Sharkman: A True Story

SHARKMAN

A TRUE STORY

TOM VATER

CONTENTS

Sharkman

Postscript

Getting out of Africa – as told by Peter Hauser

Passing through the eye of a Needle – War in the Sahara

The Birth of Sharkman

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2024 Tom Vater

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2024 by Next Chapter

Published 2024 by Next Chapter

Edited by Graham (Fading Street Services)

Cover art by Lordan June Pinote

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

To Lori

And to the sharks.

‘Everything can and nothing must.’ – Peter Hauser

SHARKMAN

ANDAMAN SEA, SOUTHERN THAILAND, 13/01/2022

Peter Hauser is a happy man. He’s lying in his hammock, a cold can of Leo in his right hand, a joint in his left, his lanky frame exhausted after spending the day floating above the coral reefs of the Koh Surin archipelago, his wry smile sliding a little closer to the sand as inebriation sets in. The tide is up, lapping at the powdery sand of Mai Ngam Bay, almost reaching up to his tent at the edge of the jungle. There’s phosphorescence in the water, silver glitter cresting the low waves. Giant fruit bats circle overhead. Lizards scuttle in the undergrowth. Out, beyond the waves, the house reef is teeming with silent life. And death.

Ever since he was a teenager, Peter has been getting Fernweh, something akin to and yet more than wanderlust, the longing to be elsewhere. Most winters, he heads out to Thailand, to Koh Surin, to Mai Ngam Bay, where he spends three months, sleeping on a thin mattress in a small tent, fronting evergreen forest, facing the ocean. This three-hundred-metre sand crescent is framed by two sheer hillsides covered in dense rainforest. Eagles take off and land in the dense canopy. The vibe is almost pre-historic. Mai Ngam Bay is in Moo Ko Surin Marine National Park, a special, far corner of the world, home to sea nomads and an astounding variety of ocean life.

Peter doesn’t come to Thailand to go sight-seeing, to get a tan or to find a girlfriend. Peter is here to swim with sharks. Out in the blue of the Andaman Sea, the truly fearless, or the truly mad, snorkel with tiger sharks, apex predators more than four metres long, that patrol the channels between the national park’s jungle-covered islands.

Peter, tall, broad-shouldered and gangly, blessed with George Clooney movie star looks, more lust for life than Iggy Pop and a disarming smile, laughs at his fortitude, It's amazing that after what I've experienced in life, everything still works in such a way that I can go swimming with these beautiful animals.

Peter lives in Kirchheim-Teck, a small town in southwest Germany. He’s been working as a mechanic for Daimler Benz since he was sixteen. Growing up on a housing estate in even smaller-town Wernau, shirking military service, smoking dope, and listening to punk rock, Peter was always one for whom 'normal' life wasn't enough, one who wanted to learn something about his limits, one who wanted to see the world, wanted to talk to people. As if he’d escaped from the pages of the Brothers Grimm, he was ‘the youth who went forth to learn what fear was’.

Peter learned a little more than he’d bargained for.

"It all kicked off exactly thirty years ago today. I was 28 years old. It was