Is it just me or are we hearing more about this now-a-days? Naturally the shark apologists all claim attacks are down.
I’ve done my share of swimming in the Pacific, pretty much the entire ring from Vancouver Island to Australia and I honestly hated every minute.
If it wasn’t the jelly-fish swarms around Vancouver Island, it was Tiger Shark warnings in Hawaii. Don’t even mention all the other things that’ll hurt, maim or kill you in the South Pacific. If I don’t have to spend another second in the ocean ever again, it’ll be good.
Perhaps I’m just a worrier, but give me a nice cold fresh-water lake in Saskatchewan any day. About the only thing you have to worry about is the leeches, black flies and mosquitos.
Well, those and the odd gluten addicted bear.
I had the pleasure of hooking and playing a Tiger shark off the Big Island HI. Great fun for twenty minutes or so before it spit out the bait.
There are sharks in the oceans and bears (and other things)in the woods. Play in their territory often enough and you will encounter them.
Seriously though it may seem that there are more, or is it just more reports by a sensationalized media fed by hyper-active social media? After all, we must always be afraid.
Captcha includes CHUM 🙂
When they’re numbers get high enough they’ll start imposing Sharkria law in no-swim zones.
Just a coupla more weeks Lance and the ice will be gone off the dug out and you’ll be swimming buddy!
We used to swim in the ditches when I was a colt. Life on the prairie man.
Where’d you eastern guys swim when you were kids? Oh yeah I forgot – YMCA….. Ha ha
Watch out for those slough sharks, out there! Biggest one I ever caught was in a dinky N. Sask lake, NE of Patterson Lake (a pond really – just enuff for a Beaver to get in & out). It was 39 inches long & 39 lbs. You could stick your arm down it’s throat, without scratching. The drillers wouldn’t go in for a swim after I caught it.
Well, I like sharks. They’re neat. I’ve dived with Caribbean reef sharks and bull sharks in the Bahamas, and been alongside tiger sharks at Isla Mujeres, but I don’t for one second feel any more comfortable by the assurances from the shark-huggers that “sharks don’t intentionally attack people”.
That’s actually pretty good ! Too bad the rest of your comments can’t be equally clever, humorous, and ironic.
sharks don’t intentionally attack people
They don’t. They generally don’t like the taste of people, and they don’t recognize them as prey when they encounter them in the water.
And therein lies the problem; if a shark’s not sure whether you are good to eat, he’ll take an exploratory bite to see. That he then swims off uninterested after spitting out your severed foot is cold comfort.
Regardless, one doesn’t have to be an “apologist” to do simple math and recognize that cows and pigs kill ten times more people – each – than sharks every year.
Leeches and black flies are worse than jellyfish and sharks. A shark or jellyfish want nothing to do with you. Leeches and black flies want everything to do with you.
I’ve never had any problems with Jellyfish while swimming but pulling up shrimp pots from 400 ft you get the remains of the tentacles of the red and purple nasty ones on the rope and when you get splattered it isn’t pleasant, particularly head shots. I prefer swimming in the salt chuck than interior lakes that warm up enough to get the “itch” from duck feces parasites.
Swimming in the Pacific? Yes I agree, rude creatures there. But I recall doing my Navy dive training in Halifax Harbour in February. Untreated sewage, and damn cold. Then I discovered the Navy expected me to exit my nice warm engine room and jump into the stormy North Atlantic for “man overboard” exercises. Usually in the mid-watch, when the officers were bored.
Guess I was younger then…
give me a nice cold fresh-water lake in Saskatchewan any day. About the only thing you have to worry about is the leeches, black flies and mosquitos.
And hypothermia.
after last year in the gulf of mexico I will stick to pools.
|they don’t”
Well, except for the odd exception…..
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-worst-shark-attack-in-history-25715092/
“Then I discovered the Navy expected me to exit my nice warm engine room and jump into the stormy North Atlantic for “man overboard” exercises.”
When I was in the militia, I had a solution for winter exercises. “I have to work that weekend.” I guess that doesn’t work when they own you 24/7.