OK...in the new era of political correctness and no offense to anyone.....what about shark week on TV in light of all the real shark attacks that are occurring along the Carolina coast.
I hope somebody says something about being safe in the water.

I would be p!$$#d if one of my family had been shark bait and then having to see all the hoopla on TV celebrating sharks.

Growing up I spent a lot of time along the coast swimming, fishing and floating just beyond the breakers. At this point in life I think I will confine my ocean experiences to the tidal pools. Just a too much pucker factor to being in the water these days.

Hope all those injured recover quickly.

Yes, Bill, it's been quite an eventful summer along the North Carolina coast. Very, very unusual to have this many bites in a single season, much less a whole year or two.

Fortunately, no deaths so far, but two teenagers lost arms, and some of the other bites were serious but not life or limb-threatening.

Nobody's been able to explain so far why the sharks have been in such shallow water or, seemingly, so much more numerous this year. A couple of people have been bitten in no more than ankle-deep water near the beach.

I'm thinking of getting a few thousand t-shirts printed up with "I Survived 2015, the Summer of the Shark" and a map of North Carolina.

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

Are the Sharks having people Week?

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

Shark week has been on every year in the summer since 1988. I'm sure there had been a few shark attacks between 1988 and now.

Beautiful thing about TV is that you can change the channel up or down or turn it off. No one is forcing anyone to watch it, especially not the victims or families of

I'm genuinely surprised that there hasn't been a big knee-jerk-panic-kill-every-shark-we-see thing along the North Carolina coast.

I used to love going to the beach (North and South Carolina beaches) in the summer and swimming/floating in the Atlantic. And in the Gulf when I lived in Florida. But one year, I just stopped. No particular reason, other than coming to the realization that there are things out there that I can't even see, and that some of those unseen things can kill me and eat me, and have a swell time doing it.

The last data I could find shows 11 fatal shark attacks along the NC coast from around 1900 through 2012, out of a total of 95 unprovoked shark attacks.

And there is a type of Jaws mentality at work in the coastal resort towns of North and South Carolina. To my knowledge, no NC beaches have been closed, even temporarily, because of the attacks...not even immediately following a shark attack. Gotta rake in those tourist/vacation dollars, you know. Who do those sharks think they are, anyway...cutting into our income like that, spoiling our fun and stuff?

It's possible. Could be payback. Shark vigilantes taking revenge for the millions of sharks killed just for their fins and skin.

Yes, unfortunately. Thankfully it's only once a year. Or maybe twice. I never watch it. Period. I mean, you can only do so much with sharks eating other things, or coming up out of the water to take bait, and so on and so forth. Shark Week has become about as repetitive as Bear Gun threads or Open Carry threads on this forum. It's like watching reruns of I Love Lucy or something.

Swimming on the back side of Shackleford Banks just a wee bit east of Beaufort Inlet. (The kind of cut where you pull up to shore and jump in with the anchor right at the beach and then go in over you head) Had a good time swimming when buddy hollers...fish breaking...we pull up anchor and go maybe 30 yards to see b i g hammerhead having lunch. Didn't go back swimming that day.

NC has a large amount of shallow water beaches. It has been 10 degrees hotter than normal during the month of June, and the water is warmer than normal. The surf is rampant with mole crabs(sand fleas), which attract large numbers of pompano, who feed right in the surf. The bull sharks, primarily, come into the surf looking for food,i.e. the pompano, mullet, and menhaden, and since bull sharks feed with the 'bump and bite' method, they bite when they touch something solid, that is putting off an electrical discharge, as all living things do. The water is murky, the sharks are hungry, and people are handy. Accidents will happen, and this month has illustrated why swimming in murky ocean water can be hazardous to your heath. If you don't want to take the chance on being a victim, swim in the motel pool and don't go more than ankle deep in the ocean. Common sense, folks, which isn't so common anymore.

I have never understood shark week, but find it even less amusing this year. The most wonderful week of the year? Really? Give me a break.

I also have never understood protecting predators, obviously the more sharks there are the more attacks we will have. Plus they are depleting our food supply. I must be stupid, but I feel like the world would be a better place without Great White sharks.

I'll watch Shark Week. I like studying sharks, and want to learn more about them. I don't think the recent attacks should compel avoiding learning about sharks.

BTW, George Burgess, the shark attack file spokesman, said that Florida has many more attacks than do the Carolinas.

