Man Better Watch Out, It’s Getting Wild Out There

Next thing you know, sea gulls will band together and wage bloody war against mankind. . . .

OK, so that only happens in the movies. But this has been a bizarre summer for interaction between man and beast.

Some examples:

* Last week a great white shark attacked body-boarder Jonathan Kathrein, 16, of Lucas Valley, off Stinson Beach near San Francisco. Kathrein said he screamed after being bumped, then was attacked by a juvenile white shark measuring seven or eight feet. He was helped to shore by two surfers after suffered extensive injuries to one of his legs, although he is expected to walk again.

It was the first attack at the popular Bay Area beach, and the timing couldn’t have been worse--right before the long and busy Labor Day weekend. Lifeguards closed the beach immediately after the incident on Aug. 26 but reopened it Wednesday and officials are hoping to get through the weekend without further incident.

” . . . We feel we needed one week to see if there were any more sightings and it also [gave] us a good deal of time to inform the public as to what happened,” lifeguard supervisor Pat Norton said.

Sounds like the plot of another thriller, doesn’t it? The location certainly would work for a “Jaws”-type movie.

Only 30 miles offshore, at the Farallon Islands, great whites congregate by the dozens in the late summer to feed on marine mammals.

According to Peter Pyle, a researcher at the islands, on the day Kathrein was attacked, white sharks attacked two surfboards set adrift as part of a study. A day later, he witnessed an attack on an elephant seal.

And Stinson Beach, though there hadn’t been an attack until last week, is well within the notorious “Red Triangle,” an area frequented by white sharks that extends from Bodega Bay to the Farallones and back to the mainland near Santa Cruz.

Even so, Norton said he wasn’t too worried about the weekend.

“I’ve worked here for 23 years and none of us had ever even had a dorsal fin sighting,” he said.

Still, he and the rest of the lifeguards at Stinson Beach figure to be on the lookout for the next few days.

* You might have seen it on TV news last week--a whale ramming an unsuspecting surfer as he sat in the lineup off Middleton Point in southern Australia.

Now, whales don’t normally attack people. But after studying the footage, officials of Australia’s National Parks and Wildlife Service concluded that this 80-ton southern right whale probably did it as a warning to the surfer, who may have been too close to the whale’s calf.

The surfer, who climbed back on his board and caught a wave in, was fortunate to have escaped unharmed, officials said, and not too bright to have paddled in an area frequented by so many whales in the first place.

Many on the beach agreed. One surfer told the Advertiser in South Australia, “You might get the odd idiot going [that] close but most surfers are ocean-aware. . . . I’d be terrified of it flicking its tail.”

* The wrath of Hurricane Bonnie is still being felt along parts of the East Coast, in the form of pain similar to bee stings caused by moon jellyfish that were driven ashore and broken apart by heavy surf, their nearly invisible stinging cells scattering throughout the surf line.

On one Florida beach last Sunday and Monday--before the onset of Hurricane Earl--more than 100 swimmers were treated for stings.

* Sharks in the sea, sure, but crocodiles? In the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta, swimmers last week were driven ashore in a panic by a couple of them.

Reports of crocodiles began coming in at about noon last Saturday, spurring a large-scale hunt by officials who eventually determined that a few of the crocs from a nearby river had “walked off the beaten path and left the area they normally stay in.”

The crocodiles were small, about three feet, but apparently big enough to make many swimmers head for the pool.

* This is a fish story if ever there was one, but it went out on the wires so here it is: Franc Filipic, 47, of Ljubljana, Slovenia, last week reeled in a 110-pound sheatfish, a member of the catfish family, and tried to haul the fish ashore when it made another run. Filipic went under with the fish and police found his body two days later.

* “The Birds” it isn’t. But one loco turkey in Albany, N.Y., has been waging war against mail carriers since last winter, aggressively pecking at delivery trucks and carriers. The U.S. Postal Service offered to trap and relocate the turkey, a large Tom, but residents balked at the plan. So, deliveries were canceled and residents had to pick up their mail at the post office.

