Shark! Sharks!

I'm fascinated by sharks; always have been. They are incredible eating machines, but also one of the most graceful creatures on our little blue planet. Even their skin as aggressive, apparently as abrasive as sandpaper (which some tropical natives actually do use in that way). All in all, they are marvel of technology, precisely designed to be the best at what they do.

The movie, Jaws, stirred a big craze in sharks--mostly fear, but then that is what a horror story is supposed to do, right? Since that movie came out, lots of people viewed sharks as a man-munching machine of destruction. Naturally, that's not really true, but it did get a lot of interest in the area of shark research and probably was a good thing in general terms. I won't discuss the politics of it all, but predators do as predators do and it's best to make sure that's understood when you're in their environment. Humans just stink at moving through water, but we weren't designed to do it well anyway so why should we be surprised.

What is impressive though, is how little we still know about sharks. With all the money poured into research, and all the time spent on it, we don't know much more about them than we did 50 years ago. I find that incredible. One program I watched on the Discovery Channel mentioned that if we could actually see through the ocean clearly (like a pane of glass) that we would freak out because of all the stuff living in it. And, I'm sure that would include all the predators swimming around as we enjoy the ocean surf.

- M