Bay of Fundy GW Shark
I was being a little silly… last I knew the likelihood of sharks and people being close together was far greater in warm water than up in Maine. But there are exceptions to any rule, a record GWS in the Bay of Fundy being one. Glad it was that far out - 13 miles is further than I am prepared to venture from land at my present skill level.
Yup, there are close encounters and knowing what to do if you happened to be the person who was involved is good. In a real attack I don’t suppose anyone would care that they were in a statistical minority.
But a little levity is not so out of line. We can read the article and take serious note (I did). And also decide to not tip sharks.
Celia
yep serious sewage outfall nnear Nahant
Last time I did any eco-survey work out there. I doubt they’ve fixed it yet.
Rolling in the Charles river after a big rainstorm, no way.
Warm vs. Cold
It’s not about the sharks. Warm water just means more people - not less or smaller sharks!
Ever see pics of a Greenland shark? They make it down your way too. Cold water species. Huge - eat anything - and based on stomach contents - not as slow as they look!
55 Attacks Worldwide, BUT
There were only 55 attacks worldwide, but 31 attacks were in Florida. Of those, 14 were in Volusia County. I bet the majority of the Volusia attacks were at New Syrna Beach.
Gee, I used to surf there....
Location, location, location....
as being someone who actually has been
bit by a shark it does alter your perception. I’ve been bit on 4 different ocassions by sharks and have the scars to prove it. of course my job is high risk for this. morays eels are worse. lobsters really hurt, and stone crabs unstoppable; but the worst was a small yellow stingray!!they are painful!! oh yeah, I pee in my wetsuit underwater too. my momma told me to get out of the water.
Morray Eels Scare Me
I have never been bite by one, but I have had a up close personal look at those teeth! Like needles!
I can just imagine what would happen if you tried to pull your hand away from one.
I had one swim between my legs one time off Key Largo.
I am very careful where I put my hands...
AS IF THESE WEREN’T BAD ENOUGH
There’s a lake in the middle of the UM Campus -Lake Osceola, named for a famed Seminole Chief. It borders several dorms’ lawns, the grounds of the on-campus art museum, and the student center…
They just pulled a 10’ croc out of it yesterday, after it had depopulated the majority of the duck flock resident there.
Now there’s another one there, about a foot and a half longer…
But you can bet there wouyldn’t never ever EVER be a Florida Gator there -it wouldn’t last 2 seconds!
Lions & tigers & bears, oh my! When you do things aquatic in Florida, especially South Florida and the Florida Keys, you can surely expect one sort of critter or another -we have a surfiet of the wee, and not so wee, beasties.
And while I concur with the statistical approach of analysis, and appreciate RC’s and Brians’s take on relative probabilities of evil events and things that go bump in the (day and) night, that’s the big picture.
And we’re not precisely talking big picture here -we’re dealing with a vastly smaller universe -folks who participate in “in-water” sports, here in Florida, and in particular spots in Florida, at that. The odds go up -WAAAAY up -in those situations. OTOH, they are still not exactly -not even close, actually -to ‘bet the farm’ odds, either.
But they ARE informative probabilities, ones that should encourage a little acquisition of knowledge, a little acuisition of awareness, and perhaps some preventative measures.
So far, the list reads, more or less-
SHARKS (emphasis on bull, tiger, & GW, to which I would add lemons & spinners -the latter only because they inadvertently go after swimmers and surfers in the surf line where they probably wouldn’t otherwise);
CRUSTACEANS -LOBSTERS (even spiny lobsters, sans claws, can give a careless handler a laceration or three from the ripper points at the lower edges of their tail plates) and CRABS (stone crabs are so delcious beacuse in part of the goodly quantity of muscle in the big claw)
MORAY EELS -these are actually quite placid creatures that left undisturbed are just more fish in the sea -witness the one that swam between Cuda’s legs; the trouble comes when you grope in their holes in the reef or rocks looking for something else (a lobster or stone crab, perhaps?). Like most homeowners, they get pissed when their houses are broken into; unlike a lot of homeowneres, they can take matters into their own hands, er, teeth. One of the bad things about moray bites is that they can become infected.
