People love seeing sharks these days. They love seeing them in terrible, made-for-SyFy movies, on television during "Shark Week," at aquariums and having them emblazoned on clothing and other paraphernalia.

You know where they shouldn't like seeing sharks? At the beach!

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Maybe it's just all the attention being paid by the media, but it sounds to me like shark attacks are on the rise in recent years. Some researchers agree this is the case, but that it's more because of people encroaching on the sharks rather than the sharks becoming more aggressive (if such a thing was possible).

Hmmm....tell that to Wareham's Andrew Costello, who was attacked by a shark in the waters off North Carolina's Outer Banks back on July 1 and is now recovering at home.

Great Whites have become frequent visitor to the shores off Cape Cod and the SouthCoast in recent years...so much so that I expect to see them wearing socks and sandals while spooning up some Del's Lemonade. But usually, folks aren't happy to see them!

Back on July 13, a seven-foot male Great White got stuck on Chatham's South Beach as the tide went out. Beachgoers splashed it with buckets of water to keep it alive before the harbormaster could tow out the shark, named Jameson by the folks, out to open waters. Needless to say, that's probably as close as any of them ever wanted to get to one of nature's most perfect predators.

But ever since then, Jameson has been spotted five times--FIVE TIMES--swimming off the shores of Chatham. As the kids say, "All kinds of nope!"

I'm not particularly afraid of sharks, but I respect the heck out of them. I'm not an ocean guy--I just don't like the salt water all that much--but I realize that there should be boundaries between me and the creatures that call the sea home. I'm not going to jump in a shark cage and start bopping Great Whites in the nose off Onset or Horseneck Beach, so I'd hope they could return the favor by not showing up on my front lawn. You have your home, sharks, and I have mine. Let's keep it that way.

I'll just keep swimming in my pond, where the only things I have to worry about are sunfish, a few pike and maybe the occasional snapping turtle.

 

 

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