I've studied attacks for years, and some take place in incredibly shallow water. Did any of you see that video of a blue shark patrolling RIGHT off the beach in the UK? Its pectoral fins must have grazed the sand at the edge of the water as a crowd of terrified people watched. It was in a sort of channel just deep enough to let it swim.

Bull sharks can reach over 1,000 miles up freshwater rivers. The record bull shark came from a South African river, over 13 feet long.

On the other hand, some of the shark "documentaries" these days are BS. I asked our man in Cape Town (Stirling) about the huge white shark supposedly lurking off of his city, which was supposed to be a local legend. He said it was a fake story, but a big white had just attacked a swimmer at False Bay, just to the north.

Sharks are fascinating. But did you see the River Monsters episode where Jeremy Wade showed the jaws of that really big musky? And the one that he caught (different musky) was also big enough to deliver a really bad bite. I think of muskies and pike as sort of freshwater barracudas.

True. There was an infamous series of attacks in the U.S. during WWI, in either 1916 or 1918, please correct me if I cite the wrong year. IIRC, it was New Jersey? The sharks swam a great distance upstream in some river, and I believe the fatal attacks took place in fresh water.

We all know of the shark attacks when the USS Indianapolis was sunk in 1945. What is not mentioned is that whenever a large ship went down in the Pacific (and there were many), either side, the sharks were always on the scene en masse giving the many 100s in the water a rough time.

Kaaskop49
Shield #5103

It was Wed., July 12, 1916, in Matawan Creek, NJ. It was probably a Bull Shark, C. leucas. I'd have to check, but think about 4-5 men were killed. I can get their names, if you're really interested.

Some books I have on the subject include, "Shark Attack: Their Causes and Avoidance", by Thos. B. Allen. That account is on pages 20-32.

BTW, I'd read all of those books that Chief Brody was looking at in the movie, "Jaws." I have some newer ones, too, and they record some grim attacks.

You are correct about mass attacks on shipwreck victims. One of the worst was on a ship carrying Italian POW's to S. Africa in WW II. I think most of the sharks in that event were Oceanic Whitetips, Carcharhinus longimanus. The ship was torpedoed and the sharks feasted.

I think it is because "Jaws" was played in 500 theaters on June 21.

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SDMF

We protect predators of many species because they help maintain the natural environmental/ecological balance of this planet we inhabit. We'd be up the proverbial creek without predators. Keep in mind, also...man is the most dangerous predator on earth.

Kinda like the more cars we have, the more wrecks we'll have? And no, sharks are not "depleting our food supply". Man is in no danger of becoming extinct because sharks eat a lot of fish. Sharks are not taking the food from our dinner tables.

No, it would not. Every animal has its place in the natural world. Every animal fulfills a purpose in the great cycle of life on this planet. Just because we may not like it or understand it, does not lessen its importance to us.

I love watching shark week ! ( not the super shark fake documentary's.) I enjoy learning about apex predators, and that's what a shark is. If you don't wanna get eat by one don't go in the water. That was there domain long before it was ours. I still swim when I'm on the coast even though I'm terrified of sharks. When I'm in that water you couldn't shove a greased sewing needle up my butt with a 10 lb sledge hammer!

I can't buy into the hype. I'm fortunate that if I need to see a shark I can stick my head in the water off one of the local piers.
As far as the OP's contention that some folks may be dismayed by the TV after a real life encounter I wonder about car wrecks vs. car commercials?

What would be a good shark caliber.

I live every week like Shark Week...

Always good advice.

Edmo

Live every week like it is Shark Week

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TRUTH: Don't delete my posts!

We are so out of our element when swimming in the ocean. Once we get past out ankles, all we are is bait.

when i shallow water dive when i see the first big one i usually get out of the water and go to another spot only because i know he has a friend near by

I want big sharks! When I was little, the encyclopedias (remember those?) said Great Whites got to be 40 ft long. Now they say Megaladon was that long. I wouldn't stay out of the ocean because of them, but I'm not going looking for them, or chumming either. We need all the great predators. Something needs to eat us! We don't control our own population, and there is already waaayyy too many of us.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

An extremely valid point. The animals aren't eating us out of house and home, the animals aren't the ones destroying our planet...we're doing it to ourselves.

Several of my Caribbean scuba dives have included sharks.
The docile Nurse Sharks will come to us due to feeding habituation.

Basking or other bottom sharks don't move, but will flee when approached.

