It’s another beautiful summer on this beautiful planet, and even after almost half a billion years somehow we all still aren’t tired of it. I know most of you are ready to get out there and ‘dive into things,’ as it were, but first we need to go over some crucial safety information to ensure your fun in the sun doesn’t turn dark: how to prevent human attacks.
First off, we’re going to explain what a human is – many of you may already think you know this, but the truth is, humans are widely misrepresented in our media. The public image of the human is a friendly, sociable creature that is largely hapless outside its curated environment and is totally useless when exposed to water. In reality, humans are mindless eating machines,, honed by evolution into a mindless swarm of omnivorous ape-locusts that will exterminate anything they encounter. They can’t swim – praise Cladoselache – but they love to play in shallow water, and even if you’re safely miles away from shore you might encounter one of their longlines, or their boats, or god knows what.
Some of you are thinking ‘gosh, that can’t be right; I have a friend who saw a human once and nothing bad happened to him, maybe all this is just overblown panic?’ I will remind you all that the plural of ‘anecdote’ is NOT ‘data,’ and the data do not in fact agree with your naivety: much fewer than a hundred humans a year are attacked unprovoked by sharks; the other way around, that number’s about thirty million. For your own safety and your own good you should stay the hell away from these things. The following will be some practical advice to help you do just that. Remember, preventing unwanted encounters with humans entirely is impossible, but by following these guidelines you will be able to reduce your chances of experiencing such an unpleasant surprise.
Firstly, observe all posted beach signs. If you see a beach with signs on it, who do you think put them there? Humans. Stay away from those places. Sometimes they even put signs up with pictures of sharks on them, just to fool you into thinking this is a nice place to hang out. This is a trap. Any sign on a beach is a warning and should be treated as such: don’t swim on beaches with signs.
Second, be careful when swimming at dusk and dawn. Everyone knows humans are diurnal, with terrible night vision and a pitiful count of other senses that verge on utter uselessness, so most of you think that dusk and dawn are safe times to go down to the beach. Wrong. Many humans are ‘early birds’ or ‘night owls’, and these para-avian freaks can be found in the water even when the sun’s barely detectable. I’m aware many of you are crepuscular by nature and habit, but for your own safety, I recommend absolute caution when approaching the shore during those hours, lest your daily foraging bite off far more than you can chew.
Matters of vision bring me to our third item, murky water is not safe water. It’s excellent to feed in, yes – low-visibility environments are wonderful tools for any elasmobranch with more tricks in your toolbox than just eyeballs – but it can also conceal the precise nature of what you’re trying to feed on. One moment you’re chasing a shoal of fish, the next moment you’ve smacked into the legs of some human wearing rubber pants and holding a fishing line. Restricted vision goes both ways.
Fourth, there’s one place in particular where murky water will be not just common but expected as a matter of course: avoid river mouths if you aren’t prepared to be hyperaware. Yes, this is a low blow: not only do rivers provide the tempting low-visibility ease-of-foraging we just covered, but they’re a rich source of nutrient outflow that lures little organisms which lure bigger organisms which lure bigger yet organisms, any and all of which are excellent eating. But you know who else uses rivers? Humans. A river is the ideal tool for an ape that can barely get itself to float; they just push their business into the water and let it sail downstream on its own. Humans and fresh water are like hammerheads and stingrays: they just can’t leave the damned things alone. Ask a bull shark. Fresh water means humans.
Speaking of humans doing their business and waste outlets, number five: beware sewage discharge outlets. They’re wonderful little things – like little compressed rivers, injecting vast quantities of filth and debris that are fed on by little things that are fed on by bigger things that we can then eat – but they’re too good to be true: it is a matter of confirmed scientific fact (not speculation, not allegation, cold hard fact) that sewage discharge outlets are made by humans. That’s right. Sewers are made by humans, for humans, and they are tended by humans. If you don’t want to encounter humans, stay away from sewage outlets.
Now, if you’ve followed all of the above advice, you may think that you’re safe. No. You aren’t. Even if they aren’t hiding, a human in plain sight has many tricks to fool the unsuspecting into coming close enough to be enmeshed in its opposable grip. Number six: not all that shines is scales. Bright, clean sunlight can make a fish shine in the water, but it can also lend glitter to all many of human gewgaws, gadgets, and flibbertigibbets that they inexplicable entangle themselves in. ‘Watches.’ ‘Jewelry.’ The meaning behind these objects is greatly obscured, but their effects are stone cold clear: with a bit of sunshine, they can sparkle like any clean healthy fish scale, luring you in for lunch and giving you nothing but a mouthful of betrayal and regret. Don’t rely on your eyes alone to tell you what’s food, and don’t be hasty!
Regrettably, no sooner have we warned you of your eyes than we must also caution you against several of your other senses – seventh, be careful when investigating splashing. Yes, most every time in your life you follow the sensation and the sound of struggling, flailing, uncoordinated writhing life in the water it will lead you to nothing more harmful than a nice snack. But if you’re doing it nearshore – and ESPECIALLY near a beach – be warned: there’s nothing less elegant or coordinated than a human in the water except two humans in the water. I know we just cautioned you against them, but use your eyes to confirm: is this really a flailing fish, or is it a thrashing human?
We’re moving towards the end of our lecture, but there’s a connected problem here that we haven’t brought up yet: number eight: human-associated animals; nonhuman lifeforms whose presence may signpost their presence. Most prominent in this are canines, the so-called ‘dogs’ you may have heard described as being sort of like sea lions with defective flippers. Like humans, they are terrible swimmers, producing incredible amounts of splashing and noise. Unlike humans, they aren’t dangerous in and of themselves. But they are almost universally encountered WITH humans, and if you think you’re doing nothing more dangerous than investigating some odd shaggy thing that might be edible? That’s when you’ll encounter a human when you least suspect it. Stay away from canines.
There is one more animal you may unexpectedly find in the company of humans, and it’s one you already know: dolphins. Yes, as unimaginable as it may be, humans may willingly seek out the company of dolphins, without apparent coercion. ‘Well, who cares?’ I can see you thinking. ‘I would never go near dolphins anyways!’ That’s what you think. Say you’re out cruising near the surface and you find a nice big fish shoal, big enough for everyone to get some. It’s you, a few swordfish, a half-dozen of your peers…. and a small pod of dolphins. Do you run? No, there’s plenty for everyone so long as you keep a weather eye out for danger. Right? Right. But sometimes – and megalodon herself could not tell us why – the danger can come unexpectedly, in the form of humans hopping right into the shoal to consort with the horrible creatures. So that’s number nine: be careful when feeding with dolphins, and not just careful of the dolphins themselves.
We’re about to wrap up, but first one final, tenth piece of advice, which is principally for any Carcharodon in our audience today: examine any oddly-shaped seal you see motionless at the surface of the water very carefully. Sometimes that’s a human lying on a plank with its arms and legs dangling off the sides. We don’t know why they do it, sometimes they just do it, remember it, identify it, avoid it. And we have it on reliable record that besides the danger involved, they taste awful.
Be safe, be careful, and remember: they’re way, way, WAY more scared of you than you’re scared of them.
That’s why they’re so dangerous.