I Did Sleep On It

    Western Australia has seen an increase in shark attacks this year. The recent death of a diver has of off Vasse has now put the number of shark-related deaths in the area into "unprecedented" territory.

You can hear more about it in this irresponsible snippet from weather.com.  The conclusion was to either allow humans to be consumed by sharks or hunt sharks to death. That is a quote.

Death is sad. Absolutely. To me though, this fellow's death would have been equally as sad had he died in a car accident or from cancer. Dead is dead. It doesn't matter how, really.

But it does. Now there is a call for a shark cull by the tourism industry. 

The f-ed up-ness of this situation kept me up all night.

Ironically, this website shows the man recently killed by a shark holding a fish that he just killed.  Maybe it is neither here nor there. Maybe it is an image of the circle of life.

If you put yourself into a dangerous situation, unwanted results may occur. I don't get what is so tough to understand about this. If I am snorkeling and get eaten or injured by a shark...well, f*&^. I was in the ocean and sharks live in the ocean. In particular, if I was in a part of the ocean where large, hungry sharks are known to hang out. Double f*&^. One for being dumb and another for being dead.

Sharks are supposed to eat. Maybe if we didn't fish the shit out of their food they wouldn't come into our swimming areas to eat our kids and dogs.

My first experience with sharks was Jaws. I did get that it was a horror movie of sorts, but my fascination with sea life grew from that movie. The fact that creatures so powerful and threatening and beautiful existed was exciting to me as a child. The movie didn't scare me...the merry band of shark hunters did.

The pic above was taken from a fish market in Ecuador where I lived for a few months. These hammerheads, barely 3 feet in length, are babes. Peace Corps and other do-gooder types frequented the fishing village and were attempting to educate the locals on the benefits of adopting more ecologically sound fishing practices (the P Corps girl was literally packing her bags to bail out of job and country when I arrived). What I learned my favorite Spanish teacher/cafe manager/chef/movie theater ticket taker/person with the best beach house in the world, was that the large sharks have been fished out of the waters and this is what remains. Ecologically f-ed up. I can see why the Peace Corps chick peaced out, man.

This experience (which I had to walk through every other day) - made me sad and kinda sick. (*I heart Ecuador is big ways and my experience was not purely negative as this blog reads. I will post a more positive story in the future*). I was a little bothered because of the dead shark babies and a little more because many of the men in this town fish because they have nothing else to do (besides impregnate 14 year-old girls and ruin their chances for an education). It was definitely upsetting because they also brought in bycatch dolphins and turtles and other "whoopsies."

The worst part was that these beautiful fish were there, in f-ing buckets, rotting in the sun.  What a waste of resources, energy, and more importantly - what a waste of life.

Shark Encounter: This sexy b^#$@ didn't bite...she had a freakin' baby in from of us! 

Bottom line - love sharks or at least respect life. They are apex predators. They maintain balance in our oceans. They do not reproduce like other animals - having maybe 1-4 pups a year with some species not even reaching sexual maturity until 15. When you kill them, that is it. They are just gone.

Sure, some sharks might eat people, but people f*&^ing destroy everything.