A False Alarm, No Ifs, Ands or Bites

The Olympic triathlon is over, the athletes have negotiated Sydney Harbor without so much as a single shark bite, and they have dutifully thanked the divers sent in beforehand to keep the man-eaters at bay.

The divers indeed are deserving of praise--having been able to keep a straight face while pretending to protect athletes who needed no protection in the first place.

The threat of sharks?

“It’s a bit of a joke,” says Mike Bhana, a film producer with Natural History New Zealand. “I’d be more concerned with swimming into a hypodermic biffed out by some AIDS-infected tranny hooker with a heroine addiction.”

Bhana has an interesting way of putting things, but you get the point.

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We bring this up because so much publicity was given the triathlon because it involved swimming across a stretch of saltwater in an island nation known to have large sharks patrolling its coastline.

And because, while so many reporters filed stories about the protective measures being taken to ensure the athletes’ safety, few, if any, reported that all the divers really were capable of doing was protecting themselves.

The Shark Pods they were using were developed in South Africa and emit an electrical field that repels sharks--most of the time--from a maximum range of only about 12 feet.

“So if the swimmers are that close to the divers they may be safe,” Bhana said.

They weren’t that close, of course. If they were, they might have seen the divers twiddling their thumbs.

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I met Bhana and his crew earlier this summer at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. They were there filming sharks as part of an “Animal Planet” series to air on the Discovery Channel, beginning in early fall.

Host of the show is Ian Gordon, the former curator of the Manly Aquarium in Sydney who now spends most of his time in shark-infested waters of the world, talking about his subjects, through an underwater microphone, while the film crew captures footage from all angles.

They spent two weeks on the mid-Pacific atoll, diving every day, often in the midst of dozens of Galapagos and smaller reef sharks. Though armed with Shark Pods, they did not have to use them.

After one such dive, when a comment was made about how calm the divers looked with so many potentially deadly predators around, Gordon credited years of experience and more than 15,000 hours logged underwater.

“What we do is promote that these are marvelous animals and they deserve to live and all that,” he said. “But what we don’t want to promote is that others try to do what we do.

“Galapagos sharks are considered man-eaters. They’ve had a couple of incidents here where divers got scared out of the water by Galapagos. The reality is, most of the time these animals are pretty sedate, but what they will do is, if you back away from them fast and get into a panic . . . the shark’s going to get interested.”

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One highlight of the Midway segment--the crew is putting together 13 half-hour episodes over a two-year period--will be rare underwater footage of a tiger shark attacking an albatross chick--with a wingspan of about four feet--that had landed in the lagoon.

“The shark had seven or eight goes at the bird and eventually killed the bird,” Bhana said after his morning dive. “The bird was dead in the water and he came around and finished it off.

“He took the bird, came down past the camera with the bird in its mouth shaking it, and then he spat feathers out--he blew this big cloud of feathers out the sides of its mouth right in front of the camera. He then cruised around the camera and then dropped the bird in front of us again. We got it all.”

So did the shark, eventually.

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Back to Sydney . . .

There are, of course, large sharks beyond Sydney Harbor and they occasionally come close to shore to feed, mostly at night, and very rarely on humans.

Ricky Chan, a doctoral student in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of New South Wales, did find the skulls of sheep inside three large tiger sharks once.

“They’re either from farmland washed into storm water, then into rivers after heavy rain, or possibly they’re livestock cargo that has been thrown overboard,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

In the stomach of another tiger shark he found an unopened can of Coca Cola. His study, to find out what Sydney-area sharks eat, lasted three years and involved more than 100 sharks donated by fishermen.

Not one of them contained a hypodermic biffed out by an AIDS-infected tranny hooker with a heroin addiction, so Sydney’s waters seem to be safer than even Bhana believes.

