Best to stay out of those sweet waters.
Cackalacky, both North and South, are some of my favorite bits of America. I sometimes wish I was born in that genteel south with an inbred taste for pimento cheese, vinegar-based BBQ sauces and cornflower blue. Those folk know how to live with their Cracker Barrels and she-crab soups, their Oakley Razor Blades affixed to mullet-heads with neon green Croakies. They also know how to surf with their Outer Banks and… I’m sure there’s another surfable stretch of sand somewhere but a certain horrifying beast may be putting an end to all of it, whatever the case, save the pimento cheese.
According to science, it is very rare, extremely rare even, for Great White sharks to stop and park off of North Carolina, preferring to race further north, in order to eat Bostonian Celtics, or take their talents to South Beach and patrol greater Miami for a spell.
Well, a 10 foot-plus man-eater named “Shaw” is bucking all trends and has researches scratching their receding hairlines. The latest from Sea World’s mouthpiece OCEARCH.
Great white sharks are known for racing past the Mid-Atlantic states to get someplace else, so experts pay attention in rare cases when one not only stops, but stays put.
That’s happening now along the Virginia-North Carolina border with a 10-foot, 3-inch male tracked by OCEARCH.
“It’s interesting watching white shark Shaw since unlike other sharks on the Tracker, he has been hanging out off the Virginia coast for over a month,” OCEARCH posted Tuesday on Facebook.
“The other sharks breezed past, only making a quick stop on their way south. What do you suppose he likes so much there?”
OCEARCH offered no ideas in the post. Data collected by OCEARCH suggests young sharks will stay close to their nursery in the first two years of life. However, Shaw is categorized as a “sub-adult,” not a juvenile.
Etc.
And while the researchers may be confounded, surfers are in the crosshairs. Or jawlines, as it were.
Genteel southern surfers should very much reconsider paddling out this winter unless they are paddling out in the relative safety of an inland wave tank.
And as long as Shaw” is lingering, I think the most understandable thing is to hang that surfboard on the wall until we learn what that man-eater knows and when he knew it.
More as the story develops.