Book Review: Emperors of the Deep by William McKeever
My second trip to the Barnes & Noble science section was not in vain since I bought a fascinating book: Emperors of the Deep by William McKeever. This work seeks to open eyes to the wonder of sharks, to dispel extremely harmful misconceptions about them, and reveal the dangers we court by regarding them as fodder for soup and game-fishing only. A few pages into it, I knew I’d be writing a second review on it.
The first half of the book is exciting and God-glorifying like Monarchs of the Sea was. I’ve read a few books about sharks already, but this book helped keep me up to date. For instance, it’s now believed that great white sharks very possibly hunt giant squid to explain why they would dive to depths deeper than a nuclear submarine can go. In a comparison I never would have thought of, they can grow as long and heavy as giraffes. In another inspired analogy, McKeever notes that shark senses for motion and electricity rival humans’ most precise scientific instruments. McKeever is good at expressing facts for us land-lubbers in ways we are familiar with, like the top speed of a sailfish being the speed limit of the New Jersey Turnpike or how makos jump vastly better than Michael Jordan. As with Monarchs, the author’s use of the term, “evolution,” was a signal to prepare to glorify God for another brilliant flash of His infinite creative wisdom.
McKeever’s writing is very evocative, from the way he describes the scenery of the places he travels to the way he brings to life the experts and activists he interviews. In this way, his personable little sketches of the experts he’s interviewing and their surroundings reminds me of Lee Strobel’s journalist style in “The Case for” series, though whether McKeever would appreciate the comparison I don’t know. McKeever provides a stirring reconstruction of a mako’s hunt for a sea lion. However, just as he brings people and places to life with his writing style, he also can make you sick with his depictions of the violence and brutality of a shark-fishing tournament. He makes the pointed observation that going after the biggest, strongest specimens eliminates the ones that nature intended should be reproducing.
The book debunks several myths surrounding these animals. Consumption of shark cartilage does not prevent cancer (not least because sharks themselves do get cancer), and catch-and-release very often does irreparable harm to sharks- it can easily kill them. To disprove the “Jaws” narrative of sharks “just swimming, eating, and making little sharks,” McKeever details two interesting studies of lemon and Port Jackson sharks forming social bonds, learning from one another, and displaying personalities. He also spends a couple of pages discussing that, in addition to being destructive to key species in the ecosystem who have much less chance of coming back due to their reproductive designs, shark-fin soup isn’t even a healthy food. It has neurotoxins that may bring on dementia and has dangerous levels of mercury.
Regarding shark attacks, he has the obligatory list of animals more dangerous than sharks (bees, deer, even dogs), but I’d like to see someone point out that fellow humans are vastly more of a threat to people than sharks. He astutely points out that sharks clearly do not want to eat humans since they rarely, so to speak, “finish the job” like a pack of wolves or pride of lions on a carcass they’ve brought down. He also says that if sharks truly wanted to eat humans, they would have caused a lot more fatalities than they have so far in the entire history of record keeping. I do notice, however, that he remains silent about the Indianapolis or other survivors of shipwreck being attacked by sharks at sea.
The second half of the book is informative but extremely somber as McKeever spells out the abuses both humans and sharks undergo at sea. He frighteningly compares the decimation of cod in the Grand Banks and all the damage done by it to the rate at which sharks, which reproduce at less than 1/50,000th the rate of cod, are being killed. His chapter on human trafficking on fishing vessels was enough to make me never want to eat tuna again. For the sake of cheap tuna, young men are often lured from their homes and stuck aboard fishing vessels for months at a time as slave labor in grueling 18-hour days with routine physical maltreatment. While at sea, the crews of these vessels also haul up sharks on their “catch-all” long-lines, chop off their fins, and dump them unceremoniously back into the ocean to drown. McKeever’s book is a rallying cry for activism to save an unjustly maligned group of species whom we will certainly miss if we exterminate them. He brilliantly outlines how sharks are beneficial, even downright crucial, to vital systems like coral reefs and seagrass beds that in turn are crucial to the entire world.
What I take away from the book most is that we have to be careful with art. The novel and movie Jaws are powerful works of art, and I cannot deny the artistic skill that went into the movie at least (I haven’t read the book all the way through). Thanks to works like these, though, people all over the world think that the ocean will be safer if we eliminate sharks since all they do is try to devour humans alive. Books like McKeever’s are a healthy corrective against such false notions, but it’s a steeply uphill battle since, to rework an old saying, “a movie is worth a hundred thousand words.” Peter Benchley himself tried to undo the damage he did with his book in later years, but he found himself unable to reverse what he started. As happened with the case of wolves in the early 20th century, humans are gradually learning that eliminating apex predators who frighten us does not lead to paradisical conditions in nature. God made them for a specific purpose, and until we get a new Heaven and a new Earth where there is no more pain or suffering, we need the predators to fulfill God’s wise design for them.