Tourist killed by 'dinosaur sized' shark off South African beach...

[east texas lib]

Zimbabwean holidaymaker eaten by shark described by onlookers as 'longer than a minibus'. Witnesses have described their horror at seeing a tourist being eaten by a "gigantic" shark in South Africa's most popular holiday destination.

Lloyd Skinner was pulled under the surf and dragged out to sea by the shark, believed to be a great white, off Fish Hoek beach in Cape Town. His diving goggles and a dark patch of blood were all that remained in the water.

"Holy shit. We just saw a gigantic shark eat what looked like a person in front of our house," witness Gregg Coppen posted on Twitter. "That shark was huge. Like dinosaur huge."




http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/13/cape-town-giant-shark-attack


Jesus H. Christ.

[dkf]

1. Dinosaur sized? Like t-Rex sized? Do they get that big?

[east texas lib]

3. I don't know how big they get...

I also hope I never find out firsthand.

[backscatter712]

14. I don't know about dinosaur-sized...

but Great Whites are pretty big.

On Mythbusters, Jamie described the ones he saw as being the size of prize bulls.

Being dragged under by a big swimming bull with teeth - sucks to be you...

[Motown_Johnny]

17. most dinosaurs were small

[Betty Karlson]

50. Up to 22 feet, I believe.

But now for the really scary news:

with global warming going on,
1) sharks are spreading to ever more waters (the warming makes more waters available for their habitat)
2) sharks may get bigger on average (I understand the large dinosaurs were that big because the earth was, in those days, seven degrees Celcius warmer than today).

And with the world's human population growing
1) the amount of fish swimming in the sea as food for the sharks decreases: we catch them away, or we pollute the entire sea.
2) the possibility of human/shark contact was going to increase anyway, but guess what sharks do when they can't find fish to eat? That's right, they start hunting for land animals that splatter near the coasts.

< SARCASM > But please don't let that deterr you to enjoy your time on the beach, eating a fried mackerel off a plastic plate, telling your children to play some more in the water.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. If it was that large, it was a megalodon

I feel sorry for the victim... but here is this piece of trivia from emergency services involving guns.

How large was it?

VERY LARGE

Even if a pidly 22.

This is the same effect and a Great White IS large... just not dinosaur sized... ok some dinos were\are small. My parrots are evolutionary descendants of the dinos.

[pscot]

39. Yes, but your parrots

have probably never eaten anyone.

[jgraz]

48. You clearly don't know many parrots ;)

I could show you some scars...

And they're not descended from dinosaurs. They ARE dinosaurs. They never let you forget that. :D

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. !!!!!!!!! How awful!

[Motown_Johnny]

5. a great white can grow up to 21 feet... how long is a "minibus"?

and since we are on the subject....


"The Whale That Ate Jaws" is the most fascinating National Geographic Special I have ever seen, it is on again at 11:00 am est Monday the 18th on National Geographic Channel.



http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/wild/4669/Overview#tab-Videos/07504_00




anyone interested enough in the subject to click on this thread should seriously consider watching this.

[csziggy]

6. Probably about 18 feet long

A Suburban is 20 feet long, old style Cadillac four door sedan the same, extended cab pickup with full length bed 22 feet long. Those are the big vehicles I have personal experience with and know the sizes off the top of my head.

[csziggy]

7. Frigging Dupe

[bertman]

16. I saw that the other night. Fascinating. This is some planet we share with these creatures.

[Enthusiast]

51. Wow, that is interesting!

Thanks for the link, Motown_Johnny.

[BlueJazz]

8. And....my friends wonder why I don't go out in the ocean here (in Florida) ..Oh I know it..

...seems safe and all that but the first time I swim out 50 ft or so, some monster would eat me and everybody
would stand around, scratching their head, saying: "Damn....how strange, that's never happened before."

[1awake]

10. lol.. ty for the laugh.. that was funny. n/t

[pokercat999]

12. Just off the beach in Venice, FL several years ago

a 650 lb tiger shark was caught by a fisher-person. Once when fishing off Sarasota, about 2 or 3 miles off the beach, a large hammer head swam to the surface just a few feet from our boat. It was a hot day and I was standing on a seat just getting ready to dive in to cool off. I saw the shark, stepped back down on the deck, took my tee shirt and dunked it over the side before putting it back on....cool enough that day.

[undeterred]

9. Sharks don't like goggles?

[EFerrari]

11. Didn't this just happen in Australia, too? Like a week ago?

Same damn goggle refusing dinosaur great white?

Do you think there could be two of them?

[merh]

23. Just goes to show ya

Even sharks don't eat man-made shit. They'll eat man, but when given the choice they spit out the shit we make.

[EFerrari]

26. They're 'way smarter than we are.

lol

:hi:

[undeterred]

29. No plastic is allowed on the 'raw human' diet.

:hide:

[EFerrari]

32. That's horrible.

:spank:

:rofl:

[flvegan]

13. Why not? I witnessed a 20+ foot great white being chased down the Cape Cod Canal many years ago.

Even my dad, 23 years Navy, his eyes got really big seeing that.

Humans need to realize that when they go into the ocean, they are no longer anywhere near the top of the food chain.

[east texas lib]

15. Indeed, out there you're a nice bite sized meat sack.

And you should act accordingly. The fear of being eaten alive hits home in a very primal way for me.

[flvegan]

18. Yup.

I live in Florida, and we've had our share. I don't go in the ocean anymore.

[LeftyMom]

35. You're in more danger driving down the road.

Especially you, because you're surrounded by people with one foot in the grave and one on the accelerator, and you drive an overpowered shoebox.

[Lurks Often]

30. take away our tools

and we stop being at the top of the food chain ANYWHERE.

On edit: According to Wikipedia, the largest, accurately recorded, Great White was 20 feet long.

