Pass the defibrillator, please

[Myztlee]

Buhbye

[Maegwin]

You know that shark is thinking, "Mmmmmm, seal" right now....that guy is toast.

[Vinilaa]

YIKES! The only thing in the world I'm completely terrified of...

:eek:

[Eomer]

Sharks are one of the most fascinating creatures on the Earth, though. They are so perfect and efficient at what they do, they have barely changed in 250 million years. It's amazing to watch them swim around, they barely even move yet zip by so fast. I think a Mako can do like 40-50mph in a sprint, or something ridiculous like that.

It's really cool to swim with them, to be honest. I went on two trips to the Bahamas back in highschool, and once each trip we did a shark dive where they fed the sharks. It was eery, from 50-100 feet away you could clearly hear their teeth clanging on the metal bars that the chopped up fish were one. I would guesstimate that there was 10-30 sharks swimming around, although none nearly as big as the one in the pic. Max was maybe 6-8 feet, and those were mostly nurse sharks which are very docile (my dive buddy caught a ride on one). One dive someone saw a 12-14 foot hammerhead, so the divemaster got everyone the fuck out of the water quick.

[Daisiee]

where the hell is brody when you need him.

[Saztin]

SPEED
Mako sharks are the fastest swimming sharks and can even leap out of the water. They are also probably among the fastest fish. Estimates of their speed varies; some say that they can swim at about 60 miles per hour (97 kph), while more conservative estimates are about 22 mph (35 kph). There hasn't been enough experimentation on their speeds to have an definitive answer.

Source: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/sharks/species/Mako.shtml

[Myztlee]

Great Whites also jump out of the water, and it's something incredible to see, yay Discovery Channel. Everything Eomer said I agree with - they're perfect, and would live forever if not for we humans killing them off. I would love to swim with them, in a huge steel cage of course, even have a great white chewing on the steel would be something worth seeing, but I'm also terrified of them. In a primal sort of way. But not in a "let's kill them all off" way. I'm scared of them, but don't hate them. Whenever an ad for Shark Week comes up, my palms sweat and I get nervous, but the first words out of my mouth are "Right on, time to set the VCR!"

As cool as sharks are, and as much as they facinate me, if I was that guy on the surfboard and saw that, I would have left a little cartoon outline of myself in smoke as I ran across the surface of the water to get back to shore.

[Eomer]

Meh, you don't need to be in a cage when swimming with sharks, unless there are large sharks around. Most times they are all pretty small. When we did the shark dives, they had this dive site they called the Arena because there was a coral formation on the sea floor (depth about 40-50 feet, shallow enough that if the seas were rough visibility got really shitty) that was in a semi-circle, so they had everyone kneel down with their backs to it so that no one would get shocked by a shark swimming by them coming from behind (they really like testing you). So yeah, we just kneeled there, and in the middle they had a concrete block with an eye bolt (about 30-40 feet away), with a rope going up to a dude in a dingy feeding down fish ka-bobs. When there was no food in the water, you would only see maybe half a dozen sharks, swimming in and out of visibility. As soon as the food hit the water though, 10-30 sharks (was hard to count) would come out of nowhere and all start jockeying over the fish. It was an awesome experience, and not really that scary, cause like I said, most were around 3-5 feet long and not interested in humans. Baracudas on the other hand, I was scared shitless of, because they are mean as fuck and twice as dumb.

[Eomer]

Cool, found their website: http://www.blackbeard-cruises.com/m-dive.html#2

The dive site I was talking about I guess is officially called Bull Run, which rings a bell now. Wish I hadn't lost my log book.

This is kind of cool, they track sightings of various fish: http://www.reef.org/cgi-bin/georep.pl?region=TWA&geogr=41010004&min_date=%2f%2f&max_date=%2f%2f&species=&sort=

As you can see, Nurse Sharks (which look like giant cat fish) are really common, and so are Reef Sharks (standard grey shark).

