03.06.2008
It’s your fault if you get eaten
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If there’s a lesson to be learned from last week’s deadly shark-diving trip in the Bahamas, it’s this: If you lack common sense, shark-diving isn’t the sport for you.
That’s not to say Austrian lawyer Markus Groh, who suffered the fatal chomp, was stupid. It probably takes a great deal of know-how to pass the bar in Austria.
However, when you’re dumping bloody fish carcass into the open ocean where large predatory sharks are known to feed, and then you immerse yourself in said chum, you’re not quite Einstein.
However, to call it a “shark attack” is brutalizing the animal.
Sharks are the thugs of the animal world, that’s clear. They’re pretty ignorant, they think violence is cool, they wear Michael Vick jerseys, etc.
But calling it a “shark attack” implies there’s some sort of innocent prey involved.
If a shark were to break into your home and proceed to eat you, a la a “Saturday Night Live” skit, that would be a shark attack.
However, when an unfamiliar entity cloaks itself in bloody fish bits and walks right through the shark’s front door, can you really blame the shark?
There have been 2,199 so-called “shark attacks” documented worldwide, 471 of which were fatal, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s “International Shark Attack File.”
And sink your teeth into this: While sharks are responsible for fewer than 20 fatalities a year, the International Shark Attack File says up to 100 million sharks die each year due “human attacks,” i.e. fishing activity.
We here at the It’s Your Fault If A Shark Eats You Agency — membership, one — don’t pretend to know everything about “shark attacks,” but we do think they’re justified.
The reason for this is two-fold:
1. Sharks aren’t smart. Not even pass-the-bar-in-Austria smart. It’s not like a shark can really tell the difference between bloody fish bits and a lawyer’s leg. To them, the difference is as indiscernible as the difference between two Nickelback songs or, better yet, two more Nickelback songs. To sharks, it’s all just one bloody mess.
2. On the other hand, what if sharks are super-thugs? Like smart, mafia-type thugs? What if there is purpose to them swimming up and taking a bite? If sharks really are intelligent and not just creatures of instinct and habit, perhaps they’re doing the human race a favor by either:
a.) eradicating our species of those with lackluster intelligence, like in the case of Jackie Jr. getting whacked on “The Sopranos”; or
b.) giving humans fair warning, as in, “Listen here, buddy boy, you jump in this water without proper protection, you wrong my family, and this thing of ours, and you’re going to get eaten. At least a little bit. And it’s gonna hurt. And you won’t die right away. You’ll probably feel the pain for hours, eh, maybe even days, then die from some nasty infection. Then the one member of It’s Your Fault If A Shark Eats You is going to write about how dumb you are. So stay the (bleep) out of my biz-nass.”
The smart sharks wouldn’t be thuggish in a “I’ll eat you for your shoes” kind of way, but in a “I’ll eat you because your presence has wronged me and my family” kind of way.
So, to recap:
Just like you wouldn’t feed the bears at the zoo, don’t feed the sharks in an untamed setting.
If a shark assaults you on land, call it an attack; if a shark assaults you in the water, call it dinner time.
And when you’re deep-sea diving and a thuggish shark approaches you, you better hope you’ve got a pair of Air Jordans or some ziti to barter with.