Jonathan Kieran

Grim follow-up to yesterday’s post. It appears another teenager has met with the jaws of doom while surfing off Ethel Beach in South Australia and this time the result was fatal. ‘Tis a tragic end for a kid who was shaping-up to be a gifted surfer.

The young fellow’s leg was ripped off by a thirteen-foot Great White Shark while his poor Dad watched the entire attack unfold. As many know, great white sharks have very specific hunting tactics honed by millions of years of evolution and they typically strike mammalian prey from the left and deliver an enormous bite to a rear flipper (or leg), severing the femoral artery and allowing the victim to bleed out quickly so that the meal can be taken with ease thereafter.

Gruesome? Yes. Effective? Very.

As I have mentioned before, Great White Shark populations are restored to fairly healthy numbers in most of the world’s waters. A few hundred years of overfishing made it possible for human beings to develop recreational sports with a relative expectation of safety (aside from drowning) but sharks have been doing their thing in the water for untold millions of years … surfers and divers are absolute newcomers to the ocean in terms of the Timetable of Existence and let’s face facts: we are not built for natural maneuvering in the sea or any other body of water. We are landlubbers who can manage a quick dip, basically.

These kinds of attacks are going to continue and become more frequent, and no amount of ardent but disingenuous environmentalist preaching that “sharks aren’t interested in humans” or reckless Ocean Ramsey stunt-swimming (I call her the Kim Kardashian of the Sea) will change the fact that a hungry or territorial shark will definitely be interested in you, if you are the only thing around that looks edible. And people ARE edible. Sharks will eat people whole.

Surfing and diving are fantastic sports and great recreational activities that can be enjoyed for decades by avid participants. But the time may have come to be extra careful and wary of beaches, conditions, and the need to employ the buddy system. That should be the case regarding oceanic interaction even without the presence of sharks. And the environmentalists are correct: Sharks must be protected and conserved to maintain a healthy ecosystem.

Be careful out there, friends. Being land creatures, it behooves us to have legs … and lives. RIP, young grom. Godspeed.

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[ Delightful new work by Jonathan Kieran is slated for major release beginning in Spring 2024 so brace yourselves and think of England. This stuff is built for speed. Stay tuned for more … ]

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