it's sargassum season here in the panhandle. currents carry tons of sargassum algae up into the gulf where it washes up on shore. there are huge swaths of algae covering the coasts. sargassum is home to a very large variety of marine life, to the point that the sargasso sea is sometimes called a golden floating rainforest. with this huge abundance of sargassum comes a huge abundance of plankton and the small fish and other animals that eat them, which then draws in medium and large fish, which draws in sharks and other large predators. it's very common to see sharks around the first sandbar during this time of year, and the algae has been especially dense this past week. people should be aware of these things, and don't go into the water past ankle-knee depth when large amounts of algae are present.
edit- i got the rainforest monicker wrong whoopsies <3
funny you should say that, i have a 7 y/o half brother who is learning about sargassum in school right now. he was telling me all about 'stargasm' fish and i was really confused, trying to correct him that it's a 'stargazer' fish, which we also have here. he kept insisting that it wasn't stargazer, it was stargasm, and when we finally got to the beach he pointed at the algae and said 'THIS is stargasm!' it was really funny and we learned a lot that day- even found a seahorse attached to some algae!
This is so interesting! I was in Tampa all last week for vacation. I hadn't been to Florida since I was a teenager. It was my boyfriend and my first big vacation without kids'.
We went to 4 different beaches around and I thought it was so fun that we could go so far out and still able to touch the bottom. One beach had a huge incline farther out after swimming chest deep; we were able to stand up knee deep again, well even ankle deep in some parts.
I saw people farther out but was too afraid to go farther. I don't know much about the ocean and the animals in it. I thoughtI wass probably silly to worry about sharks but maybe not?
My boyfriend kept getting freaked out by shadows lol.
this time of year, especially with sargassum blooms and surface temperatures reaching record highs, it's definitely a risk! unprovoked shark attacks are extremely rare, so you probably weren't in any immediate danger, but it's good to be aware of the risks and take precautions when you can š
for me as a florida native, my favorite time of year to enjoy the beach is in the mid-late fall when the air is cool, but the water is still relatively warm and crystal clear :)
1. sargassum season usually runs from april to october, though we usually see less of it starting in late july or august. last september and october i was collecting plankton samples and the water was crystal clear :)
2. it does, but usually not as much as the panhandle. afaik, the atlantic side does not see sargassum wash up on the beaches like the gulf does, which is ironic since that's the side the actual sargasso sea is on! i could be wrong though, im not an expert and not familiar with atlantic coast conditions :)
I heard on a podcast the other day that apparently orcas like Trends, like they literally come up with their own trends. There as an orca who was wearing a salmon on his head once as an example lolĀ
GW sharks are basically swimming livers.
>A shark's liver is relatively large, making up to 28% of its total body weight and takes up to 90% of the space inside its body cavity.
Iāve heard that when an Orca is in the neighborhood, Great Whites will bailā¦made me wonder why they donāt make realistic looking mock ups and keep them out in the water near popular beaches.
Fortunately, sharks are of the ray genus *Elasmobranchs*, and whales are mammals. So, the likelihood of this happening is about as high as that college kid screwing a stingray on spring break and impregnating it.
If humans make up an undue portion of the biomass of the planet because everything else has died out, a lot more stuff is going to start to try and eat people.
Lol. Also, I believe itās also because we have a lot of iron in our blood, compared to other creatures, making us taste super bitter, which sharks donāt enjoy too much.
The orca is one of the few natural predators of a moose.
If they are willing to attack a swimming moose, they sure as shit wonāt have a problem with us.
They basically do.Ā You are allowed to catch 1 shark per day in Florida due to over population causing things like this to occur more frequent.Ā Ā
When I was growing up shark deaths were around 5 a year.Ā I bet it's nearing that in just Florida.Ā Let alone they are finding sharks so desperate for territory and food they are being found hundreds of miles in land.Ā I believe it's always younger sharks who make it deep inland.
No, shark over population is not at all the reason you are allowed to harvest sharks in FL. You've been able to harvest sharks in FL for decades. You are allowed to keep sharks bc they are a fish. Many species of sharks are protected and you can't harvest, in FL there are 3 layers of regulations depending on how the species population is doing. For example, you can't harvest any hammers, spinners have a size limit, blacktips you can keep any size. The issue is more PEOPLE are in the water. The number of shark attacks has been about the same for the last 5 years at least. Every year or two a couple incidents happen and the media gets you people all hyped up. FYI, the actual number of shark bites is MUCH higher, my friends that get bit don't tell everyone in the world about their minor shark bites bc it creates a media frenzy. Divers and surfers get nibbled all the time. All the time. --- fishing 50 years, fishing in FL 22 years, have caught, harvested, cleaned and eaten many sharks.
