Pi notes that sharks visit the lifeboat daily—mostly makos and blue sharks, with oceanic whitetips and once a tiger shark—especially at dawn and dusk. They rarely threaten him directly, though they sometimes bump the hull as if testing it, and Pi keeps them at bay with a hatchet blow to the nose. He comes to see them as familiar presences, even while recognizing they make entering the water dangerous.

After sunset, Pi begins catching small sharks with his bare hands when they come close. The first catch is a mako over four feet long; Pi grabs it near the tail, hauls it up in a burst of spray, and impulsively throws it onto the tarpaulin toward Richard Parker’s area.

Richard Parker attacks at once, initially striking with his forepaws rather than biting. In the struggle, Richard Parker makes a mistake and puts a paw into the shark’s mouth; the mako clamps down. Richard Parker rears, falls, and unleashes a massive roar that terrifies Pi, even as the shark reacts only to vibration.

Pi forces himself onto the raft and releases it, letting the lifeboat drift while tiger and shark thrash inside. After minutes, the fight ends; Richard Parker sits licking his injured left paw, and in the following days he tends all four paws, likely cut by the shark’s sandpaper-like skin. The mako is left half-eaten, with scattered flesh and organs.

Pi salvages some of the remains for food and discovers shark vertebrae do not provide drinkable fluid, but he finds the meat tasty and the cartilage crunch welcome after so much soft food. After this, Pi targets smaller sharks and kills them himself, preferring a quick knife thrust through the eyes over hacking with the hatchet.