Shark attacks remain a real but unlikely danger for humans entering the water. However, this does not mean that people should ignore the chance of an attack by swimming outside the protection of the patrolled beaches. There is a much higher risk of drowning while swimming than from being killed by a shark. The best prevention is to use common sense. Awareness of what may invite or provoke an attack will assist in deciding where to go and what to do in the water. These are some safety guidelines:

• Do not swim, dive or surf in areas where dangerous sharks are known to frequent.

• Always swim, dive or surf with other people at patrolled beaches.

• Do not swim while bleeding or menstruating heavily.

• Do not swim in dirty or murky water.

• Avoid swimming well offshore, near deep channels, at river mouths or along drop-offs to deeper water.

• Do not swim where there are large schools of fish.

• Do not splash a lot as it attracts sharks.

• Do not swim with pets and domestic animals (erratic splashing attracts sharks).

• Look carefully before jumping into the water from a boat or wharf.

• If possible do not swim at dusk, dawn or at night when sharks may be searching for food.

• Do not swim near people fishing or spearfishing.

• Do not wear jewellery or shiny objects as the reflections could be mistaken for fish.

• Do not swim near fur seal colonies especially during the pupping season.

• Wear a device specifically designed for repelling sharks.

• Never attempt to grab or touch a shark. Even small sharks can inflict serious injury.

If you are in the water and you see a shark, stay calm! Leave the area as quickly and as

quietly as possible. However, if an attack is imminent try to keep the shark in sight and if it

gets close then any action you take may disturb the attack pattern, such as hitting the

shark’s nose, gouging at its eyes, making sudden body movements, blowing bubbles, etc.

Oh yeah...try praying......it couldn't hurt.

Or, you could carry a spear gun........check this out. Incredible.

A one in a million shot.

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 California 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. "That's when 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."                                  previously published in The Orange County Register

Or....you could get one of these. You can never go too far preventing shark attacks when diving.