On our second day in Corcovado I wake early, around five am, and go down to the beach to look for nesting turtles before the sun rises.  I walk for a couple of kilometers but see nothing, so I creep back into camp, grab my surfboard and paddle out for a sunrise surf. I make my way through the break and out to deep water, and then there is a moment when the sea softens and quietens, flattening like a mirror as the first rays of sun break over the horizon. I am totally alone in the limitless ocean and it is one of those quasi-religious experiences. It is briefly marred by another round of coughing, and there is the blood again. I spit it out in bright red swirls that float on the water’s surface.  There is no pain and I feel physically fine, it is just like my body has decided to remove some excess ballast. It passes. I float on.

A couple of minutes later a fin slowly breaches the water dead in front of me, very close. It glides along silently for a few metres and then sinks back under the surface. I am mentally far-away in that moment and I watch it with detachment. Dolphin or shark? I ask myself. How amazing it would be if a bottle-nosed dolphin was to suddenly jump out of the water and maybe come to play. I lie down on my board and carefully lift my legs out of the water. I see the fin again a few seconds later, now five meters to my left, gliding smoothly away. It is a substantial fin, not sharp at the tip but slightly rounded, a deep charcoal grey and matte; sunlight does not seem to reflect off it. Then a third time in the distance it breaches again, still on the same bearing, heading away up the coast. I lie and ponder things for a minute, but then the swell picks up and the set comes through. I catch a long ride through many rolling sections, right in to the beach. It is a good enough wave that I decide to paddle back out for more.

I catch another three or four waves until I see Meg on the beach, waving furiously at me and beckoning. I can see that she is anxious and I paddle in hurriedly, thinking that one of the kids had been bitten by a snake. It turns out to be no less of a tragedy: Meg has seen an anteater being savaged by one of the guard dogs in the camp. The dog was pulled off, but the wounded creature has limped away along the beach into the undergrowth by the water’s edges to die. We can hear it panting and rustling in a nest of fig vines that tangle back into the sandbank. I am very keen to see an anteater and we attempt to lure it out with coaxing noises, thinking perhaps that we might nurse it back to health, tame it, adopt it. Unsurprisingly it does not come out.

After breakfast we meet Alvaro, a local guide who we have booked to take us deep into the Corcovado jungle. I tell him about my fin story and he chuckles.
“Dolphin? No! A dolphin is swimming with leaps and jumps. No, no, no. My friend it is a shark that moves in straight lines with the fin like this,” Does a gliding move with his hand. “It is mainly bull sharks we have here, but he will look at you and think you are too big. He is going to the river mouth. A tuna or mahi-mahi is nicer for him. Bueno! It is worse for you if you get a crocodile in the sea moving between the rivers.”

Josh and I check this out on the internet later and got a stern list of shark risk factors: surfing alone, at dawn, near a river and various others. It seemed that I had broken every single rule. Nonetheless the three of us go surfing again that evening, but this time we take Arthur along as bait.

I never got a sense of threat from that smooth gliding fin, rather an insulting lack of interest, as I think back on it. There was no change of course as it cruised past me. We simply cohabited for a moment in the waves.

In surfing slang, sharks have many names: ‘the men in grey suits’ sometimes or the ‘Noahs’ (a cockney riff I suppose on ‘Noah’s arks’). My favourite term though has always been ‘the Landlord’. It has the gravitas that this apex predator is due. We humans are out of our milieu in the sea, we float and submerge ourselves temporarily for kicks, then we return to dry land. As unreliable short-term tenants of the ocean we might get our eviction notice at any point. We must know our place, make sure to pay our dues and never disrespect the Landlord.

Avoid swimming at dusk, dawn or night since some sharks are more active during these times.

Avoid entering the ocean near a river mouth

Avoid entering the ocean with a bleeding wound.

Do not surf, dive or swim alone

“How Common Are Shark Attacks in the Beaches of Costa Rica?” The Costa Rica Star