Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ripsnort on September 04, 2001, 08:31:00 AM
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Just a question: Why has the Mainstream Media focused on just the increased number of shark attacks and have not focused on the severe restrictions against fishing for them along the coast of the Eastern seaboard?
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You know, I've asked that same question.
10 years ago (or so) the limit on sharks in FL was changed from unlimited, to 2 per boat. I've yet to see a single person admit on television or in print that this may have some part in the increased number of sharks.
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It's the sunblock - SPF 30 and up give sharks the munchies....
I'd like to see the attacks compared to time of day, baitfish activity in the area, what jewlery the victim may have had on, tide & moon phase,etc.. some real underlying facts instead of just the hysteria. After all, we are in their neighborhood, they are not in ours.
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Or maybe they haven't really increased, but rather the media is making it seem like it is. Sharks attack people all the damn time. The media is bored, and they needed something to scare people with during the summer time.
COMING SOON THIS FALL!!! WHEN BIRDS GO WILD!!!
Flying south for the winter....or to kill? :rolleyes:
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LOL Super, you are correct, I always say to the wife "Must be a slow news day..."
I had a school of barracuda following me around in the keys while snorkeling..figured out it was the chrome rim around my antique mask...I left when one or two of the tried a head on with me...never encountered a shark while snorkeling off Boca Raton or the keys..
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Actually there is a DECREASE in attacks worldwide this year.
Last year there were 87 shark attacks, this year something like 46.
When that little boy in Florida had his arm bitten off by a shark, the real sharks(the media) pounced on it and said, there's a story here. As usual, they enhance the drama of everything and take it to the nth degree. From that point they report every single bite. Not just the big bites, but even little nibbles.
Man gets a leg hair RIPPED FROM THE FLESH by a rogue shark!
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There is a general increase though, from being a suprise in Florida to have a single bite in a year to being pleased it's under 50 compared to last year?
And I can't remember the last time a Florida beach was actually closed due to sharks. Like the media or not, that's news.
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Yep, it's all about selling newspapers. I wonder how many people were kill or injured DRIVING to the beach, the day of the shark attack....
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(* as he looks at the 2 1/2 inch, 50,000,000 year old sharks tooth fossil he has mounted on his wall behind glass, he wonders to himself *) ... gee, I hope all the caring human beings in the world don't find a way to kill off all these creatures, too ... dang shame about all those shark attacks, though ... but then, I guess, if you swim in the shark's back yard, you deserve what you get ... you know if that baby (* referring to the shark that belonged to the fossil tooth *) were still alive we'd be missing whole people, not just body parts ... sigh ...
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Bud, sharks have something like 3 million billion trillion gallons of ocean to swim in, if we just fished 'em off the coast within 1 mile where alot of folks have been consumed, there will be plenty around for the PITA folks to hug after. :)
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Originally posted by Eagler:
I'd like to see the attacks compared to time of day, baitfish activity in the area, what jewlery the victim may have had on, tide & moon phase,etc..
Let me know when tnhey figure it out so I can send a special friend to the beach, they might just show up at the right time.
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The resort industry should sponsor a shark derby.
Say $10,000 for the biggest, $1,000 for the biggest of any particular breed, $2,000 for the most caught. Must be caught within 2 miles of shore.
Sounds like great fun
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Damn.. I thought the title of this thread was "Sharks attack the media". I wouldn't have minded reading about that... though "Sharks attack lawyers" would have been better.
AKDejaVu
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BTW... sharks have a long life span and are pretty much at the top of their food chain. The contribute litte except to clean up dead/dieing fish and maybe even keep the population of some types of school fish down (as well as seals).
Barring some kind of Star Trek 4 scenario, why would we want schools of sharks roaming about... I mean... why such drastic limits on fishing/hunting them?
Extinction is not the issue... I mean really... any gill laden aquatic ocean creature is going to be able to survive man providing there insn't a complete poisoning of the ocrean. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to handle people with fishing poles.
AKDejaVu
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Superfly wrote:
Or maybe they haven't really increased, but rather the media is making it seem like it is. Sharks attack people all the damn time
What!!! then why would it be news?
then Fscott..
Actually there is a DECREASE in attacks worldwide this year.
Last year there were 87 shark attacks, this year something like 46.
You be a providing a cite matey?
I say its God's retrebution for the good people of FloriDUH...
Heheheh jk its the baitfish ban. Stupid ban.. when did they start doing that?
10B
[ 09-04-2001: Message edited by: 10Bears ]
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From expereince, there are almost always sharks in the surf zone. I have seen them while flying over it, fishing in it and diving through it.
