Sunday, August 3, 2008

Baby bull shark

Anyone who knows me knows that I have something of an odd obsession with sharks. I am one of the few people I know who actively wants to dive with them, especially the big variety. Possibly one of the high points of my life was diving with a full size grey reef shark (not big, but kind of chunky) hunting around me. The Boy was a little apprehensive, I wanted to go closer. I also once spent stupid amounts of time and money sitting on a bit of rock at 25 metres waiting to see one of the rarest sharks in the world, and the most beautiful, threshers.

Anyway, I have a bit of a thing about sharks.

My favourite shark is by far the bull shark. It is an amazing creature, perfectly adapted for its environment. It can swim in fresh and salt water and move seamlessly from one to the other. It will eat anything, and explore everything as if it could be eaten. It is the biggest killer of humans, not because it likes them, but because it uses its mouth to explore everything in its environment - with a huge number of nerve endings in its mouth. It is a bit fat and doesn't really have a neck.

Did I mention that it puts everything in its mouth and will eat anything.

For more, go to you tube and look up the Nat Geo piece on bull sharks or the one for Dive Magazine (type bull shark)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

this post really makes me giggle. and given that i'm enjoying Singapore so muuch I'll have plenty of time to watch the utube clip!

my first time diving with sharks was off lombok. I can remember finning like crazy to stay in one place whilst below me these two superslick, utterly at home black tipped reef sharks just hung, immobile and effortless. totally beautiful

LottieP said...

They are amazing.

Hong Kong alone consumes an etimated 3 million kilos of shark's fin a year - see this depressing article here...

It's sickening.