STINGRAYS -these, too, are placid creatures, swimming along the bottom hunting for food, or buried -literally -up to their eyeballs -in the sand in ambush mode. They don’t go after people -heck, most don’t even go after most fish. But do NOT NOT NOT tangle with one’s ‘stinger’ -it’s actually nothing more that a cartilaginous rigid barbed rod sheathed in the lower body at the base of the tail. It can be flipped vertical with great force, and the barbs sunk into otherwise unsuspecting flesh, and that, my friends, can be truly nasty. The pain is intense, the risk of infection high, and in perhaps 20-30% of severe cases, it takes a doctor to cut ut out of said flesh. That’s why you shuffle your feet when walking alone on deserted beaches down here -it lets them know you’re in the neighborhood, and distrubing the environment, and interfering with their livihood -they’ll move on. Guy I knew in high school tangled with one - he passed out from the pain, and was probably scarred for life from messing with one -he tried to be a smart ass and pick it up by the tail, and grabbed too low…
To this list I would add a few others I consider even more dangerous, in part because they’re relatively more prevalent in the environment, and relativley easier for humans to interact with.
BRISTLE WORMS -I don’t really know what this class of beatsies’ ‘real’ names are -look like the UW equivalent of a 4"-8+" caterpillar -but it has needle-sharp, needle-long, needle-like injection of toxins. Kids in particular may find these facinating…
JELLYFISH -there’s a thousand and one of these things, from under a half inch to over 6’ across, flaoting around in our oceans, in cold, temprrate, and tropical waters. Some trail tens or hundreds of lines of arms armed with stiunging cells and tiny hypodermics that inject neurotoxins to incapacitate their food. They also incapacitate humans who get in the way. I dove through a cloud of small 1-2" almost transparent ones a few years back, and was “tckled” by them -they wouldv’e knocked out the tiny prey they were after, but they had only the mildest of effects on my skin. Thank goodness -there was no way around them that we could see.
STINGING CORALS -AKA “fire coral”, these can be treacherous to divers. A few years back, some friends and I were collecting tropicals for sale to the local marine aquariasts. Diving around Key West, we found a nice supply of jewelfish, rock beauties, angels, butterflies, gobies, and others around a reef that was perhaps about 80% fire coral. And it was only, variably, about 5-15’ deep, and the seas were running about 2-3’ -nice, almost calm, for boaters, but choppy for kayakers, and bad for shallow reef divers. I went after a pretty jewel with a slurp gun and missed, my hand drifted into a rod of fire coral and YEAOOOOWCH! FIRE!!! Hence the name… I flet like I’d put my hand on a hot stove burner -but as soon as I removed contact, it went away. So do NOT do that! A friend with us was in 5’ of water, and had the surge push him into the coral, just kinda carried him right into it -he put out his arm, and has cut and poisoned painfully enough that he quit then and there and barely made it back to the boat. His arm looked like it was stained with a purple dye the next week, and it gradually faded to rode, pink, and pale pink over the course of a month an a half…
SPINY SEA URCHINS -these cute little buggers are the UW equivalent of the porcupine -handle with care! While -like porcupines -they don’t shoot theii quills, they can and do come loose from the creatures exoskeleton -and they DO pierce skin, and they DO break off below skin level leaving their tips embedded in the unfortunate piece of anatomy that came into contact with them. I know, from painful personal experience as a diving neophyte at age 12: do NOT do this!
and finally, that which I, personally, consider the most dangerous?
PHYSALIA AKA PORTUGUESE MAN’O’WAR -these lovely ballon-like creatures look like floating pink-tinged blue (or bluish-pink) jellyfish, for which many mistake them. Unfortunately, they can wash ashore in grat numbers during the winter tourist season, and unsuspecting tourists and locals stunble across them and handle them or walk upon them and get stung, some painfully. Happens several times almost every year up and down Florida’s east coast.
So -sharks & sewage -yeah, there’s danger out there. Statistically, chances for the overall population are diminishingly small -but if you go out and put yourself into those environments, you greatly increase your liabilities.
So know your environment, get to know a little about your adversaries, and as they used to say on Hill Street Blues -“ANd HEY!!! Let’s be careful out there…”
As we
Paddle On!
-Frank in Miami
i’d say you’re right on…
with those guesstimations. new smyrna is always the beach we read about in florida. it’s typically in the summer and the attacks are usually on surfers and sometimes swimmers. the attacks are usually mild, at least in comparison to what you guys see in Cali or even the NE.
I do see sharks regularly though, and have only seen one that i didn’t want to get near in my boat.
Cold Water Sharks
Seriously - seems there must be a diff in either the behaviors or frequency of sharks that tend to hang out in cold water compared to those in warm water. Anyone? It can’t be just the difference in number of people.