FISH STORIES

* The top story locally is the influx of bigeye tuna to within range of San Diego’s overnight fleet. It’s a fall phenomenon that hasn’t fully developed in a few years, but one that appears to be doing so this week. A bite aboard the Qualifier 105 on Tuesday, at 120 miles south, was about as wild as it gets. After several hours of chaos, 140 tuna littered the deck and hundreds more had been lost. The mighty behemoths weighed 60 to 100 pounds. Boats fishing much closer have been filling up too, although to a lesser degree.

* Albacore fever has hit the Central California coast. “It’s been building solid for the last three weeks,” says Kevin Frankhauser, spokesman for Virg’s Landing in Morro Bay. The longfins, averaging 25 to 40 pounds, are being caught about 50 miles offshore and with them are much larger bluefin. A 67-pound bluefin, along with more than 60 albacore, was hauled aboard the Admiral on Tuesday.

* Fourteen anglers aboard TruLines out of Long Beach Sportfishing made the 100-mile trip to Cortez Bank this week, hoping to find bluefin tuna. Instead they found yellowtail running 15 to 25 pounds, huge bonito and a wide assortment of rockfish. Chuck Nigash of La Habra Heights caught the lone yellowfin tuna and, after a dinner of rib-eye steak, he sacrificed a portion of his catch for a sashimi desert. Yellowtail have also been frequenting the southern Channel Islands.

BEAR STORIES

* It’s not open season yet, but that didn’t stop poachers, er, vandals from using hatchets and hammers to obliterate 13 carved wooden bears earlier this month at Sierra Star golf course in Mammoth Lakes.

According to the Mammoth Times, the vandals “chopped ears--and in some cases entire faces--off of 13 wooden bear statues throughout the course.”

The bears, used as tee signs and ball-washing stations, were carved from Jeffrey pines. Damage was estimated at more than $20,000 and, judging from the mood in town, the vandals, if caught, probably will be in more serious trouble than they would have been if the bears were real.

“We’re repulsed,” said one local golfer. “It’s vicious. It doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s a senseless action by people who need to be punished.”

* The Arizona Department of Game and Fish reports: “The greater Phoenix metropolitan area is no longer adjacent to bear country, it has become bear country . . . “

Since Aug. 11, at least 13 bears have been seen wandering around the city. Five have been captured and released, one was destroyed and a cub is being held for a spring release. At least two bears have been killed by cars.

Experts blame prolonged drought and excessive heat, which has destroyed natural food sources in the hills above town. “I doubt that the bears are coming into Phoenix out of choice,” biologist Stan Cunningham said in a news release. “They are simply seeking food and keep going over that next hill and the next until they end up in the lowlands, and that’s where we happen to live.”

WAX ‘EM UP

You know winter’s around the corner when the first issue of Ski magazine gets stuffed into your mailbox. Included, as always, is the annual reader survey rating the top North American resorts. This year has a new No. 1: Vail, Colo.

“With 5,164 acres, the continent’s best bowl skiing and a village that doesn’t quit, if Vail doesn’t work for you, sell your skis,” the magazine says.

Rounding out the top three are Deer Valley in Utah and Whistler/Blackomb in British Columbia, which fell from first to third.

In California, the millions being spent on improvements at Mammoth Mountain appear to be paying off. Mammoth moved up four spots to No. 13 and is the top resort in the Golden State, two notches above Heavenly Valley. Squaw Valley USA is ranked No. 17 and Northstar-at-Tahoe No. 19.

WINDING UP

The ball never found its intended target, obviously, but it was a nice reception nonetheless by Rick Trask of Santa Rosa.

Trask, while taking part in last weekend’s California Coastal Cleanup Day, stumbled upon an old football in the scrub-covered dunes of Bodega Bay.

He picked it up and tossed a tight spiral to a friend, who noticed some writing on the ball. It turned out to be an official NFL football signed by former Ram quarterback Roman Gabriel.

Trask wasn’t overly impressed, however, having grown up in Colorado a Denver Bronco fan. “I was aware of him. I probably had his card,” he told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

Also found during the cleanup--aside from 200,000 tons of trash by 50,000 volunteers--were two tickets to the 1921 inauguration of President Warren G. Harding and five World War II ration booklets.