Sport: Shark Killer

The sight of a spear fisherman on the prowl in mask, wet suit, fins and Aqua-Lung is enough to convince most casual observers that the underwater sportsman is equipped to take unfair advantage of his peaceful prey. But U.S. Navy Mineman Third Class Scotty Slaughter, 24, is a skindiver with a difference. He hunts for danger: any size, shape or variety of shark. It seems unfair to Scotty that spearmen anxious to skewer a meal should be bothered by a fish with the nasty habit of fighting back. So the blond, blue-eyed waterbug from Clearwater, Fla., has embarked on a personal campaign to kill just as many sharks as he can. To date he has personally disposed of more than 100 of the enemy.

His technique is both simple and lethal. Operating to depths of 100 ft. without special breathing apparatus, Scotty relies on his own aquatic agility and a deadly “powerhead,” a 5-ft. metal pole topped by a steel tube loaded with a 12-gauge shotgun shell. Fortnight ago, on his way to the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team School at Little Creek, Va., he slipped into the ice-blue waters off Key West, Fla., for an enjoyable afternoon of shark shooting. A couple of fathoms below the surface, he nonchalantly stuffed chunks of a freshly killed, 7-ft. sting ray into a meat grinder, let the bait drift down-current; soon he had five sharks gliding gracefully around him. A 7-ft. dusky shark broke slowly away from his companions and hovered near the skindiver. Suddenly, maddened by the scent of ground ray, the shark flicked his powerful tail and bore down on Slaughter, jaws agape. The shark killer grasped his powerhead’s shaft and drove the weapon against the onrushing shark’s head, shattering its brain.

Close as he came to annihilation, Scotty Slaughter has been far closer. Once he momentarily paralyzed a 17-ft. great white shark, reloaded just in time to see the man-eating monster charge, “with his mouth open like a cellar door.” Slaughter flippered off to the side, slammed the powerhead home with a water-muted concussion that burst the shark’s flat head.

“He’s a real horse in the water,” said one awed instructor from the Navy’s Key West underwater swim school. “But the percentage gets worse all the time,” he added ominously. “Sooner or later, a shark is sure to get Slaughter.”