting him onto a stretcher they began an arduous uphill journey from the bay towards the hut. In H. David Baldridge’s seminal work on shark attacks, he notes how many victims of severe amputation by shark bite reported feeling no pain during the initial attack itself. A flood of endorphins can engulf the body helping to numb the trauma. Unfortunately, as they fade away, a delayed pain sets in. As Robin, Jacinda and Linda tried to carry Mike, every bump on the uneven terrain was causing him agony, his exposed nerves sensitive to the slightest movement. After a few hundreds metres, on reaching level ground, they were forced to give up. Rather than bring Mike to the shelter, they realised they’d have to bring the shelter to him. Hauling back supplies, they erected a tent around the shivering patient, gingerly pulling him into a sleeping bag and wrapping him up in as many warm coverings as they could get their hands on. Darkness was already closing in and the temperatures were dropping towards zero. They needed to get Mike’s body heat up if he were to have any chance of lasting the night.
Meanwhile, Gus had reached Base Camp at Beeman Cove, making the journey in under 45 minutes. Panting, he dialled the emergency number. The voice on the other end of the line told him that the written emergency rescue plan for Campbell Island was a 700km helicopter lift to the nearest hospital. The protocol had surely been set down with the likelihood it would never be needed. Such a helicopter journey had never been attempted before in NZ, and perhaps even worldwide. On a wing and a prayer, Gus realised it was their only shot at saving Mike and made the call.
Coming off a 12 hour shift at Taupo, on New Zealand’s North Island, pilot John Funnell got a call telling him there’d been a shark attack off Campbell Island, and it was serious. Without hesitation, he started putting a plan for the risky mission in motion. Grant Biel agreed straight away to be his co-pilot and paramedic Pat Wynne joined them on board. An unprecedented flight lay ahead of them- 1060 km to the south, then 685km over the ocean. Engineers would need to make rapid modifications to ensure they would stay in the air that long. Their flightpath would be further complicated by the fact GPS would be down for scheduled maintenance for much of that time. Co-pilot Grant Biel would have to rely on old school methods to get them on the right course, estimating speed and wind speeds and setting a course. The weather was on their side though, with perfect flying conditions. Yet, if the GPS didn’t come back online in time they’d have to abandon the final leg of their journey, leaving Mike Fraser for dead. Back in the tent on Campbell Island, the team tried to ease Mike’s distress with the few painkillers and antibiotics they had at hand, all the while attempting to keep him awake and stop him slipping away.
Also responding to Gus McAllister’s call for help, the Tangaroa, a government fisheries research ship three hours away, had headed full steam to the scene of the emergency. Knowing Mike’s survival depended on an air rescue, they anchored off Northwest Bay to offer whatever support they could, in anticipation of John Funnell’s arrival from the skies.
Back on board the Aerospatiale Squirrel, despite Grant Biel having had to refuel mid-air, the flight team were making good time. Yet squashed in the back and forced to sit for hours on his hunkers, Pat Wynne was beginning to get a nagging worry the victim may be dead on arrival. His spirits were lifted when the GPS came back online just in time and the flight team honed in on their target. Their elation was to be short lived. The habitual cloud cover over Campbell Island had returned and they couldn’t see the island at all. In his autobiography Rescue Pilot, John Funnell remembered the massive sense of frustration they felt at that moment. Would they have to abort the mission at this late stage? They were struggling to see any alternative. Finally, the Tangaroa’s moment had arrived and the captain over the radio told Funnell to look out for the source of bright lights. From the ship anchored in the bay, rockets burst into the night sky, illuminating a position for landing.
A full 15 hours on from Mike Fraser feeling that first crash into his shoulder, the sight of Pat Wynne ducking into the tent offered a glimmer of hope. But the appearance of Mike, almost blue in colour and his skin waxy, deflated the veteran paramedic. Worn out by frequent vomiting, it was discovered that Mike had accidentally been given double the recommended dose of the painkiller pethidine in attempts to lessen his suffering. From his colour Wynne could tell he was on the verge of kidney failure and couldn’t be taken off the island. Not yet. ‘I need three hours’, he told the pilots, and they decided to airlift the meteorologist from the rocky outcrop, straight across the island to Beeman Cove. Once set up inside the ad hoc emergency room there, treatment began. Mike’s kidney’s were so weak that it was hard to even take his blood pressure reading. In response, Wynne found a vein in the patient’s right ankle and with a hypodermic needle full of lifesaving fluids, before setting up a drip to sustain him. Then the medic could undertook surgery to save Mike’s mangled left arm. On removing the wetsuit and snorkel splint, the arm fell apart like a bag of raw meat. Pat Wynne grimly persisted, doing his best to patch up the damage the rows of thumb sized teeth had done to the flesh. Once Mike had stabilised, the rescue team saw a window of opportunity to get him to hospital. Having lost half his blood, his condition was still precarious as they took off from Beeman Cove, speeding over the ocean towards Invercargill hospital 720 kilometres away.