Carribean Reef Sharks are more excinting. 13 feet of looming fish, make that a dozen thirteen foot sharks circling.

All of us divers seemed to bunch up like a bait ball.

I like shark week, but don't set my schedule by it.

I'm getting a kick out of Travel Channel, I think, having "Shark Fest" the same week. They say, Yeah we said fest not week. So it's not our idea, so what, the sharks don't know what channel they're on.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

Attendance is still high at auto shows,despite high fatalities.

Sharks are SUPPOSED to leave swimmers alone but they have gotten the idea that they can bite people on OUR beaches.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Don't need to watch shark week, just watch the new's

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Don

Swim in a critter's food bowl, and wonder why folks get bit?
Think how bad it would be if they were all really going after people.

Exactly. This is a point that's been made for years and years, and not just referring to sharks.

When we venture into the wild, say Montana. I have a photographer friend who lives around Seely Lake. I have a photo he sent me of a grizzly bear on a little hill right behind his house. I say behind "his house", but that begs the question...whose house is it, really?

Our western and upper western states are home to some of the largest, most dangerous predators on earth. There's a few east of the Mississippi, too. When we go there, we're in their house. Ditto for our shoreline. We aren't "humans" to these animals. They don't see us as intelligent, thinking animals. We're just another type of prey. A food source. An item on their menu.

I respect and love all wildlife, large and small. And I know what the dangerous ones can do. Without our guns, we don't even come close to being capable of warding off an attack by a top predator. It isn't a Walt Disney movie out there.

Think about it. There are beings out there who would love to do the same thing to you that you're going to do to that steak or those ribs over the 4th of July weekend. They just wouldn't waste time seasoning and cooking you.

What was this thread about, I've forgotten. Oh, yeah, sharks. Here's a clue...it really isn't safe to go back in the water.

Or come to the North Carolina coast...watch it live!

Tell you what...you do that and take a bunch of 'em up around Ocracoke and Hatteras, or down around Carolina Beach and Ocean Isle, I guarantee you they'd sell. Those Northerners (colloquially known as Yankees ) who come down for vacation will buy anything.

(That's a joke, folks. Some of my best friends are Yank...I mean people from up North.)

The simplest way to avoid shark attacks is to go to the beach and not the ocean.....

LMFAO

Watch out for the old Saturday Night Live landshark...

If it weren't for those high capacity beaches, we wouldn't have this problem.

Thirty years or so ago my ex-wife and I went to Nags Head for a few days. We stopped at a fishing pier down there somewhere or the other and they had a mounted shark in the tackle shop. I had to back across the shop to get in all in the camera frame. The fellow in the shop told me it was a Mako, and it weighed just under 700 lbs. Big fish to a freshwater bass fisherman.

I asked where it was caught. He said "Right off the end of the pier here. The chamber of commerce doesn't like us shark fishing during the tourist season. They don't want the tourists to know what's just outside the breakers."

I could understand that. The real question to me is, why would people think they weren't there?

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John 3:16 .

When I was a kid on the Eastern Shore of Maryland we would go to Ocean City for a week while my father worked down there. He was usually a Chesapeake Bay waterman. and he knew an ol fellow down there. He would go out in the bay behind OC and he made his living catchin sharks. They would get trapped at low tide while grocery shopping in shallow water. He harpooned 'em and shot 'em..some were almost as long as his boat. I got to go out with him every now and then. Being a young'un I was probably just in the waybut oh my he caught some big'uns. Think he sold 'em for cat food or something. The city fathers banned him from the fish docks...or so he said. I was with him when he killed an 11 foot Tiger. That was a really big critter. I also saw a huge Tiger cruising in a small trough down at Hatteras one time. No more than 25 ft off the shore. Out past him the water level rose to knee deep and all the swimmers never saw the darn thing. Guess they figured they were safe. Only shark that ever scared me was an 8 or 9 foot Bull shark I think. I was pulling eel pots out of the Delaware bay surf and had one rub up against me twice. I didn't know what it was at first. I realized pretty quick the 2nd time. Left 3 eel pots in the water..Father told to go get 'em and I refused. When he finally went out to get 'em..he left one. Only time he ever apologized for whuppin my butt. He was a WWII navy guy...and knew about sharks. Now I got a question..What in heck is Shark Week?? Stories about shark attacks?? I assume it is on TV..I only watch Jeopardy

Damn those sons of beaches!