SHARK ATTACK

A woman Lauren Erickson Van Wart of Boston, an American tourist, was out in the ocean off New Providence on Monday 27 November 2023, engaging in watersports activity when the report is that she was set upon and attacked by a shark. We have been around long enough to be careful when you’re talking about a shark “ attacking” human beings,  The woman died. She had just been married the day before.  It must be devastating for her new husband and her family. Sadness on the back of joy. For The Bahamas, supposedly paradise, to be associated with that is horrible. Well of course people immediately want to question the shark. But the plain fact is the shark lives in the water.  That’s their home and they behave in a certain way toward food sources. There is no distinction between a manta ray and a human being flapping around in the water. They are protected in The Bahamas so can’t catch them and you can’t kill them. Then you have human beings who make a living off swimming and feeding sharks. Is there any wonder that stuff like this happens? Predictably, the government is responding with a committee that will be looking at the rise in shark attacks and figure out how to respond. What we know is that in a contest between human beings and sharks, the sharks are bound to lose in the end.