Shot of self-defense
(as previously published in The Orange County Register)

Stewart Graham's pin-point accuracy with a spear gun enabled him to avoid becoming shark bait

September 9, 1999

By DAVE STREGE
The Orange County Register

The mako shark was in attack mode. Pectoral fins were down. Mouth was open wide. The beast was charging its next meal.

On the menu of this 426-pound shark was Stewart Graham, an experienced free-dive spearfisherman. He was hunting for yellowtail when suddenly he became the hunted.

Graham, 39, of Glendale was competing in the San Diego Blue Water Meet two Saturdays ago when he knocked on death's door near the southern Coronado Island off Mexico.

Around noon, he was 30 feet under when the shark first appeared. Graham wasn't sure, but he thought it might be a great white. He didn't care to stick around to find out.

Whatever it was, it was big and it circled Graham from 20 feet away.

"I said to myself, 'Let's just get out of the water and avoid confrontation," he recalled.

"I didn't make any erratic movements. I just surfaced and tried to keep a visual on the guy, but I lost him. When I surfaced to tell Danny, I had to lift my face out of the water. I said, 'Danny, come over, there's a pretty good-sized shark over here."'

Danny Oliver, 39, of Solana Beach was 50 feet away in his 18-foot skiff with his brother Dave Oliver, 45, of Huntington Beach and Dave's son, Kyle, 13, of Irvine.

The water was frigid and the spearfishing slow, so none of the others had been eager to join Graham in the water. Danny was getting ready to, however. He was gearing up when he heard his friend beckon him.

"I put my snorkel and mask back on and put my face underwater to get a visual," Graham continued. "I saw him coming up at 4 o'clock."

Graham, using the biggest model spear gun he owned, was pointing it at 12 o'clock. Turning the 5 1/2-foot-long gun to 4 o'clock underwater would take a pretty good effort, and he had to act quickly.

"So I turned my body," he said. "All I saw was a huge mouth open, coming at me with very erratic movement.

"Everything happened so fast. I think everything was pure adrenaline. I'm so fascinated with sharks, I watch every Shark Week on Discovery Channel. When I saw those big teeth, it just reminded me of all the surfers that have been chewed up by great whites."

To avoid becoming mincemeat, Graham knew he would have to pull the trigger. He dared not poke at it to shoo it away, as he has done with blue sharks. Doing so meant risking the loss of his gun and only defense.

"So I said, 'I'm just going to wait until I get a decent shot and shoot. If he turns right there, good. I may have enough time to get up into the boat. If not, I'm just going to shoot.' "

The shark was 15-feet away and closing fast, moving unevenly side to side. Graham aimed at the open mouth and shot.

The fish turned its head. The spear penetrated the first gill. It continued to its stomach.

"That stopped him cold," Graham said. "I hit him in such a vital spot."

A one-in-a-million shot, Danny would call it.

Joseph Melluso, who would later fillet the fish, said the spear ripped open the gills so it couldn't breathe and struck an inch above the third vertebra.

"That's why it died so fast," Melluso said.

Graham didn't wait to see if he had killed the shark or not. He quickly released the leader from the gun and quickly got out of the water.

The boat, its occupants unaware of what was happening underwater, pulled alongside Graham. He climbed to safety and explained how he was forced to shoot the shark.

"I'll tell you, I was (angry)," Danny said. "I thought to myself, 'why would you shoot a shark?' "

The last thing Graham wanted to do was kill a shark. Like Danny, Graham is a geologist who understands the important role sharks play in the food chain. This was strictly self-defense.

"This guy was big enough to take the leg or break me in half," Graham said. "I'm extremely lucky. I played my only card."

Danny realized this once they retrieved the float from the line attached to the shark and pulled the mostly paralyzed brute to the boat.

"Straight up out of the water was that jaw and teeth and it was wide open and I just said, 'Holy (expletive),' " Danny recalled. " 'Stewart, I had no idea what you had.' "

Neither did Dave. He said they weren't thinking much about it until seeing the jaws. He thought how fortunate it was that he, Kyle and Danny had remained in the boat.

"Danny and I both said we were glad it was Stewart, the best shot of the bunch," Dave said.

The group struggled with the still-kicking shark for an hour before tying a rope around its tail and starting back to Shelter Island. A 45-minute trip took three hours with the huge shark dragging behind.

What kind of shark, none of them knew.

Skip Hellen, the president of the International Underwater Spearfishing Association, competed that day and was the first to identify the 9 1/2-foot shark as being a mako, which was weighed at the San Diego Marlin Club.

Hellen of Huntington Beach said he doesn't know of anyone who has speared a bigger shark. It could very well be a world record if sharks qualified under the IUSA.

To discourage the take of sharks, IUSA doesn't recognize them for records. Graham did submit it to the Department of Fish and Game. The spearfishing mako record is open, so Graham's fish is a pending state record.

"I'm sorry it happened," said Hellen, sharing Graham's feelings on the matter. "It's a shame to see something like that taken from the ocean, but I would not question his motives. He probably did what he had to do.

"If he hadn't have seen that shark, we may have had a much more terrible story to report."

That possibility wasn't lost on Graham. When he got home at midnight, he woke up his wife, Veronica, who was sleeping with their 2-year-old daughter and baby boy.

"My knees almost buckled," he said. "That's exactly the moment that reality sunk it."

Graham knew how close he was to never seeing his wife and kids again. He cried.

The irony is what his wife told Graham before he left for the spearfishing tournament.

"Be careful," she said. "I've heard on the news there are some sharks around."