You regular readers probably know that I am not really a fan of sharks, I’m not the only one out there who has a thing about them though, am I…..? 😉
Well, on tv tonight I saw a preview for a movie that is so bad I had to share it with you shark lovers. Sharknado. Yep, shark+tornado. The toothy storm from hell. Completely realistic.
I’m just glad it wasn’t an ad for Australian tv. I would be able to avoid that first run without a problem, but late one night….I’ll change the channel… and there it’ll be. Sharks dropping from the sky. I’d never be able to watch late night trashy movies ever again…. 😉
It you have a problem with sharks (or storms, or over acting) you should probably not watch this clip. 😀 Unless you want to see the fastest and least likely way to bisect a plummeting shark. It’s at the 38-ish second mark if you blinked the first time…
Regular readers might remember that I am not a fan of sharks. Selachophobia is my one completely irrational fear.
It is irrational for a few reasons. I know sharks have better things to do with their time that lurk in the shallows waiting for humans, so going to the beach isn’t really risky at all.
The main reason this fear is irrational is because we live more than an hour from the beach. Boats aren’t my thing either so unless one gets on the bus and turns up on my doorstep there is very little chance a shark and I will ever be trying to occupy the same space.
JG didn’t do me any favours the other day with her New Jersey shark post though. I remember seeing the movies about these events some years ago and thinking that the scene where the shark is spotted swimming under the bridge towards the unwitting ‘dinners’ splashing about upstream was a little too convenient and probably written in to the script to make the story more exciting. According to JG’s account of the events that’s how it really happened. Eeek.
For those of you who didn’t see that post (go and have a look), a quick summary is that up until 1916 people in New Jersey still lived safe in the knowledge that sharks only ate things like dolphins and seals. Humans were obviously not on the menu even though we are of a similar size and probably taste just as delicious*. In the early weeks of July 1916, after a few attacks in front of shocked onlookers, people realized that this assumption was totally wrong (and probably that all those previously attacked by sharks just didn’t live to point the finger).
The shark in 1916 not only attacked people on a beach, it also swam up a river and took some even more unsuspecting victims there.
Those of you who live in Australia (and South Africa, I suspect) will know that shark attacks in the news are not something unusual. We don’t see them all the time but we aren’t shocked when we hear of them, just unhappy. Of course we are happy for all you potential tourists to think that your average surfer dodges a Great White between every set. 😉
I had to rant post about sharks because I wanted to share this article. In 1935 a 14ft shark was placed in the Codgee Aquarium for the enjoyment of the masses.
The shark had been captured a week earlier and obviously had been having quite a few adventures recently.
In front of stunned onlookers it stopped swimming, thrashed about for a moment, and vomited up a human arm. The arm had a distinctive tattoo and a piece of rope tied around the wrist.
I bet the horrified crowd didn’t really care about the distinctive markings though and I am sure a few of them never went into the water again…..
The shark also disgorged other things, a bird, bones and parts of another smaller (6ft) shark who was the original eater of the arm (which is why it was intact enough after a week for fingerprints to be taken).
The arm turned out to be all that remained of James Smith, a petty criminal, and the story behind his death was one of the most convoluted stories in Australia’s legal history. Due to the lack of body, and the underworld creed of keeping your mouth shut, nobody was ever convicted of his murder (Dictionary of Sydney, wikipedia). Had the shark not eaten the smaller shark, then been captured by fishermen, Smith’s fate would have never been known.
Just because, and to show you that sharks really can pop up anywhere (so my fear is not entirely stupid) here is a clip from Brisbane, Queensland.
During flooding a few years ago half a dozen Bull Sharks were washed into the lake on a golf course and became a local attraction. Recently the course and lake were inundated again and those at the course were worried that their iconic sharks might have made their way back to the sea.
A later news article was happy to report that the sharks were still splashing about in the lake as usual, forgoing their chance at freedom. Maybe they have developed a taste for golf balls. After all, who is going in after a lost ball there! (I think the clip’s title ‘killer sharks’ is a bit of an over dramatization though….)
