PLEASE DON'T FEED THE GREAT WHITES:

THE FISHING REPORT: Morning meal (Brian Hoffman, October 10, 2002, San Francisco Chronicle)

The way we heard it . . . Members of the Marin Mammal Center, a fantastic organization made up mostly of volunteers, recently were part of a chartered nature trip on one of the local party boats. They brought two sea lion pups, which were to be released into the ocean at the Farallon Islands. Beautiful, calm day, and the skipper pulled up to the islands between the southeast anchorage buoy and the hoist. The first seal went into the water and swam a little ways from the boat. Then the second. Then the skipper and about everyone else saw the shark -- great white, big, 17 to 18 feet -- slide out from under the boat and come up under the sea lion that had just been released. A swirl, a splash, the pup was gone. Next thing they saw was a slight disturbance just under the ocean surface, on a beeline for the first sea lion. Swirl. Splash. Not so much as a stain left on the water. The folks on the boat, naturally, were horrified. The shark, naturally, was doing only what sharks do. The skipper: "I've been running these trips for years, and this is the first time it's happened. It was very unfortunate, but that shark was in the right place at the right time. I guess."

Does anyone else feel like Hannibal Lecter when such stories seem to make the universe seem more sane? Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2002 10:18 PM