[Myztlee]

I've had bad experiences with baracudas, one I was just snorkling out kinda deep when a 6' cuda went right in front of my nose, didn't even see him coming, scared me good. The other was, again, snorkling for 30 minutes, I come out, and these people are there waiting for me and say "did you know a baracuda was following you for the past 10 minutes?"

Yep, great for the ticker.

[Eomer]

To get the fish ke-babs for the shark dive, the boat just trawls out two fishing lines basically the entire trip. Whoever is nearby when something bites gets to bring it in. So one time the line starts going and some big dude from Alabama grabs it, and after fighting with it for about 30 minutes, they get the fish up. Turns out it was about a two foot barracuda. The deck hand went to grab it, and the little fucker managed to get a hold of his thumb, got him bleeding pretty good. So the deck hand went to grab a rubber mallet to finish it off. It took him about 5 minutes to beat the thing to death. I decided then and there I would never fuck with one.

[Vinilaa]

Well it's really only the big sharks that scare me... Great Whites in particular. The small ones don't bother me too much, I even patted a baby leopard shark at the Aquarium Under the Bay in SF. :eek:

[Maegwin]

To get the fish ke-babs for the shark dive, the boat just trawls out two fishing lines basically the entire trip. Whoever is nearby when something bites gets to bring it in. So one time the line starts going and some big dude from Alabama grabs it, and after fighting with it for about 30 minutes, they get the fish up. Turns out it was about a two foot barracuda. The deck hand went to grab it, and the little fucker managed to get a hold of his thumb, got him bleeding pretty good. So the deck hand went to grab a rubber mallet to finish it off. It took him about 5 minutes to beat the thing to death. I decided then and there I would never fuck with one.
I've heard real horror stories about Barracudas. There was actually this documentary on the news one day about a lady who went out on a fishing trip with her family for the day in Florida. While they were fishing, one of their lines got a tug so the wife grabbed it and started reeling it in. When they got the fish to the boat, they saw it was a barracuda and the fish lept out of the water, into the boat...and seriously mangled the poor wife's leg. It severed a major artery in her leg and she nearly bled to death on the boat before they were able to get back and get her to a hospital. Apparently it really bit her up good, not just in that one spot either.

[Yini]

I'm deathly afraid of sharks. Two summers ago I was in the ocean with a friend of mine, we weren't out that far(were still touching the ground). I was laying with my chest on my body board when I turned around and saw the fin of a shark not to far from me. There were a few sighting of a couple shark near where we usually would go body surfing at, but didn't think anything of it until I saw the fin. After that I was like there is no way I'm going in the water again. After we got out(when we saw the fin disappear) you could still see the shark swimming around. I'm sure the reason why it was there was because we were near one of the docks. Alot of time if you are on the docks while people are fishing you can see maybe a couple of sharks swimming near by.

The only water mammel I have ever touch not in a zoo or sea world was a dolphin. There use to be this resturant that was located in one of the coves and while you are out on the patio dolphins would swim up to you and so we really big turtles.

Yini

[Kristine]

Sharks are cool, some people are just wussies.

[Gheltire]

when we went to VA Beach a couple summers ago, that's exactly what we saw about 10-15 feet off to the side of us, maybe waist deep water at high tide....I've told myself and told myself that it was a dolphin but now I'm thinking "ok so sharks do ride the surf too..."

/adding salt content to the Atlantic Ocean, one shark sighting at a time

[Myztlee]

Sharks are cool, some people are just wussies.

Sharks are incredible. Perfect. Hit an evolutionary gold star and haven't had the need to change since. I'll watch any documentary on sharks anytime. They fascinate me, but also hit something deep down that scares the crap out of me. The thought of being out in the water and seeing that silhouette slowly taking shape, coming towards me makes the backs of my knees do strange things. I do not hate them at all, I think they should be preserved just as much as the whales, but they still instill a terror beyond primal.