The surfzone is the Mcdonalds of the ocean. It is more a factor of numbers of people in the water plus a (small) rebound of the shark population since limits where introduced, rather than any unusual activity.
Sharks don't scare me nearly as much as barracuda, stingrays and bluefish, anyway.
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Originally posted by Gadfly:
It is more a factor of numbers of people in the water plus a (small) rebound of the shark population since limits where introduced, rather than any unusual activity.
Yep, its both, more people in the water (what do you know media focused on that part!) AND more fishing restrictions.(the part they DON'T focus on in the news)
What the heck are bluefish?
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Originally posted by Ripsnort:
What the heck are bluefish?
http://www.fishsarasota.com/fish_species/bluefish.html (http://www.fishsarasota.com/fish_species/bluefish.html)
Great fun on light tackle. Need a steel leader though as they have some choppers. Travel in large schools chasing bait and will hit anything that flashes in the water including milk colored tourists :)
(http://www.fishsarasota.com/fish_species_photos/bluefish.gif)
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ahh, I could see how they would mistake Rosie O'Donnell in the sea for 'food'....I can hear her now..."We must remove the teeth from fish! They are killing our children!"
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umm , there's a restriction? ooops , guess we better put the powerheads away.
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I have seen a school of bluefish run through an acre or so of mullet, leaving nothing but a bloody oil slick in a matter of a few minutes.
Here is my favorite shark story: We had a charter for kingfish(slimefish, I hate em), and it was a little slow, so we were backing up to shrimp boats and drifting icefish off of them.
The water was only about 50' deep, and if your bait got within a few feet of the bottom, small(18"-36") shovelnose sharks would take it every time. Since I was the mate, I had the pleasure of dicking with them and saving the tackle. This one salamander thought it was funny to watch me remove them from his hook, and kept letting it settle to the bottom.
Finally, a little bitty one flipped out of my hand into the cockpit, and began thrashing around. The smarter of us hauled bellybutton for the flybridge or the cabin, but the salamander just stood there laughing.
The little shark clamped onto his calf, and would not let go, and now the salamander began thrashing! After I quit laughing, I squeezed his head(the shark's) and threw him over board. The salamander had a nice round chunk of meat taken out of his leg, and his (drunk) buddies would not let us return to port for another 4 hours. Needless to say, he was a bit nicer after that, as I patched him up.
Another time, when I was a kid, I caught a perfectly formed hammerhead that was only about 8 inches long. I put him in the ice chest, and many hours later, when we got back to the dock, I revived him, and he swam away. Amazing critters they are.
p.s. The biggest shark I have SEEN is a 25 foot plus hammerhead off of Okracoke about 30 miles. I know he was that big because he swam down alongside the boat, which was a 25 footer, and he was longer than it was.
The biggest I have CAUGHT(not me personally, but the boat I was on) is a tiger off the mouth of the Mississippi river that would have went easy 600#s, but we cut him off at the boat. That one hit a Marlin lure being trolled at 18 knots, and he launched about 10 foot into the air and ate the bait on the his way down. Pretty cool, man, let me tell you.
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I work at the SE Regional Fisheries Training Center in Charlseton SC, our XO wrote something that explains why sharks bite people.
"When people enter the water they become part of the food chain"
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Originally posted by Gadfly:
I have seen a school of bluefish run through an acre or so of mullet, leaving nothing but a bloody oil slick in a matter of a few minutes.
Are they like the piranha which will eat anything regardles of its size?
Would they attack a human?
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10Bears, it's called propaganda and ratings. ;)
Remember, the news media is a money making machine just like everything else in this world. The more the news scares people and keeps them hanging on to some BS drama, the more their ratings go up and the more they make money.
Just look at the all the crap with Elian; Cuba's Poster Boy/Answer to Christ. :p Have you seen all the crazy religious achetype paintings that have been made of that kid? It's insane the way people get caught up in the dumbest things the media makes a big deal out of. (Yes, I've been guilty of it too, but starting to wise up a bit. ;) )
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yikes - i found a headless seal out at ocean beach a few months back - how timely - the rest of him had big ol nast cuts and punctures. no propellor there.
every time i go to the bay or the ocean i see seals swimming around so you can bet i'm not going in there with em. :)
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Originally posted by SUPERFLY:
Remember, the news media is a money making machine just like everything else in this world. The more the news scares people and keeps them hanging on to some BS drama, the more their ratings go up and the more they make money.
Just look at the all the crap with Elian; Cuba's Poster Boy/Answer to Christ. :p Have you seen all the crazy religious achetype paintings that have been made of that kid? It's insane the way people get caught up in the dumbest things the media makes a big deal out of. (Yes, I've been guilty of it too, but starting to wise up a bit. ;) )
oh yeah - and double cc that.
