Samoa Guide, 12. Sharks

So, yes indeed we have sharks in our shoreline waters, but most are not of serious concern. Yet, someplace deep in our brain yells Danger! whenever we see one. But it is still very exciting to see a shark swim by. Our heart rate jumps, but then the shark is quickly gone, and our only thought is wow, did you see that?

The sharks (malie) living in our nearshore waters are generally not dangerous to swimmers or divers. The most commonly seen species are the blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) and the whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus). These are not large sharks, usually about 4-5 feet in length, although everyone swears that the one they saw was bigger. They feed on fish and shellfish.

The blacktip is easily frightened away, but on rare occasions small blacktips will sometimes startle a person by swimming directly at them. They look like a little torpedo coming straight at you, but other than your brief panic attack, no harm is done. Another quirk of the adult blacktip is that, at night, it may charge at a diver's flashlight if the light shines on them for too long.

Sightings of more dangerous sharks in our nearshore waters are rare, but over the years, a few tiger sharks have been seen or caught around Tutuila. Also, hammerhead sharks are known to swim into Pago Pago Harbor, where some give birth to young and others are perhaps attracted there by the cannery wastes. The large but non-dangerous whale shark has also seen near Taema Bank and a juvenile whale shark (4.1 m total length) washed up
on Aunu’u island in 1989.

The whitetip has an unusual habit of resting occasionally on the seafloor during the daytime. These two shark species are usually not aggressive but they may swim close by to see who's in their area. But both are attracted to wounded and bleeding fish, which accounts for several shark encounters with divers who had tied speared fish around their waists. Need it be suggested that this is not a smart thing to do?

We are fortunate not to have much of a “shark problem” in American Samoa. Based on conversations with long-time residents here, it appears that there have been very few shark attacks in the Territory and probably no fatalities here in the past 30 years. The few injuries that have occurred were usually related to fishing activities, and records from the hospital's Emergency Medical Services concur with this. EMS has responded to only one or two shark incidents in recent memory – one was a somewhat humorous account of two fishermen trying to land a shark in their boat. The first fisherman brought the shark up to the side of the boat so that his partner could club it, but his partner missed. The shark then reared up and bit the first fisherman, who then got mad and clubbed his partner for missing the shark.