Hell, there are scenes in Finding Nemo that scared me.

[Myztlee]

PS: Like Vini, small sharks I can handle (though I still really wouldn't want to run into one in the ocean unless under controlled circumstances). I remember finding a dead baby hammerhead once, about a foot in length, I thought it was the cutest, coolest thing, but even at that size, the teeth were wicked nasty. Didn't help that it had washed up on the beach in Florida that we were staying at, made me wonder where mom and dad were.

But if I were to ever see what that guy in the picture is seeing, the shadow/silhouette THAT big, my brain would probably explode. At least I wouldn't come back as a zombie.

[Shik]

cant find link but there was a fatal shark attack at a beach i swim at last year i think hehe...we still get the occasional siting here down under!

ps. That pic is fake, and been around for ages, i heard it got onto national geographic or something before they found out it was a fake?

[Eomer]

That's one hell of a fake, then. Looks pretty real to me. Just look at the dorsal fin, how it sort of has the distorted ripple effect on it, even though you can't really see the ripples on the water around it. If it is fake, someone spent a lot of time on it.

[Shik]

this is the national geographic one i was talking about, im sure the other one is a fake too tho

[Aundine]

The picture at the beginning of this thread is not a fake. However, it is a dolphin, not a shark.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/surfer.asp

-Aundine

[Thanantos]

I Live in St. Pete... And used to go to Jensen Beach to surf at my grandmother's house. And as a early high-school kid would stay there for the entire summer and surf.. I have seen LARGE fish in the wave on several occations. AND YES... you DO IMMEDIATELY CALMLY (DOnt splash around!!!) Turn around and catch the FIRST wave you can back to shore.
Then when you get back there is usually some people and a Life guard hanging around saying dumb things like "There are some sharks in the area you should stay in for a bit" Umm DUH!
SOme days they wouldnt let you go in cause of the activity being higher... /shrug

But never saw anything that big.. Just a fast shadow and a eerie feeling you are being watched... sorta a primal fear thing.. soo you look around to see what it was.. and usually you need to get out.

[Elidroth]

Hate to ruin all your fun, but that's not a shark. That's a dolphin. Shark fins are not swept and tapered like that but are in fact triangle shaped. Also shark tail fins are not horizontal either, and the pectoral fins are WAY too far forward to be a shark.

Dolphins ride the surf on a regular basis out here.

As for that second picture.. there's more than one problem with that.. 1st. The British navy doesn't fly Seahawks (navy version of the Blackhawk helicopter). Second, that's the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

[Shik]

Nice website there aundine

[Shik]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0815_020815_photooftheyear.html

http://www.snopes.com/photos/shark.asp

[Eomer]

Yeah, that helicopter one is obviously fake. I remember I got that in an email from someone.

And yeah, I was thinking that maybe the original picture was a dolphin, because it looked like the tail fin was horizontal and not vertical. But it was hard to tell.

[Vinilaa]

that's the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

I know the South African Coast near Cape Town looks a lot like the SF Bay but THEY DO NOT have the Golden Gate Bridge. :p

[Myztlee]

Alright, I can accept the first is fake. Well, not fake, but misrepresented. Though that's a HUGE dolphin, hard to judge scale but it looks well over 10' long compared to the surfer.

I guess the fact does still remain, had that been me on the surfboard, and I saw that shape in the water, I pretty much would have Jesus'd across the surface back to shore, dolphin or not.

Interestingly enough, just saw on the news this second that an LA beach was closed due to a bunch of 6' Mako sharks in the area. I hope they don't decide to hunt down the sharks to make the beach "safe". The only way a beach is safe is if there aren't any humans on it. Much like the rest of the planet.

[Vinilaa]

Aul and I were kayaking near some dolphins an adult and a baby... from far away they looked like sharks and I started paddling away from them, when I finally turned back around they were jumping out of the water and playing and I was bummed I'd run away. :rolleyes: