Pod of Killer Whales accused of carrying out “orchestrated attacks” on boats off Spanish coast: “They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat!”

Extremely troubling.

The end of humanity is just over the horizon, without a doubt, what with pandemic, climate change, an increasingly belligerent China, a looming Joe Biden and/or Donald Trump presidency etc. but I feel we have our eyes on these threats and will handle by hook or crook.

It is the sneaky terrors that will undo us. Tik Tok, for example, or pods of Killer Whales carrying out orchestrated attacks on our boats.

But let us travel to the Spanish/Portuguese coast where nine orcas are wreaking, reeking, wrecking havoc and causing very much alarm.

Sailors in those waters have made multiple distress calls in the past two months and let us read Victoria Morris’s account. She happened to be on a 46-foot delivery boat and says that the whales continuously rammed it for over an hour, spinning it around and breaking the engine.

“The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they communicated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout.”

Days earlier, Nick Giles was out sailing his 34-foot yacht when the wheel suddenly jerked and he heard what sounded like a sledgehammer.

“The boat lifted up half a foot and I was pushed by a second whale from behind.” While he was resetting the cables an orca hit again, “nearly chopping off my fingers in the mechanism.”

On yet another delivery boat, a crewman’s shoulder was nearly dislocated after an attack.

Researchers are very confused as this behavior is not common. Ruth Esteban, who has also studied the region’s orcas extensively, told a local newspaper that it was unlikely multiple orca groups would display such unusual behavior and that a single group was therefore most likely responsible.

A gang.

A gang of toughs.

Street Killer Whales with devil may care attitudes, smoking cigarettes etc. Making lewd comments at passing Killer Whale dames.

And you are certainly aware of T.S. Eliot’s famous phrase from The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Wrong, I suppose, and should be re-written:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a horrible echo.
I thought they could capsize the boat.
And this deafening noise as they communicated,
whistling to each other.
It was so loud that we had to shout.

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Notoriously incorrigible sharks take advantage of rare waves in Central Florida, bite two surfers in one day!

Blood in the water.

Central Florida, best known for the NBA bubble, Kirsten Dunst, The Backstreet Boys, Wesley Snipes and tutti-frutti ice-cream, is not very well known for waves. Certainly they appear on the ocean there, mainly around New Smyrna, but are rarely large or powerful save hurricane season when robust storms whip delightful nuggets toward shore.

Yesterday, a “red flag” day across Volusia County featuring those delightful nuggets, thrilled surfers from Daytona to Melbourne Beach, also Denver, and saw many surfers in the water.

The region’s sharks, notoriously incorrigible, took advantage of the influx and bit not one but two surfers within a short few hour period.

The first was a mostly innocent 15-year-old boy who happened to be paddling out at Ponce Inlet at 10:45 in the morning. The shark bit his hand as hard as it could and left many ouchies though the boy refused medical attention.

The second occurred in Melbourne Beach where an adult male had his arm bitten so severely that it caused much bleeding and a hospital visit was required.

Sharks don’t generally kill people in Central Florida but two hits in one day that featured waves is… not cool at all and should be looked into by the authorities.

What I really wonder, though, is what happened to Wesley Snipes? He starred in so many important movies in the late 1980s through the 1990s but then disappeared, more or less. What was your favorite Snipes vehicle? I saw Demolition Man in the theater and enjoyed it very much. I also thought the actor carried Michael Jackson’s music video “Bad.”

Did you know “Bad” was directed by Martin Scorsese?

Weird.

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"I could watch Surf Theater all day long..."
"I could watch Surf Theater all day long..."

U.S. Olympic team shuns Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, heads to Waco for training camp: “Waco really allows us to do; really kind of fine-tune equipment and maneuver in the Japanese-style waves.”

Introducing Surf Theater.

The biggest investment co-Waterperson of the Year and billionaire Dirk Ziff made, when he purchased professional surfing for free back in 2013, was the acquisition of Kelly Slater’s eponymous Wave Company.

Surf Ranch, unveiled hours after Adriano de Souza claimed Brazil’s first world title in 2015 with the express intent of crushing his joy, was a marvel. An engineering wonder and certainly the future of surfing altogether.

Things have not quite gone according to plan.

New, more interesting, cost-efficient, scaleable technologies popped up in Surf Ranch’s wake, the facility has hosted the two most boring contests in surfing history and also the most boring specialty events, the only being built outside Lemoore, California is killing koalas by the truckload, or whichever cuddly Australian marsupials lives in wetlands, the U.S. Olympic team is shunning Surf Ranch for Waco and U.S.A. Today has no idea where it is.

Per the most widely read newspaper in America:

Surfer Carissa Moore, ranked No. 1 in the world, is no stranger to wave pools, training in Waco and competing at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in La Cienega, California, over the past three years.

“The biggest difference is Kelly Slater’s pool, or the surf range, is about 45 seconds long, and the Waco pool is probably top five seconds,” Moore said. “Kelly’s wave is pretty much kind of the same every time, and Waco has a lot of different settings, different waves that they can produce.”

