Happy Holidays from The Fear Beneath
Happy holidays, all - we’ve been on a winter break and will be back soon.
Enjoy your weekend.
Shark Attack Survivor Todd Murashige Savors ‘Second Chance’
Todd Murashige hugs it out at his December 3 fundraiser
By Leila Fujimori, Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Todd Murashige has lost his tan and shoulder-length hair. All his toes move, he’s standing on his two legs and can bend his knees to a 130-degree angle.
But the biggest changes in the 40-year-old Ahuimanu man since a shark chomped his right leg are the ones you can’t see.
“Oh, we can see the change for the better,” said his aunt Wilma Yonemoto. “Unfortunately, it had to be that way. He’s much more patient, pays attention to his family more. He doesn’t take things for granted now. He matured overnight.”
In Murashige’s life, surfing used to come above all else - “I hate to say it, even his family,” said Richard Peralta, his friend since high school. “We called him the samurai because he was stubborn and bullheaded. … His eyes are more wide open now, and he sees life in a bigger way.”
Peralta performed in three bands at a fundraiser last night to help support his friend, who has been unable to work as a tile-setter since he was attacked while surfing Sept. 9. About 250 to 300 friends, family members and strangers bought $45 tickets at the Willows restaurant in McCully to support and celebrate with Murashige and his wife and two children.
Murashige, a competitive surfer, was sitting on his board near the Crouching Lion Inn when he was bitten by what he thinks was a 12-foot tiger shark. He managed to paddle the half-mile back to shore, where he was assisted by a stranger.
Though he lost a lot of blood, no major artery was severed.
“I feel so blessed to have a second chance in life,” Murashige said. “No words can express how grateful my family and I are.”
Murashige said the shark attack was “the perfect scenario for me. If I got banged by a car or hurt working, I wouldn’t have gotten the message.”
“Before it was like SURF, myself, self-indulgence, not my family,” he said.
But he said it was something about being “basically alone in the ocean” that helped him get it and hear the “wake-up call.”
“To me, it’s God’s … God’s hand,” Murashige said, tears welling in his eyes.
“It’s a total transformation for him,” said his wife, Heather. “He’s been touched with something beyond what we can understand. He’s embraced it.”
Their children Tyler, 10, and Tiffany, 8, “notice Daddy spends a little bit more time; Daddy is a little bit more patient,” she said.
Even their relationship has improved, with more meaningful conversations and quality time.
“It’s not all about the surfing,” she said.
She said she sometimes asks, “Whoa, is this really you?”
Surfer Bethany Hamilton, now 18, said her whole life has changed for the better after the shark attack at age 13 that cost her an arm, and senses Murashige has experienced that, too.
“I can just see it in his smile and the way he talks,” she said. “He’s so confident and he’s stoked.”
Great White Washes Ashore Morris Island
This is pretty old news now, but it’s been sitting in the queue and we wanted to get it out there for the archives. It would be pretty intense to see one of these great beasts lying on the beach.
Morris Island, South Carolina
A great white shark washed ashore on a Lowcountry beach. The 13-foot-long shark was found at Morris Island last month by fishermen.
The Department of Natural Marine Biologists says the shark may have starved to death or been stranded.
“They are extremely rare in this area. They’re actually rare throughout their range. Their large apex predators, so there’s basically not a lot of them around.. And they are actually solitary animals,” DNR Marine Biologist, Josh Loefer said.
Great white sharks like cool coastal waters and are typically between 12 and 15 feet in length.
New Zealand Tags Great White Sharks
Since the release of the movie Jaws thirty-three years ago, the Great White Shark has been a source of fascination - and fear. But it’s still a species we know very little about.
A Department of Conservation programme’s been set up in New Zealand waters hoping to change that. Shark expert Clinton Duffy attached a tag to a great white shark six months ago to track Great White Sharks movements. When retrieved, the depth, light and temperature sensors on the tag will tell Duffy exactly where the shark’s been.
The tag recently broke free and is already sending a signal telling Duffy where its is floating. It will be found and picked up using GPS. “The principal objective of the research is to define the habitat of Great White Sharks, we want to look at long-distance movements, connections between populations in New Zealand and other countries, and we also want to learn about the basic behaviour, the day to day behaviour of the animals,” Duffy explains. Read more
Adopt a Great White Shark
Adopt a Great White Shark
Adopt a Great White Shark through a contribution to the World Wildlife Fund Gift Center. There are three levels - $25, $50, and $100, the more money the more loot. Every adoption includes a certificate, species spotlight card, and photo. There are other animals up for “adoption” as well.