The most southern coast of Maine down by New Hampshire has sandy beaches and a lot of swimmers in the summer, yet in the last 15 years of our vacationing in the mid-coastal region there have been one or maybe two incidents of sharks being sighted near the beach. In the same time period it has happened at least every couple of years in southern New Jersey and every summer in Florida.
There are definately more shark sightings near beaches in warmer waters. There are likely commensurately more attacks, probably because the sharks are in closer to shore where there are more people doing things that attract their attention.
So what is the explanation? Are there more shark species (types, whatever) that swim in warm water and tend to be aggressive? Or are there more sharks nearer shore in warm water? There are tons of sand sharks off of the east end of Long Island - but the incidence of a sand shark actually attacking anyone is nothing of note, for example.
Celia
Cold Vs Warm water sharks
Hi,
I could write an essay about it; however, I have quite a bit to study and I don't have the time.
Anyway, for the only reason you see many shark attacks around Florida is because there is no other place in the U.S. where so many people go into/onto the water year round. There are swimmers, divers, kayakers, etc. etc... every single day of the year (about two millions). However, if you look for real data you will see that Florida has the lowest rate of death due to shart attak compared to the number of attacks.
A couple of myths about sharks:
Myth 1: All sharks are dangerous.
Of the 350 shark species, about 80% of them do not or rarely encounter people
Myth 2: Most people attacked by a shark are killed.
85% of the worldwide victims survives, and about 99% of the victims in Florida survives.
The favorite targets of shark attacks are:
Surfers 49%
Swimmers/waders 29%
Divers/snorkelers 15%
Kayakers 6%
Myth 3: Many people are killed by sharks each year.
Only between 5 to 15 people are killed each year worldwide!
Myth 4: The great white shark is abundant species found off most beaches.
The great white is relatively uncommon and prefer cooler waters.
Warm waters are low in productivity with big number of species. Fishes (many different species) from warm waters are small, reproduce fast, and die fast as well.
Cold waters are high in productivity with small number of spcecies. Fishes from these waters are big, reproduce slow, and live longer. This is why you won't usually see a great white in Florida.
Regards,
Iceman
PS: I was forgetting we kill 100 million sharks every eyar. Many sharks will be designed as endangered species in a soon future...
The short answer:
Who wants to swim/dive in Maine year round without a drysuit :D. If you don't have 2 million people playing in/on the beaches, how are you going to see the sharks?
Regards,
Iceman
swimming pools
Everytime you enter a public swimming pool, you are swimming in and swallowing an unbelivable amount of human urine from people whoi were too lazy to get out of the pool and find a bathroom when they had to pee.
Not to mention hot tubs.
Perhaps you should never enter any body of water where fish have sex or people pee.
swis theroy
I was able to dive with a lady named Marjorie Bank, who was a underwater naturalist. She used the swis theroy, sharks eat the sick, the weak, the injured and the stupid so stay out of these catagories and all is good.
I have used this many times to ease the fear in my diving students and also many kayakers.
Greg
Nobody in My Swimming Pool But Me!
I am glad I have a nice big pool and no one ever uses it but me and Kathy…
My Theory About Gators
I remember when gators were almost hunted out. Large ones were pretty rare, and avoided human contact.
After they were protected, seeing small ones became common in Florida again.
After almost 50 years of protection we now have a generation of large gators that have never been hunted. There has already been an increase in attacks. I remember when there had not been an attack in many years. I predict a continuing increase in atacks until it becomes a serious problem and more hunting is allowed.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. More alarmist talk. But again a matter of perspective. It is easy to discount the danger if you have never encountered a dangerous critter, and are not likely to...
And Cottonmouths
They will chase you out of their territory. It has happened to me.
And as long as I am remembering Florida, watch out for the wild hogs…
I released my pet Hippo
to feed on the pythons in the everglades and no doubt someone else will release theirs and thus a new breeding population of hippos.
Brian
I’ll be right over
Brian
Only victim I know
Lives in Fort Laudedale but attacked in California
while surfing. Lost a couple fingers and chunk from his elbo.
Brian
My reasoning and I think Fact
Rough ocean conditions equal concentrations of baitfish pushed near the shoreline where surfers tend to splash around in cloudy disturbed water of where sharks, especially schooling type sharks tend to have the time of their life, consuming fish in a kaotic frenzy. Not to mention same for frenzied bluefish, mackeral and barracuda of which all capable of some serious chomping.
Brian