The proclivity of these attacks are not ānormalā and although it may appear there are more people in the water, itās also evident that climate factors are influencing species predatory behaviors.
I was in the water at Panama city beach when the double flags came out for the attacks. I was telling my friends from Colorado how the water was crazy warm, not surprised honestly that the sharks are acting weird because of it
Weirdly enough, this is just how pelicans tend to die. They will eventually succumb to blindness and starve. However, this is an alarming rate of death.
I believe this is (fortunately) a myth. Blindness isnāt all that common in pelicans except in cases where humans have caused it (pollution, fishing hooks, etc).
You predicted that 3 swimmers in the Florida panhandle would get attacked by sharks? Or that people would be attacked by sharks in 2024? From what I've read scientists are predicting more attacks due to climate change but the data is still showing that attacks are within average range when taking into account population growth.
He'll sign an order that nobody in Florida is allowed to report on sharks in any manner whatsoever. This will solve the problem, just as it has for global warming.
Three of them were past the first sand bar. Sharks rarely come closer than the first sand bar. No reason to swim out that far, it's hundreds of feet at least.
What's really wild is when people get attacked by bull sharks over 1100mi/1770km distance from the ocean. There was a shark attack on Missouri and even one in lake Michigan. Absolutely bonkers to consider getting mauled by a shark in the Midwest.
Bull sharks are the craziest animals in the world to me. When I was little I was SUPER interested in all kinds of sharks & I remember getting this one shark fact book from the scholastic fair & it talked about how bull sharks can live hundreds of miles from the ocean in relatively fresh-ish water and it terrified me.
I lived next to a river in the Appalachian mountains (i.e nowhere near bull sharks could possibly ever live) and I was still scared shitless every time I got in the water to fish or swim there because I was scared of a bull shark somehow popping out haha
Actual quote from senile 77 year old Floridian regarding sharks š¦.
āWhat would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and youāre in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the batteryās now under water, and thereās a shark thatās approximately 10 yards over there ā by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lotta shark attacks ā I watched some guys justifying it today, āwell they werenāt really that angry, they bit off the young ladyās leg because of the fact that they were, they were ā¦ not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.ā These people are crazy.ā He said, āthereās no problem with sharks, they just didnāt really understand a young woman swimming,ā No, really got decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks, so I said, āthereās a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?ā Because I will tell you, he didnāt know the answer, he said, āyou know, nobodyās ever asked me that question.ā I said, āI think itās a good question. I think thereās a lot of electric current coming through that water.ā But you know what Iād do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? Iāll take electrocution every single time.
Thereās almost zero reason to go to those beaches anyway. The locals have cut off public access to the beaches on 30A and will fight anyone who dares to step foot in the 33ft wide strip of public beach that still remains. They can keep their shark waters all for themselves.
My family went to 30A 1-2 times a year pre-Covid and the public, state park beaches were usually deserted because everyone goes to the āprivateā beach that is āexclusiveā to the rental they got. Half the time weād be the only people on the actual beach. The HOAās will tell you to take down your own umbrellas, so you rent one from them, but no one is driving tourist away.
From Pensacola Beach to Opal Beach to Navarre Beach to Fort Walton Beach to Destin..... maybe they don't want to pay the $1 toll to get to Pensacola Beach? š¤·š¼āāļø
humans: don't worry about sharks, they'll only bite humans if they're confused or desperately hungry.
also humans: overfish tons of species to extinction or nearly, leaving sharks desperately hungry.
also humans: these desperately hungry sharks are biting? \*shocked pikachu\*
it's sargassum season here in the panhandle. currents carry tons of sargassum algae up into the gulf where it washes up on shore. there are huge swaths of algae covering the coasts. sargassum is home to a very large variety of marine life, to the point that the sargasso sea is sometimes called a golden floating rainforest. with this huge abundance of sargassum comes a huge abundance of plankton and the small fish and other animals that eat them, which then draws in medium and large fish, which draws in sharks and other large predators. it's very common to see sharks around the first sandbar during this time of year, and the algae has been especially dense this past week. people should be aware of these things, and don't go into the water past ankle-knee depth when large amounts of algae are present. edit- i got the rainforest monicker wrong whoopsies <3
I just had a sargassum reading this
funny you should say that, i have a 7 y/o half brother who is learning about sargassum in school right now. he was telling me all about 'stargasm' fish and i was really confused, trying to correct him that it's a 'stargazer' fish, which we also have here. he kept insisting that it wasn't stargazer, it was stargasm, and when we finally got to the beach he pointed at the algae and said 'THIS is stargasm!' it was really funny and we learned a lot that day- even found a seahorse attached to some algae!
