A surfer was "nudged" by a shark in Huntington Beach, CA, this past Friday morning. As a Huntington Beach native, an avid beachgoer and a curious college kid during shark week I decided to learn more about this menacing creature.
The connotation of sharks, in general, is very negative. People assume that sharks are violent and mean. These people do not actually know anything about sharks, they are just using the stereotypes that they have heard in their lives and creating this monster in their minds.
Sharks are not usually predators to us, they do not normally attack humans without being provoked. They attack during territorial attacks or when people are disturbing them in some way. This in no way makes them evil or scary, this only means that if you are behaving in a responsible way while in the ocean you should be safe.
Although sharks usually do not attack without being provoked, they do attack surfers once in a while. When a surfer is laying on their surfboard, they look very similar to a seal (one of a great white sharks’ main prey) who is laying on the surface of the water, because of their terrible vision. Sharks have very bad eyesight, which is corrected by their heightened other senses. These other senses allow them to hear other fish and animals and also to smell a drop of blood a quarter of a mile away. These factors are what help them to live and survive, but they also further the viscous stereotype of sharks because these senses make them scarier to us as humans.
If you are ever unlucky enough to cross paths with a shark the smartest thing to do is to stay calm and to hit the shark in the gills and face. This is very important because it is their only vulnerable place and it will make the shark retreat immediately. But before you panic, make sure that it is a shark and not a dolphin. The main visible differences between these two amazing animals is the way they swim, and their dorsal fins. Sharks have a pointed triangle fin, and dolphins have a curved one. Sharks swim in a side to side manner and dolphins, the mammal that have an air hole, porpoise (swimming up and down, in a wavelike motion).
via surflook.com
Recently sharks have been sighted more commonly off of the beaches in the Southern California, and specifically the Orange County area. There are probably a lot of reasons for this happening; climate change, the temperature of the water, people have just become more aware of them, or even an unknown reason. The reason isn’t important, all that matters is that they are here and we have to learn to live with them. Sharks have been around since early spring and the first encounter has just occurred. The shark “nudged” a veteran surfer while he was sitting on his surfboard early Friday morning, before it continued to swim away. Thankfully this was a safe encounter for the surfer, but the shark was labeled “aggressive”, and two miles of beach were closed for the weekend, according to KTLA 5 News. I hope that this is the only aggressive sharks currently calling Orange County its home and that they do not begin to have more, or worse, encounters with people.
If this information has put you on edge and now you never plan on going to the beach again you should definitely rethink that plan. Shark attacks are not a very likely occurrence, and being killed by a shark attack is even more unlikely. Around 70 people are attacked by sharks each year, and less than five of those people die from this attack. To put that in perspective, there are more people who die from fireworks, coconuts falling on their head, and from digging large holes in the sand each year than from shark attacks. If you plan on living in fear of sharks during your life, you should probably be careful to look out for falling coconuts too.
Good Luck!