‘It can’t be a shark. There are no sharks here.’ Mike Fraser’s reaction resonated with most people on learning of his near death encounter off Campbell Island. For most, sharks are associated with warmer or at least temperate waters and the global maps of shark bites at least, broadly corresponds to this notion. While it may be true that sharks that can be dangerous to humans are more common in such regions, certain species have the ability to adapt to colder waters. Those in the Lamnidae family- the porbeagle, the shortfin and the longfin mako, the salmon shark and, most prominently, the great white shark, have a special advantage. Being endothermic they can regulate their body temperature. They achieve this feat by producing heat, their powerful muscles contracting and warming up surrounding blood, which they then circulate around their bodies. It’s no coincidence that lamnidae sharks are known for rapid bursts of acceleration and power. This trick allows a great white to keep their body temperature 10 to 15 degrees Celsius warmer than the sea it inhabits and permits it license to roam. In recent decades satellite tagging of white sharks has discovered that they travel much further than was previously known. Or as marine scientist Clint Duffy puts it in National Geographic New Zealand, ‘to locations where no one is there to observe them’. Ecologist Bruce Wright’s decades of research into the presence of white sharks in Alaska offers more insights. Sightings of large great whites hunting far north in The Bering Sea, and the distinctive signs of their predation on the bodies of prey in the region, point to wide distribution. Wright believes that the only thing stopping white sharks regularly visiting colder waters is food supply. Metabolising rapidly in colder waters takes a lot of energy and it's only the promise of calorific marine mammals like elephants seals that makes the effort worthwhile for these roving predators. Still, Mike Fraser’s run in off Campbell Island remains in both a literal and figurative sense an isolated incident, an outlier in the history books as both the coldest and the most southerly shark attack on record.
Although Mike’s condition was still critical on arriving at Invercargill Hospital, he went on to make a strong recovery. ‘He’s not the sort of guy you can keep down’, Jacinda Amey told the TV show Rescue 911, as her colleague underwent rehabilitation. In time his left arm regained almost full use, except for the ring and little fingers, and ever advancing prosthetics have given him some of the functions of a right arm. Always reflective and circumspect about his misfortune, Mike never held a grudge towards sharks over what had happened. Though that still frame of the great white, eyeball to eyeball, remained vivid in his mind’s eye years after, he viewed the creatures with great respect and admiration. ‘They’re just doing what they do’ he contended in National Geographic: New Zealand, feeling that he was just unlucky that they had happened to cross paths on that day.
In the aftermath, Jacinda received a lot of plaudits for her decisive action in bringing her team leader ashore. Embarrassed by all the focus on her, she insisted it was a team effort, a sentiment Mike echoed saying ‘I owe so much to all of them, not just one of them’. That incredible collective rescue meant that Mike survived against the odds. Mike Fraser’s fondness for Campbell Island and its rugged beauty survived the shark encounter too, and he returned for a final stint at Beeman Cove in 1994-95. A fascination with white sharks grew, and he spent hours reading through the published diaries of the shepherds and whalers who had once populated Campbell Island, searching for any trace of these elusive creatures. Known to New Zealanders as the white pointer, Mike found accounts of their presence, feeding on whale carcasses, which offered evidence of their long history in the local ecosystem.
The beginning of Campbell Island’s human settlement had been marked by a tragic accident. In 1810, the year of the first landing, its discoverer, Captain Frederick Hasselborough was sailing in Perseverance Harbour when disaster struck. At the mouth of the Harbour, a sudden wind capsized his small boat and Hasselborough, weighed down by heavy clothing, was drowned, along with two others- a young lady named Elizabeth, and a 12 year old boy from Sydney named George. Almost two centuries later, Mike Fraser’s accident in Middle Bay would signal the end of the era of habitation on Campbell Island. By 1995 the weather station had become fully automated and Beeman Cove was abandoned, its dozen or so boarded up shelters remaining as a ghostly museum exhibition. The whalers and shepherds are long gone as are the sheep, cattle and rats they brought with them. Nowadays, apart from the visit of an odd scientific or tourist group, Campbell Island, or Motu Ihupuku, to give it its dual Maori name, has been largely reclaimed by nature and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And perhaps, just off its coast, following the scent of the southern right whales, the sea lions and the yellow eyed penguins, an occasional great white shark passes, cruising silently and majestically, through the cool waters of the South Pacific.