Red Tide
Last year it was lime-green tetraselmis, an algae that smelled like dog food and frothed in the Southern California water. This year, in September -- LATE! -- we had weeks of red tide, a bioluminescent bloom of dinoflagellate protozoans that poisons fish and other marine life. Did you read it right? Yes. The stuff, in actuality Lingulodinium polyedrum, isn't toxic to humans, but will accumulate in shellfish that filter large amounts of water every day, thus causing phytoplankton toxins to build up inside them. (Have you seen the signs posted at the beach warning people not to eat "shellfish from these waters between the months of May and September"? The reason is phytoplankton toxins that are seasonally present.) Why and how do the little critters flash blue light? Due to a chemical reaction occurring in the cell when the plankton are moved or jostled. So a breaking wave jostles millions of these dinoflagellates and you get a cosmic photo moment:
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Some surfers insist that they get very sick when surfing in red-tide waters ... Although it isn't the dinoflagellates themselves that are responsible, says phytoplankton ecologist Peter Franks (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), it may be due to "red tides [decreasing] the mortality of human pathogenic bacteria that get into nearshore waters. These bacteria normally die pretty quickly, [but] they may die slower during a red tide, perhaps due to the increased amounts of organic material in the water. So perhaps [the reported illnesses and] ear infections are because of other bacteria that are present in higher concentrations in a red tide than they would normally be. (Please give us funding to pursue this.)" The credit goes to a student of his for preliminary research to this effect.
Our Primal Fear of Sharks
The Dave Martin shark attack of April 25, 2008 was the first fatality in 50 years in San Diego County. It happened at one of the calmest and safest of local beaches -- Tide Park -- at approximately 7:30 a.m., just beyond the breakers in a very low tide.
The summer of 2008 was a tough one for many. Someone told me, "Next year will be easier." It's true that time and distance are good ingredients for peace, but what I found out needs to be known. I embarked on a deep, new learning experience. Graphic details in the books I read left images in my mind. I met people who had their own philosophies. I developed a wholly new understanding of the ocean and its apex predator -- carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark.The Odds
They say your chances of being attacked by a shark are less than of being struck by lighting or being in a car accident -- and people get in their cars every day. What does the shark hold over us then, that makes us so afraid?
 "When the shark came across our sea kayak, it dove to the seabed and inspected it from below. When [its] dorsal fin broke the surface ... the rest was history." Courtesy Thomas Peschak, marine photographer |
The reality may be that people who frequently "use the ocean" are not so afraid, whereas the majority who don't are the ones who are afraid. In my own experience, swimmers tend to be the most fearful -- more so than divers, kayakers, surfers or those who sail. It may be that swimmers feel more vulnerable, clad in almost nothing, immersed in the water rather than on it, with no boat or surfboard or gear to wield or be shielded by. For landlubbers, what might have been a dormant primal fear was (or is) amplified by the movie Jaws and its unforgettable theme music. The film, which began as a non-blockbuster hardcover book, turned a fish into a monster, with monster ratings and monster marketability.
When the world of news goes flat for a while, we will have another "Year of the Shark." The summer of 2001 was all about shark attacks (finally giving way to 9/11, which kept the media very busy), even though the global number of attacks that year was less than the year before. Five of the 76 encounters in 2001 were fatal, while 12 of the 85 encounters in 2000 were fatal. The drama of the summer came with the bull-shark attack on 8-year-old Jesse Arbogast in Pensacola, Florida, resulting in Jesse's arm being torn off and then re-attached to his body by surgeons. Jesse's ordeal was more than sensational. The 7-foot shark would not let go of him, even in knee-deep water, while his father and a park ranger tried to beat it off. Unbelievably, he survived.
The Dave Martin attack of 2008 made world news. One of the swimmers traveled to the East Coast a couple of days later and heard people discussing it in an elevator. They were shocked to learn that someone right there in the elevator had been part of the group in the shark attack. Dave was a skilled veterinarian who loved the ocean and the animal world. A local lifeguard told me that day that the concensus among lifeguards was that if they "had to go," being taken by a great white in the ocean would be the finest way.
Sharks are not "monsters of the deep." People fear them as they fear many things, including death, disease and going broke. Our media exploits them, especially on television. As one activist (Sharkman) points out, "Since no true sea monsters have been discovered, Discovery has cast sharks in that role." We seem to thrive on creating enemies where there are none, terrifying ourselves in nonsensical, limiting ways. What is the point of being afraid of a large, curious life form that lives in the ocean?
Like humans, white sharks are warm-blooded and give live birth. They are problem-solvers, not indiscriminating eating machines. "White sharks," says marine photographer Thomas Peschak, "are much more cautious and inquisitive in nature than aggressive and unpredictable. At no time have we ever had a shark show any aggression towards our little yum-yum yellow craft ... (see photo above). We believe that white sharks come inshore in such great numbers to socially interact with others of their species, perhaps even to mate or give birth to their young. We have observed many sharks interacting with one another at close range, following behind or swimming tight circles around one another for extended periods of time. To observe and document great white sharks mating or giving birth is the holy grail of shark research and marine wildlife photography, but it is also an extremely difficult and perhaps an even almost impossible task."