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(Yes, I've been guilty of it too, but starting to wise up a bit. ;)
The further you get away from college (in years, after the political brainwashing), and the older you get, the wiser you get. ;)
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Bluefish are incredible to catch. Fishing at Emerald Isle this past spring 3 of us managed to LAND 140+ of them. MNietla, no danger really to humans, but if you are a baitfish..these things just mow through a school. However be carefull how you handle a hooked one. No lipping :) You know when the school is close, rod tips and gotcha plugs start slinging and bending.
Gadfly- while fishing in south Fla in Biscayne bay, my friend and I had a HUGE great hammerhead visit us. Our bout was 14 foot and the shark was that then a little more. I though I saw a king size hammerhead..but 25 ft, Oh My. His head was better than 30" wide from eye to eye. We felt very...insignificant.. in our little john boat and 3 miles from black creek landing.
One of our favorite thing=s to do in South Fla was catch Barracuda. We would just trll with light tackle in Biscayne bay with pre-rigged ballywho (spl?) and we hung some really big cuda.
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Bluefish are like piranha when excited, but they will weigh 5-15 pounds instead of 8 ounces like a piranha. I would not want to fall overboard in their frenzy...
Yeah Ammo, Cuda are fun, but mean. It is a waste of good Ballyhoo trying to catch em, just wrap some tinfoil around a number 6 hook.
I was wrong in the post above, I have actually seen bigger sharks than that, though not much. I have seen 3 or 4 whale sharks in the Gulf, mostly over the Flower Gardens off Texas. They were 15-35 feet, but a lot more massive. If you see one and turn the motors off, they will come up and rub on the boat. Hey, even a shark likes a good backscratch.
Anchored up(to a can, not the bottom) on the Flower Gardens, I have had one come by as I fished in the middle of the night. I would leave the tower lights on and have a 100 foot cone of light. The flying fish would volunteer into the cockpit, so I always had bait. Anyway, one night, a whaleshark came up behind the boat and just hung there for a while, maybe 5 feet away, and 4 feet under the surface.
I was tempted to get in the water with him, but the massive, fleeting shadows at the edge of the cone were decidedly NOT whalesharks, so I just watched him, as he did me. He had a whole posse of pilot fish and even triple tails following him, it was sweet.
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Originally posted by Gadfly:
Yeah Ammo, Cuda are fun, but mean. It is a waste of good Ballyhoo trying to catch em, just wrap some tinfoil around a number 6 hook..
You mean you can get Ammo and Cuda on a number 6 hook baited with a tin foil?
So far I tried only shooting at them, gotta try the hook method :)
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A friend of mine (old customer) was a playtoy for a great white.
Took off one arm, spun on the other... then decided he didn't taste good and let him go.
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'Summer of the Shark' overblown, scientists say
'There's nothing unusual about this year,' expert says
09/05/2001
By WILLIAM J. BROAD / New York Times News Service
A boy in Florida has his arm torn off by a shark and reattached by surgeons after a dramatic rescue. Two months later, a boy is killed by a shark off Virginia Beach. And two days after that, a man and woman are mauled on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The danger from sharks could easily be seen as rising dramatically. Time magazine declared this the "Summer of the Shark" in a July 30 cover story bristling with images of razor-sharp teeth.
But notwithstanding the bloody attacks, which included six people injured in two August days at New Smyrna Beach in Florida, scientists said new fears were overblown.
There is no rampage. If anything, they say, the recent global trend in shark attacks is down, even as news media attention soars.
"It's been crazy," said George Burgess, a biologist at the University of Florida who runs the International Shark Attack File of the Florida Museum of Natural History. "The basic perception that we're having an exceptionally sharky year is wrong."
Robert Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., agreed. "There's nothing unusual about this year" in terms of attack numbers, he said.
Last year, he pointed out, a bull shark attacked and killed a man in shallow water near St. Petersburg. But it made few headlines and was quickly forgotten.
"In past years, all these incidents – even the fatal ones – would have been a local or regional news story," Mr. Hueter said.
But not this year. The attack on Sergei Zaloukaev, 28, and Natalia Slobodskaya, 23, off the Outer Banks in Avon, N.C., on Monday drew national attention. Mr. Zaloukaev was killed, and Ms. Slobodskaya was in critical but stable condition at a Norfolk, Va., hospital Tuesday after losing her left foot and suffering a deep wound to her hip. Mr. Zaloukaev is the first person killed by a shark in North Carolina since 1957.