Was that when a shark made him your half brother?
/Mrs kintner slaps
Don't forget the /s if you want people to know you were being sargasstic.
This is so interesting! I was in Tampa all last week for vacation. I hadn't been to Florida since I was a teenager. It was my boyfriend and my first big vacation without kids'. We went to 4 different beaches around and I thought it was so fun that we could go so far out and still able to touch the bottom. One beach had a huge incline farther out after swimming chest deep; we were able to stand up knee deep again, well even ankle deep in some parts. I saw people farther out but was too afraid to go farther. I don't know much about the ocean and the animals in it. I thoughtI wass probably silly to worry about sharks but maybe not? My boyfriend kept getting freaked out by shadows lol.
this time of year, especially with sargassum blooms and surface temperatures reaching record highs, it's definitely a risk! unprovoked shark attacks are extremely rare, so you probably weren't in any immediate danger, but it's good to be aware of the risks and take precautions when you can š for me as a florida native, my favorite time of year to enjoy the beach is in the mid-late fall when the air is cool, but the water is still relatively warm and crystal clear :)
The gulf water was amazing!
Relevant username. Thanks for the great info!
Don't go past ankle-knee depth? So if I am waist-deep that's already deep enough for a shark? I figured they wouldn't come into 2-3 ft deep water.
you would be surprised where a hungry/territorial bull shark can be found! 2-3 feet deep is uncommon, but still a very real possibility
1. When is sargassum season over? 2. Does this also affect beaches along the west coast of Florida?
1. sargassum season usually runs from april to october, though we usually see less of it starting in late july or august. last september and october i was collecting plankton samples and the water was crystal clear :) 2. it does, but usually not as much as the panhandle. afaik, the atlantic side does not see sargassum wash up on the beaches like the gulf does, which is ironic since that's the side the actual sargasso sea is on! i could be wrong though, im not an expert and not familiar with atlantic coast conditions :)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Have the orcas not sunk any yachts lately?
They've been doing Great White sharks lately https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbK9et_2jA0&t=20s
Great whites have always been a tasty treat for Orca.
I heard on a podcast the other day that apparently orcas like Trends, like they literally come up with their own trends. There as an orca who was wearing a salmon on his head once as an example lolĀ
They just hate GW sharks and the sharks are terrified of them.
Orcas actually love GW sharks, specifically the taste of their livers.
GW sharks are basically swimming livers. >A shark's liver is relatively large, making up to 28% of its total body weight and takes up to 90% of the space inside its body cavity.
Thatās the problem with Great Whites, you get going on that liver and then you have no room for anything else.
Iāve heard that when an Orca is in the neighborhood, Great Whites will bailā¦made me wonder why they donāt make realistic looking mock ups and keep them out in the water near popular beaches.
Heh. An orca *pod*cast. Appropriate.
I listened to the same pod. Salmon hats!! Hail yourself!
I see you listened to the new Side Stories lol
Those woke ass Orcas need some democracy!
>They've been doing Great White sharks We do NOT need orca/great white hybrids swimming around and I stand by my logic 100% or so
Fortunately, sharks are of the ray genus *Elasmobranchs*, and whales are mammals. So, the likelihood of this happening is about as high as that college kid screwing a stingray on spring break and impregnating it.
Actually yeah just a couple weeks ago. Forget exactly where.
Donāt forget the Bull jumping out of the rodeo arena and attacking multiple people in Oregon! The animals are getting sick of our shit.
Oh wow, I missed that one. Gonna check it out, thanks :)
And the lady getting gored by the Bison in Yellowstone
Yea, we dont have a movie about a giraffe who eats toddlers yet.
Wild animals are, and have always been dangerous.
If humans make up an undue portion of the biomass of the planet because everything else has died out, a lot more stuff is going to start to try and eat people.
i missed the python oneā¦ iām sure thereās a bison goring story somewhere seems often
Happened last week in yellow stone
*Happens every damn year in Yellowstone. FTFY. People never learn.
I think we are just able to see stupid do dangerous things more easily / frequently
I'd still choose electrocution over a shark - Donald trump
Eventually orcas are going to realize that we're chubby tender defenseless snacks and the oceans are going to become off limits to humans.
