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Great White Sharks Visiting San Francisco
Ponca City, We love you writes "Juliet Eilperin writes in the Washington Post that while for years, humans have thought of great white sharks as wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore, it turns out we were wrong. Scientists lured 179 great white sharks to their boat with a carpet decoy designed to look like a seal, and used a lance to attach satellite tags with the aid of 2.3-inch titanium darts to track the sharks and discovered that Pacific white sharks spend months near the northern and central California coast between August and February, foraging among elephant seals, sea lions, and other prey. The sharks were spotted as far inland as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, east of the Golden Gate Bridge. 'It shows you how wild it is off our West Coast of North America. This is Yellowstone,' says Stanford University marine sciences professor Barbara A. Block. The fact that 'a major concentration' of great whites can ignore humans 'shows us the sharks are really minding their own business. The number of interactions with people is very small, considering,' says Salvador J. Jorgensen."
... and there was no mention of laser beams (frickin' or otherwise), so move along now.
Am I'm the only one that misread "foraging" as "fraging" ?
[Scene: A New York apartment. Someone knocks on the door.] Woman: [not opening the door] Yes? Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Arlsburgerhhh? Woman: What? Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Johannesburrrr? Woman: Who is it? Voice: [pause] Flowers. Woman: Flowers for whom? Voice: [long pause] Plumber, ma'am. Woman: I don't need a plumber. You're that clever shark, aren't you? Voice: [pause] Candygram. Woman: Candygram, my foot. You get out of here before I call the police. You're the shark, and you know it. Voice: Wait. I-I'm only a dolphin, ma'am. Woman: A dolphin? Well...okay. [opens door].
Love the first paragraph in TFA that points out the obvious: "For years, humans have thought of great white sharks wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore."
Holy shit. I always thought "For years, elephants have thought of great white sharks wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore."
I just learned something today. Guess I thought I knew more about elephants than people. I am sadly mistaken.
Let's see. You're using a film, produced by Hollywood, as a guide to the behaviour of a wild creature. Great move, that.
While you're at it, how about using Independence Day (ID4) as a guide to defeating an alien invasion using a Macintosh? Or The Core for a guide to plate tectonics? Or The Day After Tomorrow for a guide on global warming?
Sheesh.
As any serious diver will tell you, generally speaking, a shark sighting is a cause for excitement and anticipation, not panic. Leave them alone, and they'll generally leave you alone. Remember, kids: things make the news because they're (a) sensational, and (b) rare (which leads to the sensation.) The hype of shark attacks is nowhere near justified.
here's a typical shot of a great white in san francisco bay:
http://www.empireonline.com/features/golden-gate-bridge-in-movies/
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Quick... someone blame global warming!
It's to blame anytime anywhere something in the vaguest sense weird happens. WE NEVER HAD ANYTHING WEIRD HAPPEN BEFORE GLOBAL WARMING. EVER.
Call Al Gore - him staring pensively at great whites will make a great opening to Inconvenient Truth 2 - Revenge of the Evil People Who Didn't Buy Hybrids
A lawyer who chases ambulances?
Camping on quad since 1996.
This is madness!
Madness? No... this is Yellowstone
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
boring...
God's gift to chicks
It's always been common knowledge that great whites come in close to shore, after all their food source lives on the beach. The summary and TFA make it sound like some great revilation that sharks go where their prey goes.... hell here in australia there's a few attacks each year.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I am not afraid of Great White Sharks, but I am very afraid (after reading Dan Brown) of the EFF Sharks!
They are hungry for Twinkies. :o
Such beautiful creatures. Although I'm glad not to see them in the bay here in Melbourne.
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
As any serious diver will tell you, generally speaking, a shark sighting is a cause for excitement and anticipation, not panic. Leave them alone, and they'll generally leave you alone.
Unless there's ominous cello music playing in the background.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Relatively few humans are crazy enough to swim near the Golden Gates in the first place. There's a reason Alcatraz was such a secure prison, despite being a fairly short swim away from San Francisco; and it has nothing to do with sharks. Hypothermia, fast tides and currents, a rocky coastline, and a major shipping channel are not very conducive to happyfunbeachday.
Imagine all the people...
Scientists lured 179 great white sharks to their boat
What, no "youregonnaneedabiggerboat" tag? I'm disappointed in you, slashdot. :(
Not to mention the novel. Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws, has stated that he regrets the perception that his work created of great white sharks.
Apparently, he didn't really know anything about sharks back then. Did anybody, even scientists? No. Mr. Benchley has offered the opinion that he wouldn't have written the book if he had known anything near what we know today, 'at least not in good conscience.'
Peter Benchley became an ocean conservationist later in life. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2006.
According to Wikipedia, "Benchley was a member of the National Council of Environmental Defense and a spokesman for its Oceans Program: "[T]he shark in an updated Jaws could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim; for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors."
Just so you know.
Go "Shark Darting" instead!
You get to peg sharks with 2.3 inch titanium darts!
It's not a good idea to take a quick dip in the water off the boat, though. I think sharks are smart enough to figure out who threw those painful titanium darts sticking out of their backs.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It's all part of scientific outreach: http://xkcd.com/585/
I never enjoyed swimming in the ocean, I have friends that surf, but I eschew the proximity with hungry locals. I have never felt this was an irrational fear, nor do I bother debating it with others. I rolled a kayak in Richardson Bay once, back in the seventies. That shit didn't wash off for a week. Clean Water Act FTW!