Statistics from the shark-attack file based at the University of Florida depict the global number of shark attacks as down this year, with 52 reported so far. The overall number was 84 for 2000, 58 for 1999, and 54 for 1998. For the 1990s, the yearly average was 54.
But the number of unprovoked attacks grew throughout the 20th century and reached the high of 84 last year, the museum says. The 1990s had the highest number of attacks of any previous decade.
The perception of this year as a particularly bad one does have some backing in the statistics for the United States. During the Labor Day weekend two people died, while there were 51 attacks and one death in all of 2000. Only in 1994 were there two fatalities, and there were no deaths in six of the 11 years since 1990.
Scientists attribute the increase over the decades to millions more people going to the beach and the increasing popularity of water sports. The big attacks this year, they said, came on holiday weekends when beaches were crowded.
Another possible factor behind the rise, scientists said, is simply more reporting of assaults. The same occurs periodically when "outbreaks" of some types of cancer disappear. After careful study, they turn out not to have increased.
John Allen Paulos, a math professor at Temple University and the author of Innumeracy, said vivid television images were overpowering statistics to produce a false nightmare.
"Over the last decade, there's been a very small increase, attributable to more people in the water," he said. "But nothing really significant is going on."
As attackers of humans, sharks rank fairly low on the list of animals. In New York City alone – where the reporting of creature attacks has been thorough and voluminous – people reported 12,656 dog bites, 826 cat bites, 81 squirrel bites, 18 raccoon bites, 11 monkey bites, eight snake bites and seven bat bites in 1981.
Despite the relatively low number of shark attacks, a debate is stirring in scientific circles over whether human activity may be provoking some strikes. Some experts argue that tourist boats that feed sharks may be leading the killers to search for food in unfamiliar places.
Other experts say federal fishing limits set on sharks might be selectively encouraging the proliferation of vicious, unwanted species.
Sean Paige, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argued recently in the National Review Online that the federal government was behind what he called the "shocking return of the shark." Attacks rose rapidly after 1993, he said, when the government started requiring deep cuts in the number of sharks that could be caught for sport or profit.
But Sonja Fordham, a shark fisheries expert at the Ocean Conservancy, a private group in Washington, said Mr. Paige had exaggerated the rise in attacks.
"This is an irresponsible argument" made to foster the shark-fishing industry, she said. "There's no basis for it in fact."
Moreover, scientists said, the shark population is dwindling dangerously. Atlantic shark populations are down about 75 percent compared with 25 years ago.
But Mr. Paige said those concerns are overblown and researchers don't know how many sharks are in the oceans.
The Associated Press and Cox News Service contributed to this report.
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I think it's the media attacking Florida's tourist industry for electing Bush last Nov :)
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LOL! I think you're right Eagler. :)
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This year its Sharks ,another year it was Pitbulls, next year it might be Cougars or Bears,or Black Widow Spiders or big giant fanged hairy Bunnys.
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Yeah, but Nate, they're just hyping up the hype to sell a hyped up hype story.
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Oh yeah, I guess your right.
Those Bastards!
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worldwide , 100 people die every year from box jellyfish stings....but , tis not manly to hunt an kill "jelly' fish, only sharks
[ 09-05-2001: Message edited by: john9001 ]
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Gadfly,
I dove the Flower Gardens about 4 years ago. At that time it was a preserve with no fishing allowed. Seems like the fish knew it as there were TONS of them in the area and few at the oil derreck we dove on the way back.
Has the preserve been changed?
Mav
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No, It has not. I fished the area in the late seventies and early eighties, but keep in mind that I was fishing for fun. I didn't keep anything(although I caught some very strange fish, and some definite keepers). We would troll the rigs(and a few secret areas) all day, and then tie off to the mooring bouys at night instead of coming back to port.
This was fishing Marlin tournys, so there would be a string of 8 or nine boats tied up bow to stern. Talk about a party! After all the wineheads went to sleep, us mates would fish for fun and collect some of the larger flying fish for trolling.
I have only dove on the Gardens once, and the closer in rigs a few times; I prefer tropical locations to dive in.
Here is a pic my brother took; the fool likes to bait up sharks and swim with them:
(http://www.lizking.com/msshark.jpg)
Note the posture of the shark in the foreground, he is fixing to go ballistic.
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sharks are dweebs ! :p
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(since nobody's said it yet)
PERK THE SHARK!!!
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Hey dudes.
Go swim in their natural habitat, and take your risk. Don't whine about if something happens.
Go skydive, and you might die. Don't blame gravity if you do.
Overfish, and don't be surprised if the top predators start looking for new hunting grounds.
Kill every shark withing 1 mile of the coastline? For what reason? So us humans can have yet another playground all for ourselves? For some exaggerated fear of something that actually kicks our butt in its own element?
