In a panic, Debbie kicked to the surface and screamed hysterically for help. Local dive boats and rescue crews immediately set out through the now bloodied water in hope that Ford might, miraculously, still be alive. Hours later, they had grisly proof he wasn't. Amazingly, using mackerel as bait, fishermen Ron Boggis and Terry Bertoli managed to hook the beast. During a fierce 1½-hour battle, the shark disgorged Ford's torso. Then it "bit straight through the line," says Boggis, and swam away, bleeding from the struggle.
News of the June 9 death of Ford, 31—a mechanical engineering technician at the University of Sydney—stunned Australia, which was still reeling from another shark attack four days earlier. Therese "Terry" Cartwright, 34, a nurse-midwife and mother of five, including quadruplets, had been snatched by a great white while scuba diving off the island of Tasmania. For those with long memories, the deaths were an eerie reminder of 1982, when great whites also struck twice within a week—at Byron Bay and off Tasmania.
Although Australian beaches remained open, there were, predictably, calls to hunt sharks, which scientists criticized as misguided. "I don't understand this paranoia about shark attacks," said biologist John Stevens. "People don't go around blowing up vehicles if there is a car accident."
Still, shark "accidents" may be on the rise globally, scientists say, for possible reasons varying according to location and shark species. Among them are heavy commercial fishing, driving sharks into shallower waters in search of food, as well as proliferation near the shore of protected species—and favorite prey—like seals and sea turtles. Meanwhile, many sharks' traditional offshore hunting grounds are being invaded by thrill-seeking sports enthusiasts. Last year Hawaii recorded four encounters, two of them fatal. In November a great white ripped open a kayak near San Francisco, leaving its occupant shaken but unhurt. And that same month, Southern California reported its first attack since 1989 when a surfer at San Onofre was bitten by a 6-foot mako.
However, scientists say there's no cause for Jaws-style panic. According to experts, sharks do not seek out human targets but strike only when they mistake them for tempting morsels such as seals. (Humans in wetsuits like the ones the Fords and Terry Cartwright were wearing, or paddling small V-tailed surfboards, bear a striking resemblance to swimming seals.) Each year sharks kill an average of only five to 10 people worldwide—far fewer than the number who die from bee stings, dog bites or lightning.
But those odds offer no comfort to Debbie Ford, 29, a purchasing officer at Apple Computer Australia, who had met her adventurous husband three years ago. "They were as good a couple as you can imagine," says Greg Elder, a diving buddy and close friend of the pair. "They complemented each other, they liked to do things together, they were both very outgoing."
Ian Cartwright, Terry's widower, is trying to hide his grief for the sake of the couple's children: 6-year-old quads James, Luke, Sarah and Thomas and 16-month-old Paul. "I can't afford the luxury of breaking down when they're around," Cartwright said days after his wife's death. "It turns their world upside down."
Ironically, much of Terry and Ian's life had been entwined with their love of the sea. English by birth, the pair first met back in Herne Bay, on the coast of Kent, where Terry's lather, a champion angler, ran a fishing-tackle shop. Married in 1977, the Cartwrights eventually moved to Tonga, then to Tasmania, as Ian pursued a career in fisheries. Last year he became a director at the Australian Maritime College in Beauty Point. Tasmania: it was with a dozen colleagues and their kids that the Cartwrights set off that fateful Saturday morning.
The Cartwright quadruplets took turns at the wheel as the former shrimp trawler being used for the outing cruised through calm water toward Tenth Island, four miles oil the Tasmanian coast. The area has a large fur seal population, and there was casual discussion about the possibility of encountering sharks attracted to the seals. "The risk seemed fairly remote," says Tony Chamberlain, a member of the dive party. Terry, who hadn't been diving since Paul's birth, was eager to go down with the first threesome over the side.
Tragedy struck minutes later. As Terry's dive partners watched helplessly below, a 12-foot great white charged her. "She was silhouetted against the surface, and the shark was sort of butting and shaking her," says Jo Osborne, one of the divers. "I could see it had the whole of her fin sticking out of its mouth. By the way it was holding the fin, I knew it had more." With a flick of its tail, the shark turned and was gone—with Terry in its jaws. That afternoon a launch recovered a severed human leg with a yellow driving fin still attached.
But that's not the way relatives and friends want to remember Terry, or John ford. "We dreamed dreams, dreamed up adventures together," says John's buddy Greg Elder. "Thai's what I liked about him." And if some of those adventures had risks, well, it was a gamble Terry and John were clearly willing to make. "We often talked about the dangers [of scuba diving]," says Ford's brother Michael. "But John always said he could get hit by a car tomorrow." Terry's brother Philip Edwards strikes a similarly philosophical note. "If we didn't do the things we wanted to do, we would not even walk out the door," he says. "Life is for living."
PAM LAMBERT
BEN HOLGATE in Launceston, DENNIS PASSA and ALISON PEARL in Byron Bay, ELIZABETH GLEICK, ANDREA ANDERSON-RIBADENEIRA and SIMON ROBINSON in Sydney and DEBBIE COOK in London
- Contributors:
- Ben Holgate,
- Dennis Passa,
- Alison Pearl,
- Elizabeth Gleick,
- Andrea Anderson-Ribadeneira,
- Simon Robinson,
- Debbie Cook.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
