http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8434265/



have I been living on the moon, it's the first I've heard of this....anyone going for a dip in the Gulf this weekend?......I know I am...thankfully not off Florida..but even so.....I watched Jaws at a very young age :scared:

No surprise to me really. I saw one at fairly close range while I was messing around with my float at North Padres Island. Scarey thought really since there is 40 miles of beach there and anywhere you look there's people in paddling, swimming or whatever. I don't know if there are any actual stats for shark attacks in Gulf of Mexico, but I'm sure it happens. Don't know if this is just talk, but a guy who worked on a rig out that way told me that he used to watch them from the rig and he thinks they are attracted by the food and things chucked from it. Anyway all I saw was the underside of something biggish about 10 foot I think and a fin cut the waves (and it's quite windy/choppy there so you need to keep your eyes peeled) and I was out of there before it saw me! :scared:

Oh, there are shark attacks in the Gulf, that's for sure!

Last June we were camping on the beach just North of Galveston. Not a beach that I'd recommend, but after 6hrs in the car nothing was going to stop us going in the water with our 6-year-old twin girls.

Not the many washed-up floats from Portuguese Man-O-War jellyfish... Not the stingray barbs littering the beach...

We were in the water up to our necks, and I had one of my girls riding on my shoulders as we jumped waves. We'd noticed small bait-fish jumping madly in the surf, and assumed that that's what they always did.

I jumped a particularly large wave, and went under water. As I surfaced I saw an 8" black-tipped fin pass my nose about 18 inches away!

The insane thing is, we didn't get out. My daughter who was on my shoulders said "Oh look daddy, a shark! Can I stroke it?" and then we went on wave jumping. My wife and other daughter went running from the waves screaming, but we thought it was funny

Only when I got back to work and told this story did a colleague tell me that a boy had been badly bitten on that same day, just miles down the coast in Galveston:

Galveston Shark Attacks

Despite what the article says, I read that sharks were being driven in-shore because of a huge "Dead Zone" of oxygen-depleted seawater many hundreds of square miles in area out in the Gulf, caused by Nitrogen-based fertilizers washed out to see by the Mississippi river.

In retrospect we were irresponsible going into the water in the first place, particularly once I'd read what Portuguese Man-O-War stings and Stingray attacks are like!

(note: researching the links above, it was pretty funny reading all the web pages telling you not to urinate on Portuguese Man-O-War stings, regardless of what Australian and Hawaiian surfer law says you should do!) :scared:

OMG! You are ***MAD*** :scared:

Don't they have shark nets along the coast like they have in Australia? (Yes I do realise there is a lot of coastline to cover, but there is in Oz too.)

The scariest thing which I've encountered was a sea-snake off Phi-Phi island in Thailand - a group of us were on a boat and went snorkelling. I'm frightened of snakes so it freaked me out...then I noticed lots of jellyfish as I was getting back on the boat. I honestly think I'd have a panic attack or faint if I were to encounter a shark. It's a shame as I would have loved to have learned to scuba dive, but I'm too much of a wuss and wouldn't be able to cope with sea-snakes or sharks.

We had a Great White stuck off Cape Cod last summer. It was huge and stuck in shallow water. Eventually it went off but the tag thing fell off and they lost track of it. You wouldn't catch me swimming in the ocean now! :scared:

I was in Maui yonks ago when I was a teenager and they had these notes in the hotel rooms telling you to smack the shark in the nose should it get near to you.

We saw seasnakes off Phi Phi a few years back too. We'd been diving round that area a couple of years, and had plenty of (small) shark encounters, but this was our first time with the seasnakes - we were just snorkelling in about 4 or 5 feet of water in one of the hongs, and all of a sudden my mate had it away on his toes back to the boat. He's a wee chap, only about 5'3 or so, with stumpy little legs, but he covered the 100 yards quicker than Linford could've done it on dry land - and this was in the water - or rather on the water - I swear he ran across the surface. It was only when he got to the boat that he thought to warn us - cheers mate! And then we saw them and had pretty similar reactions. I'm not too bad with sharks when we're diving, (although not as brave as dbj if I was swimming!), but snakes (sea or otherwise) give me the right willies. As for the 'mate' - for the rest of the holiday he went by the somewhat unoriginal moniker of Jesus..........

For "brave" read "ignorant, naive and stupid"

I'd be petrified of sea-snakes too.

Always laugh when people moan about sharks in the sea, that is where they live after all.

Sharks+Florida=problems. Quite a simple formula really and you do not have to be a mathematician to understand it.

Sharks + people (people = food) = problems


*I only posted to bump this one out of all the free whatever posts for symatery. Of course when the mods delete all the free mcdonalds and cameras postings my free katie post might not make sense

Its a fine line, a very fine line.............

An Austrian was bitten yesterday near Fort Meyers,he lived.

I was more surprised to find when we were diving that crocs actually go out to sea off the coast of Australia now that frightened me.

I have a great fear of the sea. This was backed up for me when I nearly got dragged out to sea by the current in Acapulco a few years back. One shark attack is enough to keep me out of the water.

Salt water crocodiles are larger, quicker and more aggressive than the freshwater species, and have killed many people including this poor bugger
whose friends could only watch as he was dragged off the beach into the surf in front of them!

I'm no Crocodile Dundee but I could fend of a fresh water croc it was the salt water ones the worried me