Sharks at the Beach

As you can tell from the blog so far, we like the beach. In particular, we love Troncones near Ixtapa. We have a house that we rent www.casa-ki.com

This spring we were planning a trip during spring break for some surf and sun. Three days before we leave, one of my coworkers asks if I am going to Troncones. He then proceeds to tell me about a poor guy from San Francisco who started the day surfing and ended it in a Mexican morgue courtesy of a shark.

To the point, we went anyway. What was most interesting is the difference between the Mexican and Californian attitudes about nature.The week before in San Diego, a man was killed by a shark. In CA, they closed the beach and tried to understand the shark. What was the shark feeling? Why did the shark feel the need to eat the surfer? Was the shark abused as a little shark or bullied by a seal? After a week of shark psycho-analysis, they reopened the beach and the surfers hit the waves.

In Mexico, they had a slightly different approach. The next day there was a "fisherman" off the beach chumming the waters, hooking anything that bit the line, and shooting the hooked sharks with a shotgun. 15 died in the first day.

Now whether you agree with it or not, it says a lot about the different approaches to the problem. Where folks in the US often see and attempt to understand nature, sensitive to political feelings, and empathize with an animal just trying to make a living. The folks in Mexico thought of the quickest way to protect their families and livelihoods.

I honestly believe that there is no such thing as a hungry environmentalist. Environmentalists exist only as a parasitic belief system in societies that have conquered their environment. If you are watching your children starve you are less likely to care about your carbon footprint.

Mexico is an amazing country with vast wealth, but it is also home to many who truly are just barely making a living. It is probably not be the right answer to kill the sharks, as 2 more attacks have occured since we left. This shark hunt was probably done out of ignorance but it seems to me that those in far off lands who have never missed a meal from need display just as much ignorance when they condemn it.