I say we should start to shoot car drivers too - they kill way more people *on their way* to beaches than do sharks *near* the beaches.
Geesh. It's simple. we have the option of staying out of the water. Sharks don't. Sharks have been around for a wee bit longer than humans, and it'd be a tad bit sad that we'd decimate the shark population because we're more afraid of a statistically non dangerous thing (swimming) than a comparatively statistically dangerous thing (driving to the beach).
Sharks are cool. People suck. :)
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I wonder about these statistics (odds are better of getting struck by lightning or whatever) these are very distorted. They figure your odds of getting attacked in your lifetime, figuring in your whole life (not just time you are in the water) they also figure in people who never swim or never even see an ocean in their lifetime.
When did sharks become "warm fuzzy's"? When I lived at the beach sharks where vermin to be killed whenever possible for fun, food, or profit.
I’m all for preserving the environment but hunting dangerous animals who are in area's inhabited or frequented by humans is just good sense.
A similar example is that a few years ago they passed a law in this state that you could no longer use hounds to hunt bear and cougar. The amount of attacks by cougar on domestic animals and children went up sharply.
I’m not saying we should kill every shark in the world, but I would definitely make it uncomfortable and unhealthy for them to hang out in the same places we do. And no I don't care if they where hear first, it's a damn fish. Compare that to the life of somebody’s kid and IMO that fish could be sushi
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Originally posted by Maverick:
Gadfly,
I dove the Flower Gardens about 4 years ago. At that time it was a preserve with no fishing allowed. Seems like the fish knew it as there were TONS of them in the area and few at the oil derreck we dove on the way back.
Has the preserve been changed?
Mav
It is still a marine sanctuary. I dove the Flower Gardens last August and it was great. I saw quite a few black tips I followed one small school of black tips while solo diving :)
At about 95 ft on one of the oil rigs I was watching some black tips when in came a 12 ft tiger shark and sawed a big jack in half like it was butter and turned back around and swallowed the other half. It was all so interesting I stayed down a bit too long, enough to go deco and had to do a rather significant safety stop, but I still got back on board with 800 psi.
I have dove with a lot of sharks (never baited) without problems. This includes schools of hammerheads and a number of 14ft Bull Sharks off the coast of Costa Rica, near Bat Island, at a famous dive site called "Big Scare" :) lol
The Bull Sharks made my heart race because they were really huge. They were large enough to have bitten a person in half very easily. They were routinely within 8 to 10 feet of me swimming by for a look and circling as well.
I was on the bottom, trying to remain still so as not to scare them away!! really
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That is some exciting diving! Especially alone, Geez :)
I'm one for solo diving too... as long as you use at least two anchors. In spearfishing you always wind up alone anyway. I've had some mishaps, though, in spite of being careful.
One time, I was changing tanks in the water with a tank I that I had layed over the transom earlier so I wouldn't have to go back in the boat. The seas were 3 to 4 foot. The boat, transom and tank were going up and down, up and down. Next thing I know, the tank came down on my head. It didn't knock me out, but it really dazed me, and turned the water red. I missed having somebody to help me get into the boat, as I had no ladder at the time.
Another time at 85 feet on the bottom I had speared a nice big hogfish and was braining him with my knife. The knife slipped and went deep into my forearm. I felt sick when I saw the pulsing lime green smoke puffing out of my arm in big clouds. It was three hours before I got that sewn up. It would have been nice to have somebody there to help me pull up the hundreds of feet of anchor line :/
Ironically, I don't see many sharks at all down here in Florida, not at sport diving depths. I don't know why. I see some black tips and hammerheads in the winter, but few and far between. One time in winter trolling for King Mackeral, a six foot hammerhead swimming on the surface was on an intercept course with my boat. It kept coming and coming until he banged right into the side of my boat. I couldn't believe my eyes. I have no idea what that was all about. Other than that, it sounds like all shark action in Florida is in the surf... :)
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Lakes and Blue holes of concrete that take a bit of chlorine and a pump. Thats all youll catch me in. I spent 4 years at sea in the navy. Saw tons of Sharks from the North Atlantic to the Caribian. It's there world and I'm not playing in it. If they attack its out of hunger or fear. I know some disagree but you willl find very few species that are "That agressive".
As said in an earlier post. go in there world and you become part of there food chain. ;)
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Don't feed the sharks
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,33819,00.html (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,33819,00.html)
Funny how some think this will help considering the sharks don't attack the divers who are feeding them. It may be like our gator problem whereas ppl feeding them around ponds and lakes have lowered the natural fear gators have of ppl and equate ppl with food..