Coach Brett Simpson went on to add:

“We’re not really expecting big waves. I mean, there is a chance for that, but we are expecting more high-performance, shorter rides, and that’s what Waco really allows us to do; really kind of fine-tune equipment and maneuver in the Japanese-style waves.”

Surf Ranch sure wishes it was in La Cienega, California, which isn’t actually a town but rather a boulevard that runs north/south through the west side of Los Angeles from very near Los Angeles International Airport to Sunset Boulevard hugging the Hollywood Hills.

Ideally, where could it be placed?

I’d say West Hollywood and could be themed very flamboyantly. Pulsing neon lights, staged productions, house music pumping at full volume, surprise appearances by Cher etc. and not called Surf Ranch at all but rather Surf Theater.

Very progressive. Very now and oh what might have been.

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@sharkgirlmadison | Photo: @sharkgirlmadison

Dead fifty-foot, forty-four-ton Sperm Whale sparks shark feeding frenzy on Australian beach; Surfers warned, “Stay out of the water between Ballina and Evans Head for the next week!”

Ballina is fifty miles from last Tuesday’s fatal shark attack at the Superbank and thirty from June’s fatal hit at Kingscliff, heading north, and a hundred miles to Wooli, headed south, where a teenager died one month ago.

If a further reason was needed to temporarily holster your board after three fatal attacks by Great Whites in three months along a few hundred clicks of Australian coastline, this might be it.

A fifty-foot, forty-four ton dead Sperm Whale, yeah the Moby Dick sort, washed up near South Wall Ballina, a sometimes rifling lefthander protected from the prevailing summer nor’easters.

Ballina is fifty miles from last Tuesday’s fatal shark attack at the Superbank and thirty from June’s fatal hit at Kingscliff, heading north, and a hundred miles to Wooli, headed south, where a teenager died one month ago.

The sight was as grim as it was photogenic.

And, to the surprise of nobody, along came the sharks to feed.

Self-described “shark girl” Madison Stewart has been posting drone images of the dead whale, and the prowling sharks, on her Instagram feed while warning surfers to avoid surfing, at least for a week or so.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFGn22djlhD/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFIUgedDOoI/

Of course, y’can’t leave a dead hunk of blubber on the beach forever.

Workers, knee deep in the detritus of forty-five tons of dead Sperm whale. Photo via @balna_nsw

You live anywhere tween Coolangatta and Port Macquarie?

How you feeling right now?

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Seven-timer Stephanie Gilmore with Caz Marks. | Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms

Sixty-six-year-old man arrested for allegedly stalking world surfing champion Stephanie Gilmore

Magistrate denies bail, noting the distance Squire Winter had travelled to allegedly bump into Gilmore and that it “indicated fixated behaviour and some degree in planning.”

A man, previously banned from coming within even half-a-click of seven-time world champ Stephanie Gilmore, has been charged after allegedly approaching Gilmore at the Tweed Coast Pro on Sunday.

Squire Winter, a sixty-six-year-old, told police he was a surf coach who’d “briefly worked with Steph” and that his understanding of the court order was that he only to stay one hundred metres away from Gilmore in the surf.

Police allege Winter had scared hell out of Gilmore in previous incidents earlier in the year and that she had sought a personal violence order.

As part of the order, Winter wasn’t allowed to contact Gilmore, look for her or come within five hundred metres of her or her workplace.

In facts tendered to court, Winter allegedly appeared next to Gilmore as she was unloading a surfboard from her car.

Police allege Winter said, “Hi, how are you going?”

Gilmore responded, “Great, thank you,” before recognising Winter.

When he suggested “catching up later” she said, “No, no we won’t. Bye.”

Police allege Winter said, “We are going to catch up later, aren’t we?”

Gilmore said “No” and walked away.

Winter was allegedly found by police fifty metres from the carpark.

He allegedly told ‘em he was on his way to Brisbane, an hour or so north, and that he saw Gilmore on his way back from the shitter.

Appearing by video link from the Tweed Heads Police Station on Monday, Winter pleaded not guilty to contravening an apprehended violence order.

The police prosecutor opposed bail and said Winter had a “long history” of violence and breaching apprehended violence orders and that he feared for Gilmore’s wellbeing.

The magistrate denied bail, noting the distance Winter had travelled to allegedly bump into Gilmore and that it “indicated fixated behaviour and some degree in planning.”

In 2012, a homeless schizophrenic junkie, Julius Fox, was sentenced to four years in jail after bashing Gilmore with an iron bar, breaking her wrist, outside her Tweed Heads apartment in 2010.

He was released in 2014.

In March, 2020, a woman was charged with the unlawful stalking of three-time world champ Mick Fanning and breaking into his house with intent and two counts of stealing.

Sarah Foote, a thirty-eight-year-old from Ballina, same age as Mick, was accused of following Fanning between January 29 and February 4, the break-in of Mick’s pretty beachfront joint in Tugun allegedly happening on Feb 2.

Foote was accused of sending “rambling hand-written letters with accusations of pedophilia, declarations of love for Fanning and thoughts of wanting to kill him.”

The woman, who looks nice enough if you like mysterious blondes, was bailed on the condition she stayed hell out of Queensland except for court appearances.

 

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