Official GWS Thread

That is a nasty video! I guess standing waist deep, feeding 8 foot reef sharks while wearing shorts and sandals is a bad idea.

yeah who would have ever thought that feeding sharks was a bad idea 
while your standing in the water with them 

well I guess it just shows you, you really do learn something new every day. 

yeah who would have ever thought that feeding sharks was a bad idea
while your standing in the water with them 

Yeah....it's called NATURAL SELECTION 


When a human gets complacent with wild animals - that's when tragedy is just around the corner. Like that dude who went to Alaska for 13 summers in a row to live with the grizzly bears....he ended up getting eaten by one and the sad part is that his girlfriend - while trying to fend off the grizz to protect her man - ended up eaten alive as well    It's out on DVD called the Grizzly Man - I believe.

I just got the DVD documentary on that guy.  It's called "Grizzley Man".  Let me tell you, that guy is WHACKO.

-Allen

Let me tell you, that guy is WHACKO.

two words ="Natural Selection".....that's why he's no longer walking among us. I'm more upset of the fact that he got his GF involved with his stupidity and thus - getting her killed 

I'm more upset that he probably acclimated those bears to humans.  That's bad for the bears.  They won't know any better next time they come across some campers/hikers/fishers.

BTW, anyone here every put in for the McNeil River bear viewing lottery?  I've been doing this for year and have never "won".  Perhaps this year. http://www.wildlife.alaska.gov/mcneil/index.cfm

From sharks to bears ... we really are getting the wintertime blues here, aren't we?

-Allen

Woman dies after attack
.http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-01-07T121959Z_01_WRI744356_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AUSTRALIA-SHARK.xml&archived=False

Guys like sean van s. are usually hopelessly biased. His livelihood is all wrapped up in sharks, particularly the GWS,
so I have a difficult time buying anything he says at face value, I at least take a pinch of salt with it. Anything he says is going to
be spun and spun hard. And like I noted previously, there is some language on his site that
hints at a deeper elitist shark-hugging misanthropic point of view that could
easily be at odds with the interest of the general public.  It's so very jurassic park,  .

well, awareness is step # 1. so we'll just have to see what happens in the next half decade or so. Maybe we were
just crying wolf, being chicken little. I hope so.

hopefully this thread will be around to track it all.

Mooch, regarding natural selection, note that if the dude successfully reproduced before he got chomped,
then your point is not so valid.

In fact, maybe his dare-devil ways got him scads of groupies and he has 150 illegitimate offspring, who knows!

If you get eaten after you successfully reproduce, well, natural selection didn't work against you assuming that
your offspring survive which is usually true these days.

Mooch since you have declared your intention to not reproduce, we could argue that your love of fishing and
fear of committment (insert cliche here) is natural selection in action!  .

Mooch since you have declared your intention to not reproduce, we could argue that your love of fishing and
fear of committment (insert cliche here) is natural selection in action!  .

very true....there can only be "one" mooch and I'm sure the trout will be happy to know this 

I got a reply from Ralph Collier of the Shark Research Foundation regarding my questions about
details on the only known fatal attack of a GWS on a kayaker.

He gave me a copyrighted excerpt from this book that answers a couple of my questions about
the deaths of tamara and ray in 1989 off malibu.

paraphrasing, here are the answers to my questions:

1. She was wearing a windbreaker, so probably was not swimming when she got the wounds
that killed her (a big bite to the thigh that cut her femoral artery)

2. The kayak had damage consistent with a 2000lb object going 17 knots as determined by
an engineer familiar with kayak construction methods.

Buy Collier's book if you want the details, but I have asked him for permission to post the excerpt
from his book here.

However, this sounds like 16 years ago, two people died somehow at the jaws of a white shark(s)
while they were in their kayaks, making it pretty darn germane to this thread, 

Also, by my count 3 kayaks have been effectively sunk by GWS, the two covered by BASK links
above and tamaras.

pretty wild!

ralph quotes the ventura coroner who says the wounds are consistent with a white shark 5M in length.

I just ordered his book $60, I'll post a review when I get it and check it out.

The only orca attack I've ever heard of was the one on a kneeboarder in big sur.  I don't think the orcas
are as dumb as the white sharks. They'd have a clue on the kayak being a big hunk of plastic I think.

But I'm speculating of course.

J was kind enough to CC me on the email and a few more details struck me:

1. "Something" was seen swirling near where the kayakers where know to go.

2. The kayaks where found lashed together.

3. The weather was pretty crappy that day with 30-50 knot winds.

4. Lots of wierd bumps etc found on the kayaks as well as the female victims hands and head.

Link to Collier's Book - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=norcalkayakan-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0971971749%2Fqid%3D1136859981%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%2526v%3Dglance%2526n%3D283155

maybe bill is suggesting she was assaulted, chucked out of the kayak and then chomped while
floating?  then her companion ray bailed for Peru? Could be, stranger things have happened.
But I think they determined she didn't drown or die from the bruises to the head. the coroner
said exanquination or loss of blood was the cause of death.

my conversation with the volvo-driving rower @ lexington the other day was kind of funny.

I'm no spring chicken and he pre-dated me by a good 20 years. But he was out there
rowing a single scull early in the morning, amongst the diftwood.

we chatted and the topic of sharks came up. not such a worry in lexington of course,  .

His coment was, "Sharks? Kill them all, I hate 'em. F*cking commies". heh. I had a good laugh,
I figured, volvo, rower == tree hugger, so his comment was quite the surprise.

at the end of the day I'm more tree-hugger than not, but it was funny to hear this guy's
opinions on sharks, cause right now I'm on the way non-politically-correct end of the spectrum
to bring up the idea of kill permits for the GWS.

I just realized that tamara and roy were 24 and training for a triathlon in 1989.

so was I! 

I was not suggesting anything, just fleshing out the details. I hope he let's us publish his full excerpt, it is very interesting. Or maybe everyone should just buy the book  Something very strange happened out there involving a shark, what exactly we will never know. My guess is a bit different:

They stopped and lashed the kayaks together and Roy jumped in for a swim, at some point Roy is hanging on the side of Tamara's kayak and is attacked from beneath. This causes the damage to Tamara's kayak and Tamara's head as she is flung against the kayak. Roy was probably killed on impact. Tamara was either cut during the initial attack or was hit soon after.