After a long-awaited year, our anticipation climaxes as beautiful creatures of the deep-sea emerge on our television screens and social media sites. My daughter, Bells and I couldn’t wait for these formidable and mighty apex predators to grace the screen in our living room for an entire week.
With technology today, even my “know it all” twelve year old learned new information about her favorite animal. The young wanna be Marine Biologist had been educated in new tagging technics and clan behavior. Who knew sharks travel in clans? Well, it’s not proven yet but marine biologists now know that the same sharks will at least meet in the same places together.
We even got to watch Dave Riggs build a submersible watercraft in his garage on what he called, “a shoestring budget.” His contraption is for the purpose to dive sixty feet off the coast of Australia in search for the oceans super predator. We sat close together in awe as a great white attacked and nearly destroyed the small craft.
Standing in our living area, Bells had an eye-opening occurrence when we measured how big a 21 foot great white shark is (The look on her face is something I should’ve recorded). Watching the largest shark on record being documented was an experience neither of us will soon forget.
Kina Scollay is now on her bucket list of people to meet. Yes my young tween has a bucket list. This New Zealand shark expert is famous for his ID system as he paves the way for imaging techniques to personally identify each shark. This tool has given researchers and scientists the means to track behaviors and migrations patterns on those sharks that haven’t been tagged.
We learned that great whites can be identified by their scares after being attacked by other predators. This type of information is stored in a data base similar to computer facial recognition programing. It’s rather simple to identify a shark if they’ve been photographed and/or filmed.
It was interesting, to say the least, watching sharks to be hand tagged. But deliberating that this could someday be my sweet baby girl’s career of choice is a bit frightening. And the more we watched, the more apprehensive I became.
But all in all, the programming was satisfactory and we both now follow many more marine life organizations, professionals, and scientist. Immediately after dinner, our routine didn’t stray far off the path of the couch. Which is unusual for us but hey, it’s only a week.
As the untimely end of my latest decade approaches, I’m left with mournful feelings that nearly break ones heart. This is the last week of the first half of my life, and it saddens me to say goodbye.
Nonetheless, goodbye is necessary as I start a new chapter. With only eight years left of children at home, I’m in dire need of finding something else, besides motherhood, to identify with.
I wonder; is it proper to plan the second half of ones existence? With such a lack of life experience there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to plan the first part. Could midlife allocate such favorable circumstances to go after all that’s desired but unachievable till now? What does that actually mean?
The finality of a bucket list seems morbid and terrifying to me. I do not favor the idea of planning things to do prior to my ultimate demise. Now I supposed I could be writing, “Things to do before I die.” But that’s just not me. Nonetheless, not having goals or nothing to shoot for is far more depressing than writing about death.
As midlife approaches in just a few short days, I’ve come to realize, just like everyone else, there is so much left for me to do. Of course there’s the clichés such as eating and drinking my way through Italy, having a love affair in France, and swim in the ocean with a Great White Shark. Not-to-mention cruises, theme parks, and beaches to explore. These are just a few of the many exciting journeys I’m ready for and can’t wait to write about.
Someday I’ll be blessed with new in-laws and grandchildren as my family grows. So many new things to experience and celebrate in my future.
My Grandmother & I
As I say farewell to my thirties, I open my heart to my new life and give-in to Gods good graces. I have good health, awesome children, a true-love story to write about, good friends, and the best grandmother in the world.
On Sunday evening as I lay in bed and say my prayers I will close with my favorite Shakespeare quote, “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
Media sensationalism and extensive ignorance has given the great white shark a bad reputation and on the brink of extinction. According to the International Shark Attack File, the species is responsible for seventy-five confirmed unprovoked attacks on humans worldwide in 2011. Their role as a menace is very much exaggerated.
A creature that is inclusively feared since 1945 when the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed, hurling Nine Hundred men into the shark infested waters of the Pacific Ocean creating a feeding frenzy for hundreds of starving sharks. A fear once again provoked in 1975 when Steven Spielberg made the movie Jaws. These two specific events have created an unnecessary panic-stricken society that is ignorant with fear and are badly informed.
In the United States during 2010 the number of fatal dog attacks was thirty-three and sharks had two fatalities. In 2009 the number of bicycle fatalities was 630 and sharks, one. In 2005 the number of fatal alligator attacks was eighteen and sharks, nine.
Planetgreen.com states Forty million sharks of all classes are needlessly slaughtered every year. UniSci reveals that 150 people die each year from being knocked in the head by falling coconuts. That’s fifteen times the number of shark fatalities. Does that mean all the coconut trees should be chopped down?
Since 1996, dramatic declines in shark populations have affected the marine ecosystem as the great white’s main environmental role is to keep balance as well as a healthy ecosystem by cleaning the ocean from the sick and weak. They also keep the seal and sea lions population in check. Marine Biologists have discovered that the decline in Great White Sharks is the direct result of over population of seals and sea lions which is responsible for the declining salmon population on the California and Oregon coasts. If this continues to happen and apex predators do go extinct, the entire ecological unit will be lost. It is extremely important for marine ecosystems to stay in balance by maintaining shark populations.
One company, Oceans Research, uses a unique technique to keep track of great whites called Photo Identification Technique. This method records the place and the time a specific shark is spotted by researchers. The sex, size, approximate weight, behavior, unique body features, and most importantly, the dorsal fin are also recorded.
Dorsal fin identification will help identify sharks by recording specific shape of the fin, notches, pigmentation, marks, bits, spots, scars, and deformities. When possible, great whites are tagged with a satellite tracker, and skin and tissue samples taken as well. From the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 2009, it’s been documented that one tagged great white shark swam between South Africa and Australia, a distance of 12,000 miles, in 9 months.
Sharks are not mindless killing machines set out to get anyone who uses the ocean as their own person playground. Sharks are intelligent and can learn to refine their skills as they age. They have an exceptionally well-developed sense of smell and their vision may also be acute. Great whites are known to lift their heads out of water to survey their surroundings, a behavior called “spy-hopping.”
Contrary to belief, sharks need to eat. The preferred diet of the great white shark is marine mammals that have large stores of fat or blubber. Great whites have been known to hunt in areas with large seal and sea-lion populations. They also will feed on other fish such as tuna, salmon, & mackerel, sea turtles, birds, other sharks, and blubber from whale carcasses. Nonetheless, they will eat just about anything if they are starving.
Great white sharks are the world’s largest predatory shark at the top of the apex. The largest great white documented is twenty-four feet in length. The average great white is fifteen feet in length, can be up to 7500 with fifty-six teeth, seven rows. They have a pointed snout, with black eyes that roll back into the head for protection as they attack. The skeleton’s composed of cartilage, the reason we do not find fossils of great whites, only their teeth.
Life spans of a great white estimate at 30 years of age. They don’t mature until fifteen years of age and will not birth pups till then, which is why it’s nearly impossible to get back a healthy population into the marine bionetwork. Not a lot is known about how Great Whites breed due to the fact that these sharks are solitary creatures that constantly search the ocean for food.
Keep in mind, when a person swims, surfs, scuba dives, or enjoys any other activity in our great ocean, it’s certain that you are entering into another world that’s inhabited by wild creatures who have instincts to either eat or protect and will kill indiscriminately. This vast environment is the home of over one million plants and animals and scientist say each one relies on the other to keep up a perfect symbiotic order.
We cannot go on and allow people to slaughter the oceans main predator. The ripple effect of losing these prehistoric fish, that have existed for over 350 million years, will be catastrophic in our own ecosystem someday. Kill the ocean, destroy the planet.
Shell de Toni 