We're number 1!
We’re number 1, we’re number 1 and don’t tell me you don’t have a warm glow in your chest right now, emanating outward, feeling real nice. Don’t tell me you aren’t proud as punch because when was the last time we were number 1 in anything? Our industry has been decimated, climate change is chewing through our communities and/or burning them to the ground, Kelly Slater will soon retire and then no one will even know what surfing is anymore full stop.
Not even after it’s “huge” Olympic debut.
But today we’re number 1 as it was just revealed in the Yearly Worldwide Shark Attack Summary.
Today we are proud as punch and let’s read the section pertaining to our singular glories, what we do better than all ocean-going folk combined.
Following recent trends, surfers and those participating in board sports accounted for most incidents (53% of the total cases). This group spends a large amount of time in the surf zone, an area commonly frequented by sharks, and may unintentionally attract sharks by splashing, paddling, and “wiping out.” Swimmers and waders accounted for 25% of incidents, with remaining incidents divided between snorkelers/free divers (11%), body-surfers (8%), and scuba divers (3%).
It makes much sense that sharks don’t like to be splashed.
To be quite honest, I don’t like to be splashed either especially when my eyes are open and the splashed water hits one of them with some velocity. It hurts and, if I recall in my nearly finished graduate degree in shark behaviors, the man-eating beasts don’t have eyelids.
In any case, I’m proud of us and we all deserve to take the rest of the day off.
Go surfing, get attacked, smile.
Today is ours.