In other news, this last week some people made a surfer statue look like it was being attacked by a shark. Did the Discovery Channel send someone out to wrap that paper shark around the statue? That’s smart, if they did.

Shark News Tweets

I saw a Twitter account get created that lives for Shark Week. They post anything and everything they can find about sharks. That’s great, I hope they get a lot of followers … but what about after Shark Week?

What’s the Deal with Shark Fin Soup?

And did you hear that most of the world is banning shark fin soup? Why are people defending sharks? Maybe they serve some big important purpose in the water, but I’d much rather not have them in my water.

Citi Bank Hong Kong apparently made a mistake worthy of world wide attention when they recently offered card holders a 15% discount on shark fin soup at a local restaurant. This was obviously in a city where the soup wasn’t banned, yet the pro-ban people around the world managed to weasel in and ruin the whole thing. Citi Bank got a lot of bad publicity for it. My first thought was, “Geeze, banks think they can do anything these days.” Then I thought, “Wait, who cares if they eat shark fin soup?” And seriously – who spends their life thinking about shark fin soup?

Ants Don’t Pollute

I think if Discovery Channel really put in the effort, they could make people crazy about ants. Ants are cool because they can survive anything, they lift like 100x their own weight, and they’re obviously really smart. Ants recognize that they have a boss, and they only have one Queen. They work together and they have jobs. Your dog doesn’t have a job. If your dog had a job and a neighbor’s dog had a job, do you think the two dogs would know what each others job was, and then work together to build a colony and worship a Queen Dog?

Nobody’s dog has a job, and certainly no cats have a job. Ants wake up with a goal in mind, whether its to dig a new short-cut tunnel, or to bring home a bunch of food. They wake up and they get going. There’s never an ant sleeping in and calling in sick. They’re almost like advanced humans: 100% efficient, super strong, impossible to eradicate, and self-governed with not a single prison or mental institution or even taxes. I’d bet that the first human civilizations got their ideas from ants (it’s a lot more likely than aliens).

But ants bite and they’re a nuisance. They have a place in nature but we make pesticides to kill ants. Sharks are another pest, and we really need a pesticide for them. I think it’s gonna have to be in the form of a shark flu.

Surfing with Sharks

I used to have a bigger fear of sharks than I do now. I’d walk into the water with my surfboard and wonder if I’d be seeing one. I’d imagine giving my life over to God to do whatever he wanted with … he could let me have fun in his waves, or he could feed me to his sharks. It helped me get through some sessions.

You always wonder if you see them out there, little shadows on the water made by waves – was that…? No, not this time. But maybe some time. And you know of someone it happened to.

But yea sharks are cool to see on TV. Maybe we could just keep the ones at the zoo.

Shark Attack #1

The first of the two recent attacks was on June 28, and involved a 20 year old Galveston surfer named Chad Rogers, who was surfing near 8 Mile Road. This is my favorite surf spot in Galveston… the waves are better at the Flagship, for sure, but this place offers complete privacy and some fun waves, especially if you want to cruise along the top of the water on a longboard. The coast there is lined with beach houses that have their front porches facing the water, along with many windows; it’s easy to feel like you’re the star of a show you’re putting on, as there are likely several people watching you surf from their living room.

A guy (I forgot his name) who was in “Endless Summer 2,” who lives near Galveston (Keema, I think), told me that sharks like to feed between the first and second sand bars, which is about 60 yards out. The second sand bar is the very best place to surf out there. You can stand in knee-high water, while water just 5 feet away is 20+ feet deep and dumps some major head-high waves on you, making for an easy take off and a long, powerful ride.

Chad was just past the second sand bar when he spotted the fin of a 5 foot bull shark, which bit his foot almost right away. Chad kicked the shark and then paddled over it to get back to shore. Having escaped a shark myself, I’m pretty sure that the paddle back to the beach was hectic and very scary. Chad’s foot required 20 stitches.

A side note about this shark attack is that it wasn’t “leaked” to the press until after July 4th. I guess that was smart for businesses, but it was very inconsiderate of the many tourists visiting Galveston for Independence Day. Tons of adults and children were in the water with hungry sharks. As for why they’re suddenly so hungry – we’ll get to that soon.

Shark Attack #2

The second recent attack was just yesterday, July 16th. A fisherman named Charlie Gauzer was fishing in the same area, near 8 Mile Road, when a shark approached his boat and bit him on the leg while he stood in 3 feet of water. He said he “started to feel pain. I looked down and [there was] blood coming out of my leg.” If the shark didn’t like the taste of his leg, this is the point where it would have let go, but this shark continued to bite down even harder on Charlie’s leg as he tried to escape.

Charlie did end up escaping, and lived to talk about the attack. The shark missed his artery, which could have led to him bleeding to death, but did sever his Achilles tendon. The shark was really close to having a distasteful but satisfying lunch.

Why They’re Attacking

The biologists maybe right: maybe sharks don’t like the taste of human flesh. Maybe they’re even confused about what they’re biting down on, with Galveston’s brown water, and maybe the water is even darker now due to the recent oil spill. But if I take a bite of something that doesn’t taste good, and I continue to bite down even after tasting it, it means I’m really hungry and I don’t care about the taste as much as I care about filling my hungry stomach.

The oil rig may be capped now, but the massive death toll it took on the Gulf’s marine wildlife is going to plague us for some time. Sharks are more likely to attack now because they have less food to eat. Thousands of fish and other marine life are dead, leaving sharks wondering where their next meal is going to come from.

The bottom line is that there comes a point when the taste of food doesn’t really matter any more. If you take all my food away, I might bite you, too.

Discussion

If you have strong feelings about the oil spill or about these shark attacks, the comments are a great place to share them. I’ll personally reply to you.

Source.

That’s one in three-hundred-million, or, “probably never.”

You’re more likely to die from:

Slipping in bath or shower: 2,232 to 1

Drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1

Killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1

Being murdered: 18,000 to 1

A car accident: 1 in 18,585

Any kind of fall: 1 in 20,666

An airplane accident: 1 in 354,319

Choking on food: 1 in 370,035

Terrorist attack while visiting a foreign country: 1 in 650,000

A fireworks accident: 1 in 1,000,000

Food poisoning: 1 in 3,000,000

Contact with hot tap water: 1 in 5,005,564

Parts falling off an airplane: 1 in 10,000,000

Being bitten by a dog: 1 in 700,000

Contact with a venomous animal or plant: 1 in 3,441,325

A mountain lion attack in California: 1 in 32,000,000

So go surf already!

For more odds on dying, injuries, and more, check out the source.

“I was on the shark’s back anywhere from 5-10 seconds,” he said. “It was so strange that everything was so slow and yet again so fast.”  While riding the shark’s back, Jim took hold of the shark’s fins and rode it, unsure of what to do.

“About that time my board was free floating around so I swam over and got it and surfed for another 45 minutes or so.”

I don’t know about you, but after riding a shark that wanted to eat me, the last thing I’d be doing is surfing, unless it was the fastest way to get to shore, and it wouldn’t be a 45 minute session.

The tiger shark was no baby, either. Terry Lilley, a marine biologist, measured the bite mark on Jim’s surfboard and said that the shark had to be 14 feet long. This guy road a killer shark the size of a mid-sized sedan!

Ironically, Jim’s attack occurred just 5 miles from where Bethany Hamilton’s arm was bitten off by another shark attack in 2003.

Even after his encounter, Jim says of sharks, “They’re very gentle; they’ve very warm.”  He said his experience was almost spiritual, and that he now feels a very strange connection to the animal.

Source.