Sharks 1, shark experts 0. Noted shark expert, Dr. Erich Ritter, has said that he has never been bitten by a shark because he understands shark behavior. Ritter, the chief scientist for the Global Shark Attack File (part of the Shark Research Institute), has even said he can keep them away just by modifying his heart rate. Of course, you have to wonder about the validity of Ritter's claims after he was bitten by a 350 pound bull shark on April 10. According to Marie Levine, executive director of the Shark Research Institute, Ritter was badly bitten by a shark in the Bahamas. Upon hearing this, male reporters grimaced and doubled over in sympathetic pain. "No, no, the Bahamas," Levine said. "That little chain of islands off the east coast of Florida." She then explained how Ritter was bitten in the calf in waist deep water off Walker's Cay, Bahamas, while being filmed for the Discovery Channel's Shark Week 2003. Shark Week is an educational series designed to help non-shark experts (i.e. sane people) understand sharks and shark behavior. And to scare bratty kids into minding their parents. "See that shark, Timmy? If you don't stop jumping on the couch, that shark be in the toilet the next time you're on the potty." Shark Week shows involve shark experts swimming around with sharks, facing the very real possibility of being bitten in the Bahamas. Shark Week is also known as "Dorks Who Swim In The Ocean Because They Have No Sense of Their Own Mortality." Ritter had invited the cable network to film his work with bull sharks (translation: I wanted to get on MTV's "Jackass" show, but it was canceled). He was working with lemon, black-tip, and bull sharks in murky, waist-deep water when he was bitten. "It was a serious injury," said Levine, making humor writers around the world feel bad for that Bahamas joke. "He's going to be in the hospital for four or five more weeks." The shark bit all the way to the bone of his left calf, sending Ritter into shock. He was flown to St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, where he underwent an arterial graft, and may need a skin graft later. Ritter, who is a diving instructor and a professor at the University of Zurich and Hofstra University in New York, has said in the past that most sharks will just bump an object in the water, and if the object is not prey, they'll move on. He also believes that most shark attacks aren't really attacks, they're accidents. Spilling a drink is an accident. Running your car into another car is an accident. Being bitten by a shark is an attack, whether the shark meant it or not. But "accident" is what Levine and other experts have been calling this. In Ritter's case, the bull shark was chasing a remora, and got confused in the murky water. "There was food in the water about 15 yards from Erich. A bull shark closed on the remora but in the low visibility bit Erich instead," Levine said. But Dr. Sam Gruber, a shark expert from the University of Miami (Go 'Canes!), called it "an accident waiting to happen." "Hey, you want a real scientist, go to NOAA! You want a wild and crazy guy who knows how to make a quick showbiz buck, gimme a call," says TV shark show whacko Erich Ritter, the dive industry poster boy for interactive shark feeding scams (until he fed his left leg to a shark in the Bahamas). | | "(Ritter's) method is basically to titillate TV cameras," Gruber said in a Reuters news story. "He wants to impress people that he can control these sharks and they will never bite him." Gruber then began giggling uncontrollably and muttering "Heh heh, titillate, heh heh heh." Ritter's injury comes on the heels of the media's near-obsession with shark attacks during 2001. Last year, there was a veritable media feeding frenzy about shark "accidents," including 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast who lost an arm to a bull shark in Florida, and Krishna Thompson, the guy who hired Johnny Cochrane (another shark) to sue Our Lucaya Beach & Golf Resort after being attacked by a shark while swimming at the resort's beach. Click graphic to view shark feeding timelineBut despite the international attention, experts say the 76 worldwide attacks were only an average year. Oh good, as long as it was only an average year. Look, modifying one's heart rate and understanding a shark's behavior is fine, but Ritter isn't Aquaman, and he can't communicate with sharks through aquatic telepathy. Why is he playing with the stupid things anyway? If I wanted to be a shark expert, I would sit inside a steel cage, placed inside a titanium cage, sitting on a flatbed truck driving through the middle of Kansas, and watch Shark Week on TV. I wouldn't be stupid enough to actually get in the water with them! I may not know much about sharks, but even I'm expert enough to know better than to get into the water with them. Erich Ritter's left leg after shark attack. If you can't make an honest living, you can always feed yourself to the sharks for TV adventure shows.Now I realize that out of the millions of annual beachgoers, the odds are slim-to-none that someone is going to be bitten -- excuse me, "accidented" by a shark. But you greatly increase your chances of being accidented when you purposely play with sharks like they're some kind of pointy-toothed puppy. They're not puppies, they're scary! They're sinister, cold-hearted, cold-blooded, ruthless eating machines who enjoy an occasional snack on shark experts, and people stupid enough to swim in the ocean when there are perfectly good swimming pools just a few hundred yards away. That's why that music plays whenever they're around. |
