(08-30-2023, 08:05 PM)Snarl Wrote: The beach.
I have a rule: When I visit Miami, I go straight to the beach and walk out knee deep. Yeah I take off my shoes and socks, but the pants are gettin' wet.
Grew up about 20 miles from Daytona Beach ... The World's Most Famous Beach ... back in those days. We were damned poor and took a lot of our meals out of those waters. I got a helicopter ride that flew a few miles along the shore. The numbers of sharks swimming amongst the bathers was an unforgettable sight to see.
Retired from the service on Oahu back in '98. SCUBA diving was a free recreational activity for me and I was out there most every day if I was on the island. Dove off of Electric Beach. Would snorkel out to the 3d reef. If you looked back over your shoulder you couldn't see the island above the wave tops.
Now I live a half hour or so south of kdog and GHLD. Only 'water' around here is the Ohio River.
I've had a few encounters with sharks. Bull sharks are nothing to mess with. I got bumped by one in Florida. Probably just an accident. I had a Tiger tear my fin off while I was exiting the water in Hawaii. Caused a nasty break in my ankle. Had another Tiger encounter ... he wanted my catch bag more than I did. I wasn't gonna get in a fight over it. Those happened so fast there wasn't really enough time for any feeling of terror to build. I did get in the water where there were a ton of hammerheads schooling. That raised the hackles of all the divers and we got back up on the boat and called it a day. Saw a bunch of pelagics during a blue water dive. We got out of the water quickly then too.
There's much worse stuff in the oceans than sharks.
Yikes. I'd have deployed the squid defense if my fin got latched onto by a tiger
I've never been scuba diving, but I did love swimming with fins, felt like I was flying underwater. I watched a GoPro video of a spearfisherman swimming along, then suddenly the camera view starts rotating
Turns out a great white crept up behind him and snatched one of his fins. It even made another pass at him before it left. I can't imagine the adrenaline. Those things are underwater trucks with teeth.
Hammerheads would be creepy too. They're not known to attack like bulls, tigers, and whites, but they're always curious and like getting close to investigate. I watched a kayaker smack the shit out of this hammerhead 40 times with his oar, but it kept coming back and checking him out.
(08-30-2023, 02:07 PM)Chiefsmom Wrote: @ grace:
I was just going to say, I have swam in so many ponds growing up, never thought about it twice.
Until recently, when we were fishing at the neighbors pond, and on the edge was a snapping turtle, almost as big as a car tire.
That was it. No more ponds.
We don't have the ocean close to us, but I don't mind swimming in lake Michigan. I did go into the new park lake/old pit with the grandsons a few weeks ago, but I figured there were enough people in the swimming area to scare off any big turtles.
Those still bodies of water also sometimes have those brain-eating amoeba too. One minute you're happy, swimming, jumping into the water, then a few days later you get a headache, and feel sick, then a few days later you're gone. I think the survivability is something like 5%.
I'm really starting to feel like Debby Downer in this thread