Of course if you are the one being eaten, I don't suppose it matters whether the damn thing was 16 feet or 20 feet long.

Ugh, being eaten alive is a phobia of mine.

[LeftyMom]

31. Whites that big are semi-routine off of NorCal in season. That's just unusually big for South Africa

The seals here are fatter, so the sharks here get more calories for less work, and it shows. Theirs? Big, but not as big, so a 20+ footer in SA is a big deal.

Random shark fact: a white shark that big is a fully mature female. The males run smaller.

[AsahinaKimi]

41. not only that but

Some fisherman have cut open some rather large sharks and found things like License plates, hand tools, rubber boots, and a few other odd items. Sharks usually attack surfers because from below they look like big fat seas or sea lions.

The Bay Area is part of the Red Triangle, because as you said we have so many seals and sea lions here, they draw big great white sharks for feeding time. I can't recall a shark attack on a San Francisco beach, but then, its not to say it hasn't happened recently. I would never swim in the Ocean for two reasons. One its probably not good for my health if the water is polluted and second if there are predators there, they are probably Great Whites, as we are not far from the Farallone islands.



To me, its better to eat shark then to be eaten by one!!!

[LeftyMom]

43. The biggest white sharks in the world are at the Farallones.

There's a big shark tagging and tracking project the researchers there are involved in, and as part of it sensors were put up to see if white sharks go past the mouth of the bay. They do, but nobody really knows why or for how long. I don't recall there being any recorded predation events, and there really isn't anything high enough in fat content to make a decent meal, since the elephant seal rookeries are all on the ocean side, so maybe they're just looking around or attracted by the warmer water or the noise. Who knows. :shrug:

[AsahinaKimi]

47. I have heard people say

There are larger great Whites in the waters off Australia. I don't know if that is true, but for sure they have Crocodiles that dwarf anything we have in the states.

[TreasonousBastard]

19. OK, that's bad, but I watched a couple of episodes of "River Monsters" on...

Animal Planet, and, given a choice, I'd take the shark over some of those things.

(just the name "goonch catfish," is enough to give me the willies)

[BlueJazz]

22. I watched that also....Damn...that thing was a strange Fucker. Took the Dude awhile..

...to figure that one out.

[merh]

38. I see what you mean! ick!!

http://animal.discovery.com/fish/river-monsters/goonch-catfish/

[elocs]

20. Would that be the same dinosaur-sized shark posted about here last Wednesday?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7454936

[east texas lib]

28. Whoops!

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll try to do a better job of due dilligence in the future.

[shadowknows69]

21. "There are giants out there in the canyons"

-Billy Joel, "The Downeaster Alexa"

[flvegan]

25. Very true.

We really have no idea what might be out there. No idea at all.

[Happyhippychick]

24. Am I the oldest person at DU? Not one Jaws mention!

[shadowknows69]

27. Too easy, and it is kind of a tragedy. So there's that.

[KonaKane]

33. Not that unusual

Here in Hawaii you only get a fraction of the sightings and attacks actually reported. Just last week a tiger shark over ten feet long attacked a surfer over on Maui.

I am constantly amazed at what they DON'T say on the news.

[LeftyMom]

34. Untrained viewers give crazy estimates of shark sizes.

First of all, they generally don't see the whole length of the shark at once, and they don't know the proportions for estimating size from the parts they do see. Second, they're in a panic. Third, in the water they usually don't have a good reference object for size. As a result, almost every eyewitness report of a shark attack involves an impossibly large shark. Hell, untrained observers aren't even very good at telling you what species attacked half the time.

Luckily, it's pretty simple to figure out the size of the shark based on measurements of the bite radius, if they find any remains. It's not unusual to do the measurements and figure out that a shark witnesses claimed was 20+ feet was barely half that.

[Control-Z]

36. The guy's body

clamped in the jaws of the shark may have been an indicator?

[LeftyMom]

37. Probably not.

Attacks are almost invariably from below and not at the surface of the water. There might have been more than normal to see since this was shallow water, but that alone almost entirely rules out a large shark. Mostly what you'll see is splashing and the shark's dorsal thrashing as it throws itself back and forth to tear off flesh. Video of attacks is usually shown slowed down- at full speed you just see splashing and chaos- in person and in a panic it would be very difficult for an untrained eye to make sense of what they were seeing in order to give a good identification.

[Control-Z]

44. I thought I read that people recognized an entire

body in the shark's mouth? Perhaps not.

[LeftyMom]

46. Untrained eyewitnesses routinely get it wrong.

In many cases where a reported length can later be compared to a bite radius on a survivor, recovered remains, a surfboard, etc, the witnesses tend to estimate much larger than the actual length of the shark. Since the witnesses are claiming the shark was larger than any predatory shark found in South African waters, larger than any measured Great White, and as large as the largest credible sightings of a Great White (which are all from other regions of the world entirely- SA White Sharks run small because the seals they eat run small,) the chances that they are overestimating the animal's size are exceedingly high.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EndersDame]

42. This Thread Is Useless Without Pictures! I love Dinos and Sharks!

Sad about the fellow getting eaten and all that but I would really like to see a pic of the beast! Sounds pretty cool (the shark not the loss of life)

[Broken_Hero]

45. All right

I'm scared....

[quinnox]

49. Now imagine looking at a 50 footer great white

That was around in the dinosaur period. How scary is that? Some have speculated this shark back then may even have reached 75 feet or even 100 feet long. Yikes!

[shadowknows69]

52. I was very into marine biology as kid. And I recall maximum size estimates of whites

Could reach up to 30-35 feet. Mako's even bigger and Whale sharks up to 50+, though it's unlikely a whale shark would be attacking a human as they're primarily a plankton consumer IIRC.