Shark Week

Hawaii is known for it’s beautiful beaches, luaus, surfing, forgetting that Sarah Marshall girl and of course sharks. Recently, Mike Coots was attacked by a Tiger Shark that took his leg while he was floating on his surfboard. Mike was taken to the hospital and was taken care of. Interestingly enough, Mike Coots harbors no vengeance to the shark that took his leg. In fact Mike Coots wants to start up a Shark Conservatory for those sharks that are hunted for their fins; Noble cause for such a terrible thing to happen.But sharks are the one animal in the world that don’t need a conservatory. Case and point, Mike Coots leg and Bethany Hamilton’s arm that was taken by Great White (#soulsurfer).

Why are we trying to protect a creature that can eat up an entire human appendage in one bite and something we dedicate an entire week of our lives to? Sharks don’t need our protection, they have thousands of teeth that do that for them. Any fish or animal that can devour 2 tons of a whale in an hour doesn’t need our protection or conserved. The sharks that get caught and served up as soup probably deserve it. It’s the same as the antelope that gets eaten by the lion. It’s never the smartest or the fastest that gets devoured; the weakest link gets eaten. It’s the same for these sharks, the ones that getting consumed are not the smartest, they are the slowest and laziest. To which I’m sure some of the Sharks in the ocean say “Thank god, Gary got caught. That guy was buzz kill. Do you know how many seals I’ve lost because that dude wouldn’t jump up out of the water.”

If the Lion King has taught me anything, it’s that we are all part of the circle of life and monkeys give birth to lion babies. With that said, I’m sure the humans act of vengeance against these sharks is to hunt them and turn them into soup. We don’t even make them a part of the main course; they don’t get that sort of respect when you eat one our people’s legs. Let that be a lesson to sharks, if you wound our people we will eat you in a meal and consider you less than salmon.

Conversely, when a Shark gets killed for its fin, that’s some shark’s kid or mom or uncle or dumb cousin, and the only vengeance they get is to eat a surfer’s arm or leg, in hopes that they can crush their dreams like we did theirs. Maybe the shark we killed just wanted to be known as the Shark that killed that whale all on his own and become the greatest shark ever known. Now we’ll never know. And that’s cycle; they eat our appendages, we eat their families and they are back eating our appendages.

Now if Mr. Coots would like to do something helpful in the wake of his terrible event, he can just teach Pilipino natives how to surf with Carrie Underwood, like Bethany Hamilton did.