Contribute to The Shark Research Committee on someone’s behalf:
The Shark Research Committee is proactive in our approach to shark conservation through education. We believe that by increasing the public’s awareness of the shark’s vital role in protecting the biosphere’s of the World’s Oceans that we can emphasize the need for immediate conservation of the more than 100 million sharks that are senselessly killed annually.
Great white sharks are found in most temperate waters throughout the world, and are most common around Australia, South Africa and Northern California. Their diet consists of warm-blooded mammals, primarily pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), but also whales, dolphins, fish and squid. Caught for their jaws, teeth, leather and fins, which collect high prices and are in demand worldwide, great white sharks also face the threat of accidental capture in fishing gear, and animals that survive are often killed for their body parts.
Great Whites on Display
Filed under: California, News, Shark Culture, Shark Research, Shark Sightings
Great White Shark at Monterey Bay Aquarium
By Alistair Crowley
Four Southern California great white sharks have resided on display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium since 2004 — each in the Outer Bay exhibit for as long as six months before being released back into the wild.
Aquarium spokespeople say the display program has benefited public perception of sharks everywhere and, ultimately, will boost interest and activism in preserving the ocean’s diminishing shark populations.
However, five great whites have died in the hands of the Monterey Bay Aquarium since 2004, when the facility began acquiring juveniles entangled in the nets of certain boats and, consequently, critics have suggested that the aquarium is doing less for wild great whites than it is for its own box office sales. Read more
Great White Shark Spotted in Santa Monica
Filed under: California, News, Shark Sightings, Unconfirmed
Deep in the archives, a fresh comment surfaced that we felt was pretty interesting - it’s a report from “Roman Shchur” which we have not substantiated in any way, nor have we researched this claim and gotten any background information. Just bringing it to your attention, we can discuss journalistic ethics in a separate post.
“Saw a 10′ to 12′ great white shark yesterday (12/10/2008) at 4pm while fishing the shipwreck in santa monica. It followed my sardine all the way to the boat then paused looked at us turned arond and went back down. It was huge! Never seen anything like that before.”
Thanks for the report, Roman! If you spot this post and have any other details, we’d love to hear more from you.
Great White Shark Destroys Shark Cage
UPDATE: We initially posted this video without knowledge of this dive operator’s questionable record of safety and behavior. Coverage of this video by our friends at the Underwater Thrills: Swimming With Sharks blog brings up some important points that we wanted to mention here:
… For example this video is one of the primary reason the Mexican Navy enacted a ban on chumming at Isla Guadalupe in 2008. This ban affected an entire fleet of operators and shark divers from all over the planet. All due to a video and the complete lack of any media control exercised by a commercial shark diving company.
“On November 4th (2007) we had an incident that was pretty darned exciting. CC, or Cut Caudal, one of our regular sharks, accidentally ran into one of the main cages on the Searcher. CC came up nearly vertical about 20 feet away from the cage and grabbed one of the hang baits, which he is known to do on a regular basis.
However, on this particular day he swam right into the portside cage’s viewing window. As CC took the bait he instinctively rolled his eyes back, couldn’t see where he was going and accidentally swam directly into the viewing window. CC’s entire head went inside the cage and he was stopped just short of his pectoral fins.
Well, we all know that white sharks have no reverse and CC was too far in to turn around. He tried to turn, but he could not quite get his snout to clear the corner. He rolled on his side and began to thrash up and down trying to free himself. Being a rather large white shark he just ended up making the opening bigger by simply removing the front of the cage so he could get out of the cage. CC literally removed all the lower front vertical bars and the horizontal bar that connects all of the vertical bars to the main frame of the front cage panel and then swam away.
What was amazing is that it took only about 10 seconds to do this. What was even more amazing was that there were 2 divers in the cage at the time and they thought that this was the coolest thing they had ever experienced and walked away completely unscathed. The divers also said that CC was just fine too!
We were all very relieved that no one was injured. We were also pleased that our divers listened to the safety briefing prior to diving and followed the instructions and evacuated the cage when this incident occurred. One diver utilized the emergency escape hatch and somehow managed to film the entire event. We learned something from this and we will take appropriate measures to prevent this from happening again.
