Summer of the Shark?: A Baby Great White Shark Was Caught Off the Rockaways This Weekend
(Add your own John Williams-inspired sound effects here.)
Ah, summer. It’s finally here! And while it isn’t (yet) the oppressively humid, unbearably hot nightmare that the Farmer’s Almanac promised it would be, it is sunny and warm and absolutely perfect for beach-going. We finally made it through the long, cold, snowy winter and dreary, rain-soaked spring! We should get to celebrate, right? We should feel free to, I don’t know, skip down the sandy shore and frolic in the waves, right? Right! Just, you know, be really, really careful of all the sharks out there! Because, as it turns out, there’s bound to be a lot. Fun.
Via DNAInfo, on Sunday, a baby Great White Shark was caught and released just off the Rockaways: “A group of friends out fishing about a mile off Rockaway Beach wound up reeling in a baby great white shark and spotted another 10 footer in the water. The little Jaws was tagged and released by the fishermen.” The 10-footer swam up behind the boat and was just hanging out as man-eating sharks do, because, as Steve Fernandez, one of the fisherman aboard, points out, “There’s no magical fence that keeps them off the beach. They swim wherever they want to go.”
And, as it turns out, this summer might just be shaping up to be full of shark-sightings (and hopefully not, you know, shark attacks) because, due to things like the climate change-caused warmer water, more people are going in the water and staying longer, and there is an abundance of food closer to the beach which attracts a larger shark population. So, you know, be careful out there! I’ll definitely be thinking of your safety as I sit really, really, really far away from the ocean aka inside my apartment all summer.
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