That didn’t sit well, either, and finally, the residents agreed to move their mailboxes curbside so mail-carriers don’t have to get out of their trucks and risk coming under attack.

“We’re hoping that the turkey will get accustomed to the new system and that will be the end of it,” said Mary Madonna, a post office spokeswoman.

THE DOVE OPENER

Thousands of hunters made the pilgrimage to the southeast corner of California, some venturing into Arizona, for Tuesday’s dove-hunting opener.

“It sounds like World War III and birds are just raining out of the sky,” said an official with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish.

For a while, it appeared that real rain would scatter the doves before the opening-day assault. There were some squalls, but the dove opener was, by and large, a huge success, with 10-bird limits being filled in as little as 20 minutes.

“The clouds were more of a blessing than anything else because it kept us cool,” said Richard Sprague, owner of Sprague’s Sports & RV in Yuma, Ariz. “Hunters down here were extremely successful.”

Sprague said he sold 900 licenses the day before the opener and that the winner of his annual “Big Breast” contest was Anaheim resident Bob Freck, whose bird weighed in at 84.6 grams.

HURRICANE AFTERMATH

Official damage assessments in the aftermath of Hurricane Isis are not yet in, but unofficially, things are a mess throughout the East Cape region of Southern Baja because of the chubasco that made landfall there earlier this week before continuing on up the Sea of Cortez.

Houses are full of mud in many areas. Hotels fared well enough, but their dirt landing strips were damaged by flooding. Portions of Highway 1--the lifeline to the East Cape from the airport at San Jose del Cabo to the south and La Paz to the north--remained closed as of Thursday morning, but a southbound detour was made available for access to the airport. Power throughout the region remains out and might not be restored for days.

At least one hotel cruiser and two super pangas were sunk, according to Gary Graham, a Buena Vista resident and owner of the fly-fishing business, Baja on the Fly.

Telephone service was restored to some areas Thursday. Margie Enos, a massage therapist at Buenavista Beach Resort, said downed power poles and flooded roads and arroyos is making it difficult for officials to get a handle on things.

The situation figures to improve daily, but prospective tourists might want to call their travel agents and ask about access and the availability of water and electricity.

THE BITE

* Local: San Diego-based vessels still offer the best fishing, as yellowfin and small schools of bigeye tuna--30-50 miles southwest of Pointa Loma--for the most part remain beyond the range of landings to the north. For those who prefer yellowtail to tuna, however, there are large schools at various locations as far north as Oxnard, with the best fishing at San Clemente and Santa Catalina islands, along the coast south of Newport Beach, at the Horseshoe Kelp off Long Beach and the Short Banks off El Segundo.

* Baja: Ron Baker of San Quintin Sport Fishing said one of his captains caught a 165-pound yellowfin and two customers teamed to catch a 120-pounder. Much smaller tuna, meanwhile, continue to highlight the action out of this sleepy vacation spot south of Ensenada. Farther south, at Cabo San Lucas, a 520-pound blue marlin caught aboard Picante Dream highlighted the week’s action. Ten to 15 blues are being hooked daily, and sailfish remain the predominant billfish catch.

CALENDAR

* Graham, the aforementioned owner of Baja on the Fly at the East Cape, will give a slide presentation-seminar on fly-fishing north and south of the border Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. at Orange Coast College in Newport Beach. Details: (949) 645-9412. Graham can be reached on the Internet at https://www.bajafly.com.

* Graham Macintosh, an Englishman living in San Diego who gained fame years ago by walking 3,000 miles around the coast of Baja, and more recently by walking 1,000 miles along the old mission trail from Tecate to Loreto, will lecture and show slides from both trips this month at the First Spiritualist Church in San Diego. The 1,000-mile journey will be featured Thursday at 7 p.m. and the 3,000-mile trek will be discussed Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. Both lectures are free, and figure to be funny. Details: (619) 284-4646.

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* FISH REPORT, C14