It's the 25th annual Shark Week this year - a quarter century of celebrating our worst fear! No matter how much I know about these ou's - and I've spent plenty time researching em for the Bomb Surf article I wrote on Whites - they still scare the shite outta me.
I most certainly do not ever want to bump into one whilst out having a surf - despite knowing that it isn't meant to want to eat me, and I'm not on it's menu blah blah blah. You try telling that to my amygdala (the fear centre in your brain). Cos it's going "Shit in your suit bru - you're about to be #chompdown"
Fear aside - yes, they are magnificent creatures, and they are important - no vital - to a healthy oceanic ecosystem, but I am happy appreciating them from afar. I'll give em a thumbs up from my armchair rather than my surfboard!
Stab Magazine in Aus posted some cool facts about sharks to celebrate Shark Week. Check em out....
1. Sharks have existed almost unchanged for 400 million years, since long before the dinosaur.
2. It’s impossible to sneak up on a shark, because their eyes are on the sides of their heads and most can see almost as well behind them as they can in front. But they do have two blind spots: one in the front of their snouts and one directly behind their heads.
3. You can tell how old a shark is by counting the rings on its vertebrae, much like a tree.
4. A great white shark can lose 1,000 teeth in a year. It takes most humans seven years to lose their 20 baby teeth.
5. A shark may lose and grow up to 30,000 teeth in its lifetime — hardly an issue when it can take as few as three days to grow a replacement.
6. Developing pups of the sand tiger shark would give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money. They practice intrauterine cannibalism. (As they grow, they begin to eat their brothers and sisters until, eventually, only two sharks are born — one from each of the mother’s two uteruses.)
7. A shark can detect the electrical impulse emitted by a standard AA battery one mile away.
8. Two-thirds of a shark’s brain is dedicated to its sense of smell.
9. A lemon shark can smell one drop of blood in an Olympic-size pool.
10. Further proving sharks are the ultimate hunters, they can detect whether a scent is coming from their right or left nostril to better help them track down their prey.
11. Cookie-cutter sharks may be small, but they’re gutsy. They use their sawlike jaws to feed on pieces of whale blubber from living whales.
12. Both the largest and the second-largest sharks in the world, the whale shark and the basking shark, are harmless plankton eaters.
13. The world’s smallest shark, the pygmy shark, is 6 inches long when fully grown.
14. The bull shark can live in fresh water or salt water and has been known to travel as far north as Indiana via the Ohio River and Red Wing, Minn., via the Mississippi.
15. Sharks will sink if they stop swimming.
16. Sharks have no bones. Their skeletons are made up entirely of cartilage. When a shark dies, salt from the ocean completely dissolves its skeleton, leaving only the teeth behind.
17. A large great white shark can go three months between meals.
18. There are no vegetarian sharks.
19. When hatched, zebra sharks are dark black with white vertical stripes, but, as they age, they turn yellow with dark black spots, resembling a leopard.
20. The world’s fastest shark, the salmon shark, can swim up to 55 miles per hour. (Michael Phelps can swim 5 miles per hour).
21. The shortfin mako shark can accelerate faster than a Porsche.
22. Juvenile hammerheads have been known to “suntan” in shallow waters to improve their counter shading before moving into deeper waters.
23. Tiger shark teeth are strong and sharp enough to tear through the shells of sea turtles.
24. The longest migration documented in sharks is a great white that traveled 12,400 miles from South Africa to Australia and back in less than nine months.
25. You are more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by a shark (this is a kak fact - try finding a coconut tree in PE!)
Go ahead - go find your local spots resident Johnny and give him a big 'ol smack on the lips, and say "I love you bru!".....or don't.
PS- if you wanna read how Thomas got that shot of the massive White tailing that kayak - check it out here.