I’m about to write a post on a subject about which I know literally next to nothing. I do this out of self-preservation. Here I am, 70 years old, a fearless (or so it seemed) water (the kind you submerge in) lover who’s able to float (without so much as a twitch of movement) as if my muscles are made of polyethylene foam instead of myofibril molecules and filaments.
I never paid much attention to what’s IN the water in which I love to submerge. As a kid I remember going to a small creek somewhere in central Wisconsin with my grandfather. When we came out, we were covered in leeches. Oh Lord, I never want to do that again. In fact, I don’t remember ever swimming from the bank of a Wisconsin river again. I also never really liked walking through the muck that inhabits the bottom of lake and rivers up north where they have good, black dirt for growing abundant crops. But I squished that muck between my toes because I loved being in the water in those lakes in Wisconsin. As a kid, we used to wear old tennis shoes to try to avoid the muck, but mostly the squishy stuff won and often sucked the shoes right off our feet.
My world expanded outside the Midwest when I was about 25 years old. Already married to Sergeant Randy, he got orders to Guam. We road tripped to the west coast where we shipped (courtesy of the US Air Force) our Oldsmobile Delta 88 from San Francisco to Guam. It was my first glimpse of the vast, blue Pacific Ocean and sand beaches. I fell irrevocably and completely in love.
You’re never more than 5 miles from a tropical beach on Guam, an island in the South Pacific with a total area of 212 square miles. Only 900 miles north of the equator, with a year round temperature averaging 84°, our favorite activity was spending time in the water at the beach. Yes, there are sharks there, but because, we were told, Guam is mostly surrounded by a coral reef, there was little danger from sharks. We were much more concerned about stepping on a stonefish or being stung by jellyfish or a Portuguese man-of-war. None of any of those things ever happened to us or anyone we knew in the 3 years we lived on the island, or in the more than a dozen times we visited the Hawaiian Islands since then.
So, I’ve never been very concerned about what’s in the water. Odds, you know. On one of my favorite YouTube channels (Gone With The Wynns) Jason and Nikki are always in the water as they navigate their Sailing Vessel Curiosity2 all over the world. They often film sharks while they’re in the water with them, but I’ve only seen one episode where sharks became a bit of a problem for them.
Now that we live here in Florida, you all know that the beach is one of my favorite places. At the beach my favorite place is IN the water, and because of my almost supernatural ability to float so effortlessly, I’ve never thought twice about getting too far from shore. I worry more about getting run over by a speedboat that doesn’t see me out there.
Until recently.
I listen to Badlands Media for most of my news and views on current events and politics. One of the hosts, a fellow called Burning Bright, has a thing about sharks. And I don’t mean a minor thing. Every chance he gets he goes on some sort of shark rant. And boy, does he seem to know everything there is to know about sharks. His shark rants and his shark phobia have become infamous on Badlands. In my opinion, Burning Bright is a smart, credible guy on every other issue I care about. Sadly, his fearful obsession with sharks is starting to rub off on me.
I know, I know. It’s completely irrational. He lives in the Boston area for Pete’s sake. Surely the sharks in New England are much more aggressive than those that hang out down here in laid-back southwest Florida. Hell, this is Jimmy Buffet (god rest his soul) country. No self-respecting shark would want to ruin the party vibe down here!
Before this irrational fear goes too far, I figured I’d better find out enough about sharks off the SW Florida gulf coast to assuage my anxiety. Here’s what I learned.
In 2023 there were 69 unprovoked shark attacks around the world. Of those, 16 were in Florida, only 2 of the 16 were on the gulf side, and one of those 2 gulf side shark attacks was 70 miles offshore while a guy was in the water spear fishing. None of them were fatal. I couldn’t even find any good information about the 1 attack in Pinellas County which is about 2 hours north of here.
While researching, I found this informative article comparing the danger of shark attacks vs all kinds of other scary stuff like lightening strikes, tornados and alligator attacks. The bad news is that the article says that if you swim in the water often (yup, that would be me), you’ve been within 5 to 10 feet of a shark without knowing it. That doesn’t give me much comfort, thank you very much. Bottom line, though, is that you’re twice as likely to be killed by a lightning strike than to be bitten by a shark.
I read recently, or maybe I heard it from Burning Bright during one of his rants, that sharks like to attack from underneath, so last time I was at the beach I was careful to stay in relatively shallow water. And the article mentioned above gives some tips for staying safe if you do encounter a shark. For example, it says to maintain eye contact with the shark.
Riiiggggghhhhttt….
I’m going to practice hitting a shark in the snout and gills…just in case, keeping in mind that water resistance will weaken my punch. Maybe there’s a business opportunity here – shark self-defense. They could teach it at the local YMCA.
No fear, that’s my new beach mantra. If I chant it long enough, loud enough, I’ll start believing it. Won’t I?
P.S. There are no sharks in my pool. I just checked.
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