It was 1997. I’d decided to leave film school and use my student loan to buy a camera and a plane ticket to South Africa.

It was the beginning of wewalk. I’d been invited to stay with Andrew Carter in Jeffreys Bay—a surfer I’d interviewed a few years earlier, after he survived a shark attack at his local break. It was a brutal and rare event: a great white hit him from behind, dragging him underwater with his leg and surfboard clenched in its jaws. By sheer luck, the board jammed in the shark’s mouth and Andrew escaped—barely. Another surfer, Bruce Corby, wasn’t so lucky. He was attacked moments later and died from blood loss.

What transfixed me wasn’t just the story of survival. It was that Andrew still surfed.

What is it about surfing that could override such a horrific experience?