Jonathan Kieran

For all of those heartening stories we have heard over the years about dolphins rescuing swimmers and divers from the predations of sharks in the salty wilds of the Big Bad Ocean, it is crucial to remember that the acrobatic and beloved animals are a fairly regular part of a large shark’s diet.

Watch as the squeaking, happy dancers of the Neptunian tides perform all manner of maneuvers alongside recreational boats, flipping in and out of the water and coursing along in the wake of speedier vehicles, displaying their prowess as the Briny’s most dazzling cetacean swimmers.

Alas, even these athletes of the deep cannot always outmaneuver the surprisingly agile and stealthy Great White Shark, especially when targeted from below in delicious silhouette. The dolphin’s chances for survival are even less when two or more sharks are gathered for the buffet. This was indeed the case for one luckless member of the Flipper Brigade about 90 feet offshore near Torrey Pines in Southern California the other day. Beachgoers got an eyeful as a conglomeration of great white sharks, probably juveniles, went after the doomed dolphin like a gaggle of bulimic San Francisco matrons at dim-sum assembled for lunch in a hot Chinatown eatery.

A nibble hear, a chunk there, and Flipper’s remains washed onto the shore ignominiously once the sharkies had their fill. Feel what you’re going to feel—dolphins are our cute, relatable mammalian companions, of a sort, bringing good cheer and bonhomie to the roiling waters of the world—but the beaches around Torrey Pines are extremely popular with surfers of the human variety. Just imagine if these hungry great whites had fixed their sights upon some poor guy just catching some waves on his board, baking off a buzz. Not a pleasant thought at all.

Of course, marine biologists will likely insist that the sharks mistook the dolphin for a seal. Prehistoric creatures with hundreds of million of years of evolved hunting experience have real trouble distinguishing one kind of food from another—much the way supermarket shoppers are always mistaking rotisserie chickens for cans of baked beans. It’s all just one big Wordl puzzle out there for us all, the fingered and the finned. Stay frosty out there.

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