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2005-12-09

Shark season

With summer comes shark scares, yay! Most beaches here have shark sirens which are custom designed to scare the shite out of everybody, which is fair enough as nearly 5 meters of shark is going to give you a bit of a breathless moment anyway. However the ensuing panic of hundreds of people making a break for the shore may well excite the pointy-toothed leviathan - turning it from casual observer interested by all the funny soft pink things in the water to frenzied attacker confused by all the food suddenly trying to run away.


Everyone's reaction to a shark in the water must give the lifeguards a bit of a giggle. This quote is from the most recent news story where a good-sized shark was spotted off Bondi Beach:
"There were 100 people up the top screaming like monkeys," said Anthony Carroll, one of the lifeguards who went out on jet-skis to alert swimmers.
It looks like the Bondi shark is either hanging around or has brought a friend as another sizeable one was spotted at Tamarrama yesterday.

Critical habitat for sharks, and people surf here...It's not like people don't know there are sharks here. Divers specifically come to places like Gordons Bay and Clovelly to see the sharks. It is also extremely rare that people get bitten. It has been a year since anyone has been attacked and people were surprised when that happened. The guy who was attacked last Christmas was English. The shark bit his board so he punched it on the nose, got out of the water, got another board and went back in. Dozy pom. This was at Bronte Beach, which is about 1.5km from Bondi as the shark swims.

The beach that I live at, Maroubra, is listed as critical habitat for sharks and large fish, there are diving and fishing restrictions as you can see from the sign in the picture. It is also one of the most reliable surf breaks in Sydney and on any given day there will be at least ten people in the water on surfboards (most people who get attacked are surfing - wetsuits and surfboards make you look like food even more than if you are just swimming). I have not yet heard of anyone beeing attacked or even seeing a shark at Maroubra, probably because they treat the open water with a bit less complacence.

The normal air patrols that give the lifeguards early warning of big sharks close to shore do not have the funding to run this year and the police don't have the resources to do it instead so there are going to be a lot more of these scares this summer. I've decided I'm not going to let it bother me. If you get bitten you are profoundly unlucky and the chances of it happening are so small as to be comparable with being hit by lightning. I say this because I was in the ocean at seven this morning and it was a great way to wake up. Emily chose this as the moment to tell me about the shark scares and quickly freaked herself out and started jumping at shadows in the water, they turned out to be seaweed.

7 comments:

  1. The real question is, do they taste good?

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  2. Sharks rule. Truly they are magnificent creatures, beautiful in their terrifying perfection of evolution, graceful and deadly. And yes, they taste delicious.


    Dozy pom? Are you being assimilated?

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  3. I don't know if I've eaten shark. I think it's meant to be a bit like swordfish.

    I'll take guidance here from Goat san, our man in Japan where they eat anything, particularly if it came out of the sea.

    I know you aren't meant to eat the shark's fin soup here because poachers catch the shark, cut its' fins off and put it back leaving it toa horrible undeserved death. But if you've caught and killed the whole thing naturally it's okay.

    Am I being assimilated? Possibly, or perhaps the act of that particular surfer was one that could onlybe made by someone who grew up where there aren't super-evolved killing machines in the water.

    The shark alarm went off here four times on Saturday morning and we heard it at least twice more before sunset. Lots of big nosey fish.

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  4. Funnily enough, I've only eaten shark in Bristol. As for the taste, it's fish +.

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  5. To judge from what happened at Cronulla beach over the weekend, the sharks aren't just in the water.

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  6. ...and your area as well, I gather. I trust you're all OK.

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  7. All is well.

    There was a bit of a mini-riot on Sunday night but it was people's cars that took the brunt of it.

    Good view of the locals getting tetcy from our balcony. Interupted the movie I was watching though, what is the world coming to.

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