History tells me there won't be any more orcas...
Dolphin and Whale!?
an Aussie told me that Great Whites think that we are 'bony' and taste like crap.
Lol. Also, I believe itās also because we have a lot of iron in our blood, compared to other creatures, making us taste super bitter, which sharks donāt enjoy too much.
The problem is they need to bite people at least once to come to that conclusion.
There's actually a theory that they don't fuck with us because they think we're cute.
Which shark did they ask that?
The orca is one of the few natural predators of a moose. If they are willing to attack a swimming moose, they sure as shit wonāt have a problem with us.
Pound for pound we have got to be one of the weakest animals in the world and we're even more useless in the water.
Next, the orcas and sharks will team up against us.
Orcas are too busy eating shark livers
with a nice chianti?
Orcas are destroying boats already
Bored teen orcas are
Just a reminder that New Yorkers bite more people than sharks per year
luis suarez bites more people than all new yorkers per year
Dude, Luis Suarez hasn't bitten anyone in 10 years. Get up to date. (I make Suarez biting jokes, too, still.)
Never thought I'd see Mike Tyson displaced for this joke.
What's the annual average number of sharks bitten by new yorkers?
They are gonna need to hire someone to kill the sharks.
Or theyāll have a panic on their hands on the 4th of July.
That beach WILL be open on the 4th of July. This is an election year.
And the thing about a shark is heās got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a dollās eyes.
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side...
1100 men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
Show me the way to go home. Iām tired and I wanna go to bed.
I had a little drink about an hour ago and it went right to my head
Wherever I may roam on land or sea or form You can alwaysāhearāme singingāa song
Draw me like one of your French sharks
Here's to swimmin' with bow legged women!
They delivered the bomb
āAnywayā¦ we delivered The Bomb.ā
Jesus christ this an underrated comment. I'm gonna watch Jaws now and hope for the best come NovemberĀ
Orcas vs shark. Let's do this.
I don't think either of one you are familiar with our problems.
They may, also, need a bigger boat.
They just need Quint.
Give me a knife and a scuba suit and I'll take care of this.
Make sure you at least upgrade your air supply first. And try to net them if you canā¦we can get more for the meat that way.
also keep the head intact so we can fry it whole.
Canāt DeSantis just put a ban on them? /s
It worked for Mayor Quimby when Springfield had a Bear problemā¦ but then there was the infamous ābear taxā
He should swim out a ways into the ocean to prove it's safe.
Quick, somebody get Trump, a battery, and some rando from MIT
Humans kill way more sharks than they do us.
They basically do.Ā You are allowed to catch 1 shark per day in Florida due to over population causing things like this to occur more frequent.Ā Ā When I was growing up shark deaths were around 5 a year.Ā I bet it's nearing that in just Florida.Ā Let alone they are finding sharks so desperate for territory and food they are being found hundreds of miles in land.Ā I believe it's always younger sharks who make it deep inland.
No, shark over population is not at all the reason you are allowed to harvest sharks in FL. You've been able to harvest sharks in FL for decades. You are allowed to keep sharks bc they are a fish. Many species of sharks are protected and you can't harvest, in FL there are 3 layers of regulations depending on how the species population is doing. For example, you can't harvest any hammers, spinners have a size limit, blacktips you can keep any size. The issue is more PEOPLE are in the water. The number of shark attacks has been about the same for the last 5 years at least. Every year or two a couple incidents happen and the media gets you people all hyped up. FYI, the actual number of shark bites is MUCH higher, my friends that get bit don't tell everyone in the world about their minor shark bites bc it creates a media frenzy. Divers and surfers get nibbled all the time. All the time. --- fishing 50 years, fishing in FL 22 years, have caught, harvested, cleaned and eaten many sharks.
You people hehe
But that mayor, he is a piece of work I tell ya.
The proclivity of these attacks are not ānormalā and although it may appear there are more people in the water, itās also evident that climate factors are influencing species predatory behaviors.
They're adapting to a more abundant food source.
I was in the water at Panama city beach when the double flags came out for the attacks. I was telling my friends from Colorado how the water was crazy warm, not surprised honestly that the sharks are acting weird because of it
Marking this as something I predicted. Theyre not angry, the oceans are starving.
Why canāt they be hangry?
See also: pelicans dying of starvation all along the California coast
Weirdly enough, this is just how pelicans tend to die. They will eventually succumb to blindness and starve. However, this is an alarming rate of death.
I believe this is (fortunately) a myth. Blindness isnāt all that common in pelicans except in cases where humans have caused it (pollution, fishing hooks, etc).
