ABDUL RAHMAN ABDULLAH-Shallows (2022)

When I was about eleven I would go fishing with my dad in different spots along the Derbal Yerrigan (Swan River). He had this fancy custom made rod but we never seemed to catch anything, ever. One morning on the South Mole in Walyup (Fremantle) he pulled in a juvenile Bull Shark about a metre long. It put up an incredible fight and another guy stepped in to help dad land it. People gathered around to clap and cheer. The shark was thrashing wildly on the ground so this guy started hitting it with a piece of wood. The sound of impact on the sharks skull echoed the claps as they died away, deflated by the violence. I remember that sound more than anything else. It took a long time to die but I’d rather remember how it lived. We never went fishing again. Witnessing the life of a single animal taken underlines the structural violence inflicted on the worlds oceans on a global scale. We are all complicit.