*I think that one day we might meet a killer whale with a taste for humans and our current assumption that they don’t eat us either will go the same way.
When I found this article I actually checked the rest of the page it was on just to be sure that it wasn’t some sort of sneaky promotion for the ballet dancer whose photo is mentioned in it.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t. This article was sandwiched between newspaper reports about smallpox quarantine, and troubles with shearers. Not really a prime place for a bit of advertising so I have to assume that they expected their readers to believe the story.
I have done posts in the past about the unusual contents of stomachs, although it seems that sharks are the ones with the most unexpected eating habits*.
None of the reports I have found in the past, however, seem to have had something as fragile as a photo of a ballet dancer doing its best to avoid digestion though.
Now, I’m not too knowledgable about anatomy but I have often seen liver at the butchers. I can easily see how unusual things make their way into a stomach, but a liver? No, I don’t think so.
This article makes me a little scared for the poor critters at the aquarium. Was the person performing the post-mortem also the one charged with keeping them healthy when they were alive? Were there really rocks, pebbles, wire, a bullet, and a photo inside this poor creatures liver or was it some other, more believable, body part that contained the collection? Even I can tell the difference between a liver and a stomach….
It was with small amusement I read in the news yesterday that a diver was feeding the sharks at Melbourne Aquarium and was bitten on the face. We have been to the aquarium before and watched the feeding. A large stingray did it’s best to suck the head off one of the divers and amused my boys no end. I can only imagine what happened in the viewing gallery when the shark latched on yesterday. Gasps of horror? I suspect that if there was a school group in attendance the gasps would have been accompanied by small boys saying ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’.
This incident is a lot less impressive that it sounds, the shark was a Tawny Nurse shark, a type of shark that usually feasts on octopus it sucks out of their hidey holes, and was only 40cm long. Still, I wouldn’t want it chewing on my nose and I expect that the injured diver was far from amused.
After reading about that shark, of course I had to go and look for an old article about face-eating sharks and was totally unsurprised to find another. Poor Constable Gallagher was out for an innocent spot of spear fishing and a man-eater latched, on nearly removing his nose.
Hmmmm… The shark that attacked him was a Wobbegong shark (I have always loved that name ….Wobbegong…) a type of carpet shark not known for its man-eating tendencies. Wobbegongs are usually found on the sea floor just hanging around waiting for their whiskery faces to attract small fish to their deaths. They generally only bite people who step on them.
Could it be that the spear fishing policeman got a little too close to one and scared the crap out of it? Some might say it is a case of just desserts…
Last year a Sydney man was teaching his son to surf and was reportedly bitten on the leg by a two metre Great White Shark. A local shark expert witnessed the attack and renewed his calls for greater protection against sharks. (Nothing to do with the shark patrol/warning operation he runs of course.)
A tooth removed from the wound proved the shark to be a 1.6 metre Wobbegong and threw a cloud of doubt over the expert. I’m sure you have seen documentary footage of a Great White, they are big, scary and white(-ish). Well, a Wobbegong is called a carpet shark because it looks like, umm..a shark-shaped carpet. Not much of an expert if you can’t tell the difference. Perhaps he would have been better off saying ‘I don’t know what type it was, I didn’t get a good enough look’. But why let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?
If you have read my other posts on sharks you will know that I believe that if you are in the water with them you have to expect to be eaten. Don’t complain. Again the sharks are reinforcing the lesson, stay out of their big wet dinner plate if you don’t want to get tasted! 😉
Have a look at this diver following a beautiful Wobbegong on youtube
If you wish to use any images or text from my blog be sure to ask permission and include a link back to Buried Words and Bushwa, and full credit to it.
Trove.
The newspaper articles here come from the National Library of Australia (trove.nla.gov.au). Get on there and do some text correcting! You never know what you might find...
Buried words and Bushwa. 
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