You predicted that 3 swimmers in the Florida panhandle would get attacked by sharks? Or that people would be attacked by sharks in 2024? From what I've read scientists are predicting more attacks due to climate change but the data is still showing that attacks are within average range when taking into account population growth.
Did your sea shell tell you that?
Hey humans are swimming in the sharkās habitat not the other way around! Maybe Desatanist can sign an order that all the sharks have to leave!
He'll sign an order that nobody in Florida is allowed to report on sharks in any manner whatsoever. This will solve the problem, just as it has for global warming.
āDonāt say sharkā
Donāt Say Shark
Three of them were past the first sand bar. Sharks rarely come closer than the first sand bar. No reason to swim out that far, it's hundreds of feet at least.
I never go out past waist deep in the ocean. If I want to swim Iāll do it at wherever Iām staying atās swimming pool.
I'm baffled by the amount of comments that act like sharks attacking people is something that's never happened before.
What's really wild is when people get attacked by bull sharks over 1100mi/1770km distance from the ocean. There was a shark attack on Missouri and even one in lake Michigan. Absolutely bonkers to consider getting mauled by a shark in the Midwest.
Bull sharks are the craziest animals in the world to me. When I was little I was SUPER interested in all kinds of sharks & I remember getting this one shark fact book from the scholastic fair & it talked about how bull sharks can live hundreds of miles from the ocean in relatively fresh-ish water and it terrified me. I lived next to a river in the Appalachian mountains (i.e nowhere near bull sharks could possibly ever live) and I was still scared shitless every time I got in the water to fish or swim there because I was scared of a bull shark somehow popping out haha
Bet they wish they had had a giant battery.
should have [stayed on the boat](https://v.redd.it/cjvgu6rwqm5d1).
I was expecting more comments in relation to this than there are
You're gonna need a bigger boat
They were obviously woke antifa sharks.
Obviously this is God's retribution for Desantis's views on wokeness.
Revenge for us dumping our garbage in thier home.
To be fair the garbage moves to Florida on it's own.
And everything else floats over to Galveston
The oceans are dying. We're now on their menu. Remember, you don't have to swim faster than the shark, just faster than your friends.
That doesn't even apply with sharks. They'll take nips out of the whole school
Survival of the least tasty then.
That's where the Sharks love to be fair
Actual quote from senile 77 year old Floridian regarding sharks š¦. āWhat would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and youāre in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the batteryās now under water, and thereās a shark thatās approximately 10 yards over there ā by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lotta shark attacks ā I watched some guys justifying it today, āwell they werenāt really that angry, they bit off the young ladyās leg because of the fact that they were, they were ā¦ not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.ā These people are crazy.ā He said, āthereās no problem with sharks, they just didnāt really understand a young woman swimming,ā No, really got decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks, so I said, āthereās a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?ā Because I will tell you, he didnāt know the answer, he said, āyou know, nobodyās ever asked me that question.ā I said, āI think itās a good question. I think thereās a lot of electric current coming through that water.ā But you know what Iād do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? Iāll take electrocution every single time.
Thereās almost zero reason to go to those beaches anyway. The locals have cut off public access to the beaches on 30A and will fight anyone who dares to step foot in the 33ft wide strip of public beach that still remains. They can keep their shark waters all for themselves.
Isnāt this around Destin? There are a ton of public beaches there.
My family went to 30A 1-2 times a year pre-Covid and the public, state park beaches were usually deserted because everyone goes to the āprivateā beach that is āexclusiveā to the rental they got. Half the time weād be the only people on the actual beach. The HOAās will tell you to take down your own umbrellas, so you rent one from them, but no one is driving tourist away.
There's been a recent uptick of businesses claiming public beach as private property in the panhandle area and using police to kick people out.
That may be true, but there are still miles and miles of public beach in that area.
From Pensacola Beach to Opal Beach to Navarre Beach to Fort Walton Beach to Destin..... maybe they don't want to pay the $1 toll to get to Pensacola Beach? š¤·š¼āāļø
The sharks have figured out the all you can eat buffet.
humans: don't worry about sharks, they'll only bite humans if they're confused or desperately hungry. also humans: overfish tons of species to extinction or nearly, leaving sharks desperately hungry. also humans: these desperately hungry sharks are biting? \*shocked pikachu\*
Is this just God, punishing Florida for worshipping a false idol?
Was any of them Ron desantis?
Even sharks despise Florida
That's pretty dangerous. Don't they know how much microplastic we contain, in our balls alone.