Surfing
Surfing
Meet the shark attack survivor turned crusader
Turning the other cheek is easier said than done, but Mike Coots is far from normal.
“A lot of people think I’m an idiot,” says Mike Coots, when pressed on the common reaction to hearing he’s a crusader for the conservation of sharks. Mike, y’see, is missing his right leg from mid-thigh, the result of a tiger shark taking a bite at his home beach in Kauai in 1997. At the time, Mike was an up-and-coming bodyboarder and had little awareness of his aggressor. “We’d see sharks when we were diving and freak out and get goose bumps and stuff, but that was pretty much the extent of it. I always thought if ever I ran into trouble with a shark it would be when I was spear fishing, never when I was surfing. I totally understand people thinking I should be anti-shark, but if you surf or dive I think it makes more sense, you understand the science behind it.”
Mike’s sympathy towards his aggressor may seem strange to some, but not to the man himself. “It’s kind of a no-brainer. If you have the opportunity to raise awareness about a species on the brink of extinction then you should probably make the most of it and see if you can’t create something good out of something bad.”
Mike Coots
© Mike Coots
The “good” Mike hopes to create is the prohibition of shark finning, the controversial practice that sees the animals caught solely for their fins. “In China, shark-fin soup is a delicacy,” says Mike, “like steak or lobster in America or Australia. It has only been popular for a couple of hundred years and offers little nutritional value, but has become a status symbol and is driving the fin trade. Because sharks are apex predators the rest of the flesh is full of mercury and basically inedible. Longline fishermen catch sharks, cut their fins off, dump the body back into the water, and the shark swims around for a couple of days, rudderless basically, dying a slow death. If we can create more awareness of this in Asia then hopefully the demand will drop, and the killing will stop. The health of our oceans is far more important than a bowl of soup, but it has to be the mindset that changes, not the laws." A protectionist stance like Mike’s isn’t going to be universal among those who’ve suffered at the jaws of the ocean’s apex predator, and many victims of shark attacks are among the most vocal advocates of their hunting. “I can absolutely sympathise with victims who feel the opposite to me and want to see sharks destroyed,” he says. “Everyone has different ways of reacting to trauma, but for me sharks are a critical part of our marine eco-system and the good far outweighs the bad. Everyone sees humpback whales and sea otters and thinks they’re important, but because of what sharks do that hurts humans they’re not seen in the same way.” Never a particularly environmentally conscious person before the attack, Mike has undergone a radical education in the 18 years that have passed since that fateful day. “I’ve been contacted by all sorts of different environmental groups and really learnt the science behind it all. You can’t argue that with sharks being top of the food chain they play a huge role in the make-up and diversity of sealife below, and if you remove them the network underneath might start to crumble.”
It wasn’t just Mike’s outlook on the ocean that saw change. “Well, yeah, I bodyboarded before the attack,” he laughs. “I didn’t start surfing until afterwards, which is funny ’cos I don’t know how my foot feels on a tailpad, or leaning into a turn. The surf media always try to make out as if it was some kind of defiant move to come back a standup, but the truth is I moved to Santa Barbara to go to photo school and the waves there are pointbreaks that suck for bodyboarding. So, I took a longboard out and as time went on I got on smaller boards.”
Andy Irons at home in Kauai
© Mike Coots
Photography came to Mike as a form of staving off boredom, but it has since led him to much more, including a friendship with one of surfing’s greatest. “After being out of the water for so long my friends gave me a camera so I could still be down the beach,” Mike explains. “I was trying to find a job and the idea of getting paid to shoot surfing really appealed. A short time later I enrolled at photo school. I was really fortunate. It’s generally taboo to shoot around Kauai, but I was lucky enough to build great, trusting relationships with some of the best surfers in the world, and there just happened to be an incredible crop of talent coming through at the time." "Andy Irons was easily the most exciting surfer I’ve ever photographed. Just going to the beach with him you’d feel like something crazy could happen at any time. Andy had this excitement that made it feel like anything was possible, that any wave he took off on could lead to a cover shot. And he always asked lots of questions about what I was up to in conversation, which was cool, he took a genuine interest with where I was coming from, and was really supportive of it all. Really nice, lasting memories to have.”
Mike isn’t Kauai’s only shark victim, nor will he be the last, and he’s using his experience to try and help out people who’ve undergone similar trauma. “Bethany Hamilton has been a close family friend her whole life, and now I’m a board member on her foundation, Friends of Bethany. We help handicapped kids and people who lose limbs in traumatic circumstances. The day she got bitten her brother called me in tears, saying he thought she was going to die and asking if I could meet them at the hospital. I jumped in my car and raced to the family’s side. When she came to I was the first person she saw, and I’ll never forget that look. It was a surreal feeling, but I knew she was going to be OK.
"I had a lot of questions when I first lost my limb, and I know all new amputees do, so I always try to help them find a sense of peace, and let them know that losing a limb isn’t the end of the world, you can still do anything an able-bodied person can do.”
As is the way with these things, Mike has had to remain philosophical. “Stuff happens to everybody,” he smiles, “it’s just how we react to it that determines who we are. I don’t really regret paddling out that day, or getting bitten by a shark and losing a limb. It’s brought me a lot of opportunities and adventures, new relationships with people I would never have met otherwise. In a way I feel fortunate.”
