Shark Attacks, Consumes Christian Fundamentalists
Hoping to settle the long-standing debate about whether Jonah was swallowed by a whale or a shark, Sarah Sprague and Ruth Tippit, two Biblical literalists, eagerly dove into the waiting jaws of a 16-foot white shark armed only with a candle stub and a book of soggy matches. This photo, taken by their pastor, Reverend Foote, shows the brave zealots’ final glimpse of planet Earth—the chum-slick waters off Anacapa Island.
Tiger Shark Vs. Loggerhead Turtle
Turtle Fans Beware: This is pretty graphic.
Day 74: 9/7/13: Save The Turtles (Feed the Sharks!)
A lovely day at Zuma Beach volunteering for Oceana at the Malibu triathlon. Last summer, I asked surprisingly willing triathlon swimmers to sign a petition to protect California’s great white shark population (ultimately the National Marine Fisheries declined despite the dwindling numbers). This year: loggerhead turtles. I had that same squishy uniquely human whose-side-am-I-on-anyway? feeling as I talked about the increased need for habitat for sea turtles, knowing that tiger sharks particularly love to feast on them.
Ultimately I realized that my position as a human isn’t necessarily to root for one side, but to attempt to restore some part of the balance that humankind with its plastic, its miles of nets and hooks and acidified seas has destroyed. Nature, of course, is often brutal and so I’m moved when people fashion artificial flippers for a sea turtle crippled by sharks.
I know that human belief in our separateness from nature is the root of most of our problems. But my humanness will always make me feel like a distant admirer of animals, an apologist for my species, a loving outsider. As a kid, I wanted to be like Fern in “Charlotte’s Web,”–so much a part of the animal world that they “forgot” I was there and gossiped freely. Now, I don’t know if I seek a window into animals’ secret world so much as I need an alternative to the crowded, relentlessly human one I inhabit. Maybe it’s as simple as the epiphany I had a few weeks ago when admiring the crazed smile of a moray eel: “I like the other.”
A baby Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Day 73 9/6/13: You Ain’t From Around Here
My friend Jennifer and I went to the desert so she could do some research for a novel she’s writing. Somewhere between the sterile outlet malls of Barstow and the kitschy rustic ghost town splendor of Calico, we stopped by an RV park to ask some general questions about weather, water rights and desert life. The sign indicated that visitors should park on the road. We did, but wandered in the far entrance, toward the little trailer marked OFFICE. The silence of the desert is so startling to me that everything felt a little dreamlike.
Anyway, the suspender-clad bespectacled guy running the Shady Lane RV Court seemed cordial.
After a perfunctory greeting, he indicated that he’d already walked out to the road and checked out my car.
“I have to make sure I know who is walking around here or the guests get nervous,” he explained.
I didn’t see any guests, and attributed his zealousness to boredom, although I had told Jen on the way up the 15 Freeway that the desert seems to nurture a particular kind of paranoia. I don’t know if desert paranoia is different from swampland paranoia, or deep woods paranoia, but my friend Helen and I had experienced a few examples of desert “eccentricity” while visiting a Mojave wolf sanctuary last Christmas.
Day 72 9/5/13: The Past Tense
Today in shark class we marveled at the oddness of shark biology—the sand tigers’ practice of intrauterine cannibalism (unborn pups eat other embryos while still in the womb) and the unborn big eyed threshers that eat eggs from their mother’s uterus, a practice known as “oophagy.” (I love the sound of that word–somewhere between “egg” and “oaf”). We talked of Hawaiian and Aztec shark god myths and marveled at pictures of weird species like dwarf lanterns and goblin sharks. I suggested we all convert to an ancient shark worshipping religion and walk around the campus in strange wooden masks.The class had the feeling of discovery and aimlessness that grade school classes used to have—“Oooo—look at this weird picture.” I guess my goal, if I had one, was immersion and delight.
I told the class that as a child I mourned the eclipse of “Jaws” reign by “Star Wars” in 1977. Since I lost my father last year, any mention of childhood summons him. My father was, after all, the person who took me to see “Jaws.” Each memory threatens to pull me into unknown depths. Even the well-worn stories are reframed by his absence.
Jaws has Jowls!
Eyewitness Account: White Shark Sighting!
My friend Dana had the eerie luck of seeing a shark breach in Santa Cruz this summer:
From August 12-14th, I was camping at New Brighton State Beach just outside of Santa Cruz with my girlfriend, Valecia and my Portuguese Water Dog, Aesop. The campsite is on the bluff overlooking the ocean, so in the morning of the 13th, we went to the beach and spent most of the day swimming.
It was a very active day at the beach. There were people fishing and kayaking, and the ocean seemed active in general. There were a few young seals in the water playing with a bunch of little kids. The seals seemed to be very social and curious. Since my dog likes to swim pretty far out, I remember thinking he looked (perhaps too much) like a baby seal. Aesop is an expert dog swimmer, but next to the seals, I worried that from a shark’s point of view, he might appear like a sluggish baby seal who had drifted from the group, so I tried to stay close to him in the water.
Valecia went to get supplies from the campsite, and Aesop and I got out of the water. I was looking at the ocean and suddenly everything seemed very calm. The seals had all disappeared and the surface of the water appeared still and glassy. Shortly after, large pelicans starting lining the shore. There were so many of them, and they were so large, that they scared a few straggling swimmers out of the water. I looked at the water and thought, “Of all the times I’ve stared at the ocean, it’s never seemed as still and creepy as right now.” I had never noticed every animal disappear so suddenly before.
And then, I saw a great white shark breach the surface of the water. His whole body ejected straight up into the air. The shark wasn’t huge, but I definitely recognized that it was a great white. He was probably about 9-12 feet long. The sighting lasted only for a moment, and I was looking around to see if anyone else had seen it. I was dying to confirm what I had seen because I had never seen anything like this in my entire life.
About 6-8 minutes after the sighting, the pelicans descended into the water en masse. Shortly after that, all sorts of life returned to the ocean, particularly the scavenging birds.
-Dana Marterella
English: New Brighton State Beach near Santa Cruz, California View of public beach area near cliffs from stairs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Warhol Jaws
Day 71: 9/4/13: The Shark Sees My Soul & Finds It Lacking
Section 2 of my shark class met today. Instead of trying to decipher their stony expressions (anxiety, indifference?), I let them write a page describing how they felt about the ocean. One girl told me about her fisherman father who is legally blind and makes his own hooks. Although she is a vegetarian, she respects that her father only catches a fish or two at a time, because it’s better than factory farming. Oh the sheltered bliss of youth! While her father may catch only a poor hapless specimen or two, she has yet to discover the “factory farming of the sea” that is industrial fishing.
Sifting through the narratives of fear of drowning, fear of plankton, joyful memories of the dolphins of Anacapa, I found one student that took an overnight trip to SeaWorld with her seventh grade science honors class and dissected a squid there, another who tried to overcome her fear of sharks by standing in the “shark tunnel” at the aforementioned aqua prison, but confessed, “I didn’t last more than a few seconds without tears rolling down my face. I just can’t face them.” (emphasis mine).
Besides turning every single one of my students against SeaWorld, I look forward to exploring their fear more deeply.
“I just can’t face them,” seems to endow sharks with the power not only to kill, but to see inside the human soul and detect some moral failing there. I thought cats alone possessed this ability.
Shark Dreams 