Cape Cod Official Encouraging Shark Genocide In Misguided Idiocy
I was too slow to the draw on the original post which was originally above in this blog. However my comrade in chief Kmarko covered it well right here.
We got people clearing the water like Chief Brody is staring at them and the beach looking like the hallways of the Overlook Hotel. AWESOME. Its kind of a shame that the odds of a shark attack are microscopic as we could use a little more natural selection on the Earth these days. While it is still EXTREMELY rare for a shark to attack a human unprovoked, people go from cavalier to shook faster than the CGI shark Michael Phelps “raced” when they see a video like the one above. Members of a wildly successful podcast might even call them… “triggered”. It may be unfortunate and scary, but you aren’t a victim if you’re attacked while swimming in the same surf seals live and swim in. You are simply involving yourself in a pretty simple odds game where you look exactly like prey to stuff that lives there. If you went to England and bitched about how much they liked soccer, most people would ask what you were expecting while hanging out in England. The same logic applies here. If you’re in the ocean, you have to play by the ocean’s rules- which includes bigger things than you potentially eating you. The funny thing about the futility of this logic battle is this – the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts was in 1936!!! Which leads me to the wrinkle in this story.
I normally would just watch the video and move on due to my ADHD attention span, but for some reason I decided to read the local news writeup. Folks, I spit out my coffee all over my Reebok Classics and I wasn’t even included in that ad deal. The commissioner of Barnstable County where the attack occurred saw this video, which happens millions of times a day off camera across the ocean, and decided there was only one course of action.
“ Commissioner Ron Beaty is looking to deploy baited drum lines with hooks near popular beaches in the hopes of catching great white sharks — a protocol that he says has been successfully implemented in South Africa and Australia. Large sharks found hooked but still alive would be shot, he said, and their bodies would be discarded at sea.
“From my viewpoint, based upon the sharp increase in shark-related attacks and incidents around Cape Cod in recent years, there is a clear and present danger to human life as a result of this growing problem,” Beaty said, although he didn’t cite any statistics.
A motivating factor for his proposal, he said, was Monday’s shark attack on a seal off Nauset Beach, which was crowded with people.
Could there be a more out of date statement than “we need to react to this completely natural predator acting how it has for 100+ million years by shooting all of them and dumping their carcasses at sea”. A video that shows a shark recognizing that the surfers were not its prey and eating a seal that was swimming next to them. There has been 1 fatal attack in the past 1482 days, but we need to take action so these evil sharks don’t MURDER all of these helpless children! Instead of instructing the humans, who we can communicate to through the English language, not to swim next to seal colonies, we should ineffectively try to kill all of the sharks? If this moron enacts a law where sharks are killed in response to this event, I may have to, in the words (that haven’t come to fruition… yet) of Dave Portnoy, do something that I regret my whole life.
So, I tweeted it out this morning to get a gauge of the people, and lo and behold the city official enacting the law isn’t exactly a fan favorite! It’s a man by the name of Ron Beaty Jr., a convicted felon who went to jail for sending death threats to politicians and later his ex-wife… sounds like a level-headed dude!
C’mon… That’s too easy. THIS is the dude? Some of these politicians are better than anything you could make up in a movie. Kind of ironic that a guy who hasn’t come across a meal he didn’t want a piece of wants to exterminate an animal that has a false reputation for the same problem. The buffets of Cape Cod should be picketing in front of city hall for protection against this blob too. Ron, I don’t know why you are so worried – Great Whites are targeting seals off the beach, not whales, you should be just fine. Might be best to just worry about not getting blown out 216-15 for inconsequential city government seats.
Shark culling does not work in effectively guaranteeing the prevention of Shark Attacks. The Australian example used by the male Violet Beauregarde here was shut down after being deemed misguided and wrong. There are too many sharks and there isn’t a surefire way to prevent them from ignoring the hooks and still swimming into the beach’s waters. It’s almost like there will be an inherent (albeit TINY) risk when swimming in the water with animals that are 3-4 times larger than you no matter what. If you went to Africa and dressed up as a zebra and then got killed by a lion, I don’t think the answer wouldn’t be to bait traps with antelope meat and kill lions to dump in the woods.
The Western Australian program was shut down years ago after not working and killing tons of sharks to no avail.
““The imminent threat policy is a joke,” said Michael Kennedy, campaign director of HSI. “This is not only a complete waste of money, but also a complete mockery of the WA government’s commitment to improving the scientific understanding of white sharks.”
I thought certainly I was mistaken. The guy must have proposed this solution off the cuff and would eventually see the flaws in this idea. Oh no, I found his Twitter account and this dude LOVES his idea…
Unbelievable! The good news is our hefty friend is a big fan of public debate! He even tweeted his phone number to encourage “intense public debate”.
I’m sure he will be open minded and consider all suggestions, being the successful public figure that he is. It might also be important to note, this legislation has very little chance of getting off the ground due to the White Sharks being protected, which is terribly inconvenient for Mr. Beaty. So while this SHOULDN’T develop any further, it is important to squash these types of sentiments before they start and use the opportunity to educate as many people as possible about the truth regarding these animals.
No matter what, I just hope the Sharks don’t go crazy and start attacking everything in sight, because then we’d really be screwed. We need to develop a safe zone where we could remove children from this imminent danger! There has to be a place somewhere here on Earth, a place where we can go but Sharks can’t…
Holy shit. If you look right near all of that blue stuff on the map I think we may have something. A mythical place where you can GUARANTEE your hypothetical sharkbait son will be safe… ON LAND AND NOT IN THE WATER WHERE SEALS LIVE!
Editor’s Note: In the 3 day span YP spent writing this blog Commissioner Beaty shelved his plan over “mounting opposition.” Whatever, still a great takedown!
YP UPDATE —
King Ron has GRACIOUSLY agreed to potentially listen to offers. Hopefully the negotiations work out and he will grant the sharks their lives back. PHEW!
UPDATE 2 —
I demand Ron put his proposal back on board and then shelve it again due to this article!