In 1975, while living in Los Angeles CA, my first bride and I vacationed in Nassau. On our return, we visited relatives in Pittsburgh. During this visit my bride and I went to see a movie. At its end, I said to her, “If I had seen Jaws before we went to Paradise Island, I would never have gone into the water.”
Nineteen years later, I was skinny-dipping in South Beach with some friends. We had just left a bar where we had played pool and watched OJ Simpson’s slow roll down the highway in a white Bronco. As we splashed around in the surf, one of my friends casually noted that, “hammerheads have been seen near the pier.” I whooshed from the water like an ICBM, plopped onto the beach and stuffed my sandy body into my clothes.
When I was a young boy, my brother and I would spend summers with my aunt in Philadelphia. She was a schoolteacher and summer camp counselor at a “school for troubled girls.” My brother and I were not allowed direct contact with the girls – we could not be on the grounds at the same time they were – so we swam in the pond when the girls were away from the camp. One day, while climbing the ladder from the pond to the dock, I stopped midway, half in and half out of the water. It was then that I experienced my first fish bite: something nibbled on my thigh, and I executed an exit from the water that I would duplicate many years later, in Florida.
When I was floating on a raft in the clear waters off Paradise Island, near Nassau, I noticed that the shadow created by the raft had drawn the attention of some fish. The fish were schooling beneath the raft, and would scatter when I slid into the water to cool off. I stopped sliding into the water when I saw a fish that appeared to be the length of the raft, chilling in the shadows with the small fry. Panicked, windmilling arms can produce impressive propulsion for a raft. I eat little fish and flee from the big ones.
I have a friend who volunteers at the Clearwater (Florida) Marine Aquarium. I got to see Winter, the dolphin that lost its tail, and other dolphins. The performances of those big mammals made me wonder how many other monsters might have shared water space with me. Not that I am claiming an entitlement to the water — I used to tell my children that I was a dolphin — but I am not fond of the idea of being fed on while bathing. And despite my self-proclaimed proficiency in the water, I am no Aquaman, and cannot win a sprint against even the lowliest of fish. Or fishy-type mammals.
When I visit my friend in Clearwater Florida, I walk from her house to the beach. If it is warm, I swim; if cool, I bird watch. I have never seen a monster rise from the waters. Though I have seen the gentle breach of schools of dolphins off the coast of California…
Anyway, Shark Week, a Discovery channel phenomenon, began on August 10th. I have not watched any of the shows in the past, and I am unlikely to see any this week, as I do not have cable. The series has been touted as a learning experience, but I confess to having no interest whatsoever in learning about how, what and why a shark eats. Especially not whom a shark eats.
I say, “Let ‘em eat fish.”