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
So what? Greg Norman has played golf everywhere, it's no big deal.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
In related news, Scientists on the same ship studying shark communication have made a major breakthrough when they repeatedly translated a consistently repeated series of noises from the tagged sharks to mean:
"Grab your pointy sticks and climb on down here into the water with us you air breathing little assholes!"
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Actually shark researchers have been observing Great Whites returning to the Farallon Islands about 35 miles west of the Golden Gate for over 20 years. This website doesn't talk about migration and return, but Susan Casey's book The Devil's Teeth does discuss how the researchers on the island saw many of the same sharks returning year after year.
The surprising things in the research (as opposed to the article) are the genetic distinction of the Hawaii-California sharks versus sharks in the Western Pacific, and to a lesser extent the fact that sharks habitually come close to shore but rarely interact with humans.
We need a bigger boat.
Was ask albacore fisherman on the West Coast if they had seen any White Sharks.
Or asked some West coast divers.
But I guess that wouldn't have been as scientific.
after all, TFA *did* say "other prey." A clear euphemism for "people." Therefore, sharks are in SF to eat people. Don't go surfing or you'll die!!!
*Imagine several pages of sensationalist hyperbole continuing here, please.*
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Of course it would have been too easy to ask the locals near Stinson Beach, or Dillon Beach.
Several years back, an acquaintance of my sister was sea kayaking off of Northern California with her boy friend. They came up missing. They found one of them, I forget which, drifting, dead of blood loss, in the two kayaks which were lashed together. The one they found was missing large chunks of body. The other person was never found. While the sharks seem to mind their own business most of the time, the few exceptions are killers.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
You know, I always knew that this shot ACTUALLY happened. This just confirms it!
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
they'll generally leave you alone
Mike Tyson "generally" is not going to kick your ass, but you're still not going to sit next to him in the airport. Are you?
Maybe not directly under the Golden Gate, but you don't have to go very far to still be in sight of the bridge and find a beach and/or a place where people surf.
It's not like a shark can't travel distance or anything. So, maybe a 5 minute cruise for a shark, and there's people there.
I think what's more relevant here is that there's a lot of sharks in very close proximity to where people actually go. A lot more sharks (and a lot more often) than people had previously realized.
Cheers
Try searching YouTube for "surfing Fort Point."
I've seen people surfing directly under the Golden Gate (singular, for the benefit of the GP) for decades. And as the parent points out, there are several beaches very close to the mouth of the Gate. Additionally, the summary mentioned Great Whites coming east of the Golden Gate Bridge. That's inside the bay, right where those surfers and the aforementioned beaches are located.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
In d minor?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Mike Tyson "generally" is not going to kick your ass, but you're still not going to sit next to him in the airport. Are you?
I might be a little nervous, but sure I'd sit next to him since I know I'd be okay if I just didn't do anything that made me look like a wounded sea lion.
The enemies of Democracy are
The large shadows I've seen and strange unaccounted for splashing noises I've heard over the years, while out in winter surf, which sparked spooky feelings, are definitely something; and something big. Sometimes they are dolphins, but other times, when you don't see a dolphin, man does the hair stand up on the back of your neck....
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Here in Humboldt Bay, we've got plenty of great whites as well.
My family likes to fish shark once in a while. When I was a kid my dad and his friend pulled up a great white that was longer than his 14 foot aluminum boat!
You also hear about shark attacks from great whites at Moonstone Beach (about 20 miles north).
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I've never thought that the sharks are wandering out in the wide open. Put it this way, the sea lions and seals they eat are at the mouths of rivers (and in the bay) because of the fish spawn. The sharks should be found where their food is.
That's a terrible plan. He's broke and you would be cross-eyed and have to wear a diaper for the rest of your life.
But the shark just wanted to taste the rainbow!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
While the sharks seem to mind their own business most of the time, the few exceptions are killers.
"Since 1580, when records began, the total number of attacks on humans by sharks has been logged at about 2,200 only. This is equivalent to just 5% of the number of Americans injured by toilets in the year 1996." --Stephen Fry on QI
Validate the number yourself by looking though the records of the The International Shark Attack File (ISAF). The ISAF is a global database of shark attacks.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Shark_Attack_File]
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
As any serious California surfer will tell you, a great white in the water where you are at is bad news - "leave them alone" is no consolation to people who are out in the water and get bitten, and sometimes killed. They cannot be safely dismissed out of hand. They are wild, aggressive hunters that do not think. We all know that the whites come in to feed during the winter - that has always been the case. Shark attack incident logs alone make that clear.
"humans have thought of great white sharks as wandering the sea at random,"
You must mean humans that don't live near a coast.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bunch of crap.
Even knwoingf wht we know now, yes, a shark could be the villain. The even mention in the book and movie that it is unusual behavior.
Bunch of people overlooking facts to support there environmental stand.
Here is one, what wouild ahppen if all the sharks were gone? They are the top of the food chain, as such they don't mater much to the rest of it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thank you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is it possible to play a cello underwater? I found a youtube clip of an underwater violin, but no cello...
He'll eat some gentle people there.
Ceci n'est pas un post.