Following my recent editorial on sharks, risk, and what it really means to coexist in the ocean, I received a thoughtful response from Murray Cox.

Murray is 75. He’s spent decades swimming not just along the Sydney coastline, but throughout Sydney Harbour and well beyond it. His relationship with the ocean spans eras, attitudes, and changing public perceptions of risk. What he shared wasn’t a rebuttal of the editorial, but a lived perspective that adds depth and humanity to the conversation.

And it starts with a memory.

“Let’s go back to an evening in late January 1963. Jim, my mum’s boyfriend, arrived at our flat in Darling Point drunk, not unusual, but he was crying too. He had been on a friend’s boat in Middle Harbour that day. Marcia Hathaway was killed by a bull shark in less than a metre of water.”

Between sobs, Jim, a man who had fought in World War II, described kicking the shark in bloody water, then pushing a broken-down ambulance up a bush track. For Murray, that moment lodged early, not as mythology, but as lived reality.

And yet, by his understanding, there wasn’t another fatal shark incident in the Sydney region until Simon Nellist off Little Bay in 2022.

In the decades between, Murray swam.

Relentlessly.

In 2010–11, he was awarded Ocean Swimmer of the Year by oceanswims.com after completing every organised ocean swim along the Sydney coast in a single summer, then “joining all the dots in between”.

“Every metre from Barrenjoey Lighthouse to Congwong Bay in Botany Bay. Including across the Heads. Even Narrabeen Lagoon.”

That final coastal swim included friends, but Murray is clear that most of his swimming life was solo.

“Mostly I swam alone. Like Greta Garbo, ‘I swim to be alone.’ I like to experience that wild place, just 100 metres from the safe shore.”

The following summer, he swam the length of Port Jackson, from waterfront edges to the Harbour Bridge, across to the Spit, around to Manly, and back across the Heads. Often with a paddleboard or kayak for support, not because of sharks, but to avoid being run over by powerboats.

In all of that time, Murray was only stopped twice. Once by a bluebottle infestation off Avalon Beach. Another time by Water Police, just as he was about to swim beneath the Harbour Bridge.

“I reprised that leg on a later date.”

What stands out isn’t bravado. It’s judgement.

“In all that time I never encountered a shark, nor did one enter my mind enough to disturb me. But I sensibly didn’t swim the Harbour in January, February, or March, which is bull shark season.”

That sentence matters.

Murray doesn’t dismiss risk. He contextualises it.

He describes ocean swimming as a continual negotiation between the rational and the emotional.

“As ocean swimmers we are willing to merge into that wild place, weighing pragmatic and limbic risks.”

We assess conditions, water temperature, rips, currents, exit points, and familiarity. But fear doesn’t operate on spreadsheets. It lives somewhere else entirely.

Murray even pointed me toward a small, quietly powerful book that captures this tension beautifully: Everything Is Teeth, by Evie Wyld and illustrated by Joe Sumner.

The book isn’t about sharks in a literal sense. Instead, it explores fear, memory, trauma, and obsession, using sharks as a recurring presence rather than a constant threat. Sometimes they are animals. Often, they are ideas.

That distinction feels especially relevant for ocean swimmers right now.

As I explore further in a separate piece, When sharks live in the water, and in our heads, the challenge many swimmers are facing isn’t just what’s happening in the ocean, but what happens in the space between reading the news and stepping into the water. Sharks are rarely encountered directly, yet they occupy an outsized psychological space.

One incident can ripple through weeks of swims, group chats, and internal debates. You understand the statistics. You know the context. And still, you hesitate.

Murray’s broader point lands quietly but firmly.

In 2023, Australia recorded 125 coastal drownings, 1,266 road fatalities, over 3,000 suicides, six deaths caused by horses, and two deaths each by snake, spider, bee, and shark.

And yet:

“Being eaten, by surprise, by a gruesome-looking ancient predator terrifies us most of all.”

Fear isn’t logical. It’s human.

Murray’s story doesn’t argue against shark mitigation, nor does it suggest complacency. It reminds us that ocean swimming has always involved judgment, timing, awareness, and personal responsibility, layered over something far less rational.

Fear follows stories.

And that’s why conversations about sharks, risk, and ocean swimming need more than headlines or slogans. They need lived experience, historical memory, and space for nuance.

Murray Cox offers exactly that.

Not a denial of risk.

Not a dismissal of fear.

But a reminder that for those of us who love the ocean, the question has never been whether risk exists.

It’s how we understand it, manage it, and decide what level of it we’re willing to live with, in order to keep swimming.

From OceanFit: Sharks don’t need statistics. They need understanding.