When we said, “You can get face-to-face with the ultimate predator” this is not what we had in mind!
The Searcher’s cages are 6 years old now and we have learned a great deal since we first built them. We are going to take this opportunity to design and build new state-of-the-art cages that will be safer and stronger. We will unveil the new cages in spring 2008.”
They Do Things Different In New Zealand
This footage is not directly related to the story below, but removing the carcass of a dead whale from the beach is always a classic source of entertainment…
Victoria Bay, New Zealand
The George Herald reported that swimmers were ordered out of the water on Sunday after the authorities were notified by a resident who spotted a whale washed up between rocks on the east side of the bay. The whale had been dead for days and was “already rotting” when it washed up on the rocks, said George’s Fire and Disaster Management chief, Barend Nelson.
A boat was sent out to tow it out to sea, but the mission was aborted as the whale was too heavy. The Humpback was originally estimated to weigh 15 tons but was bigger than expected, said Nelson.
Early on Tuesday morning the whale was wrapped in a net, and 150m cables were attached for three vehicles to tow it off the rocks. The 40-ton capacity cable began to fray once the whale was on the beach, and chains had to be attached for the last tug.
The dissection began with workers from Tree Master using chain saws, which attracted a lot of attention from locals.
“We tried to keep the spectators away because it was very smelly and messy,” said Nelson.
Seven hours after they began, 30 tons of whale meat was loaded into 10 vehicles and driven to the rubbish dump for burial. Nelson said on Wednesday there were still “little pieces of whale in the water”.
George Herald reporter Wessel van Heerden said the rocks and sand were covered in a white, fatty layer and in some places, pieces of blubber were floating around. “They’re busy rehabilitating the beach and picking up all the little pieces,” said Nelson.
Giant Goonches Invade the Philippines?
Giant Goonches want to feast on your tribal villages
By Shawn Lindseth at Heckler Spray
If you live in a Filipino village with an economy primarily based on fishing, it could present quite a problem if five monsters suddenly show up in your water keeping everybody land-locked out of fear. Some say this is what caused the current world-wide economic meltdown. Others claim we just made that up right now.
Still others claim five snake-like black beasts did show up in the local waters of a Philippine island of Luzon.
In November of 2002 a Filipino boy reported seeing a big black creature swimming near his village. He thought he was seeing a log until the thing moved - showing off a little more of its shape. The description now given it is that it looked like a cross between a catfish and a shark. The boy screamed, bringing other locals to his aid - but the creature was gone.
About two months later a a whole bunch of people reported seeing the same thing at the same time - a creature measuring three feet wide and seven feet long. Their description was that the creature seemed to be rolling as it swam down stream.
Pandemonium ensued. Read more
Grisly Shark Massacre Report From Somalia
Wholesale massacre of sharks. When will it stop?
“Some Somali shores became uninhabitable because some of the ships were throwing thousands of Shark carcasses into the sea after their valuable fins had been cut off. The mutilated dead bodies of these majestic sharks were coming into shore and decayed on the village beaches.
The smell was terrible and many residents were getting sick due to infections carried by flies from the rotting carcasses. The residents of the coastal towns such as Garacad, Jariiban, Idaan etc. suffered severely. An entire shore line could look like red for entire days; this was not blood but floating lobster-eggs shaven from the processing of Lobster tails for the rich clients mainly in Kenya and Dubai.
This indiscriminate lobster harvesting during wrong times, when the female Lobsters carry eggs and the forbidden taking of female lobsters with eggs caused the villagers to go hungry because the marine creatures were depleted by these ruthless commercial fishing practices neglecting any laws of legal fishing or cultural habits.”
The Chum Slick Shares Our Love of Hate Mail
Just discovered a hilarious post over at The Chum Slick, and it involves a very angry “Zac’s Mate” who has a few choice words for our fellow sharky blog. Here’s a sample (WARNING: the following language is not appropriate for minors!) :
you can go fuck yourself, people that get attcked by shark need every bit of supprt they can get. i know because im close friends with someone mentioned on your site. if i ever met you in person i would seriously punch you in the face, you are an absolute fucking dick weed. FUCK YOU!!!!
We’ve gotten some real great feedback and angry letters on our brief stint in the shark-blogging world, and hope to continue to incite passionate conversations and heated debates in the shark attack new arena for a long time coming.
Here’s a toast to our fellow shark blogs. Cheers.
