Autumn is shark-bite time, but Mr. Fin has no calendar

On a recent afternoon as I paddled in from Suis, I slid into the water and swam to stretch out, towing my board by its ankle leash. After a few strokes I felt a sudden, violent tug on the leash.

Instinctively, I felt that old sharky feeling. I remembered that video of Mick Fanning’s tussle in South Africa last year with a great white that got caught in his leash. He escaped unharmed.

After a couple of seconds, my leash went slack. I didn’t see a fin, but as I clambered back on my board, trying not to splash like an injured fish, I kept looking around. Maybe another surfer had played a prank, grabbing my leash as he paddled by. That was what it had felt like.

But there was nobody there grinning at me — not above the surface, anyway.

I sprinted for shore, feet hoisted in the air.

I got that sharky feeling the other evening at high tide, paddling through dark, silty water filled with leaves and trash at Graveyards. Nothing happened, but Gravies is the only break where I’ve actually seen a shark fin up close and heading straight for me. It could have been chasing a school of fish that boiled between us, but the other surfers and I didn’t wait to find out.

It’s October in Hawaii, Sharktober to some, the month with the most shark bites — 26 since 1980 — according to a state Department of Land and Natural Resources advisory. The agency advises that “ocean users exercise a little more caution this month especially and also through the end of the year.”

It referenced the Hawaiian proverb that the shark bites when the wiliwili tree blooms in the fall. (November was second with 14 bites, including two fatalities.)

It’s kind of like the advice to avoid eating shellfish in months without an “r,” only in this case the month has an “r” and we’re trying to avoid being eaten by a fish.

Yet every month registered bites: June was third, with 11. In 35 years, eight people in Hawaii were killed by sharks, none in October. Still, last October saw a couple of grisly attacks in Oahu waters where two people lost parts of their legs.

The day after the DLNR warning was in the news, I went to the dentist. His assistant, who has gazed unflinching into many a gaping mouth, said she loves the ocean but hasn’t gone in it since she saw “Jaws.”

I know how she feels. After seeing that film, I wouldn’t even go swimming in an Iowa reservoir.

Still phobic the following summer but lured by perfect waves, I led my husband-to-be out to Suis, paddling over the reef at negative low tide in order to avoid the jaws that surely lurked in the channel. A rogue wave knocked him off his board into a coral head and he was dragged by the leash, bleeding, over the teeth of the reef.

It took a while to convince him I hadn’t been trying to kill him.

THE SEA is warm this October. “It is said that the presence of a shark is indicated by the warmth of the sea,” Mary Kawena Pukui writes in “Olelo No‘eau” about the saying “Wela ke kai o Ho‘ohila (Warm is the sea of Ho‘ohila).” This, she explained, can mean “praise for a fearless warrior, or a warning that danger is near.”

In the Hawaiian language as well as in nature, sharks, like all of us, have more than one side: As top predators that help maintain the ocean ecosystem, they can do good and harm. But whether they come in the form of ancestor or god, friend or foe, they are fearless warriors.

With sharks on my mind last week, I took a break from surfing after work and watched the sunset from shore. As I walked home, the trees thrashed in the wind and the night felt alive with spirits as well as the exercisers and campers heading up the road to the Diamond Head cliffs.

The scene evoked a saying from Pukui’s book about a wiliwili grove “where homeless ghosts wander among the trees.”

As I paused to admire the spooks, skeletons and headstone on Captain Cal’s lawn, my neighbor Dina and her daughter Kaila came bicycling by and invited me to their Halloween costume party. “You have to come as your hero or your nemesis,” Kaila said.

I think I’ll do both, and go as a shark.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.