"Sharktober?” my friend asked. I’d just told him about this column I’m writing.“Yes, Sharktober,” I repeated.“Shark … tober?” he said again, drawing the syllables out as if to ensure he was saying the word properly.“Yes!” I confirmed once more.We stared at each other for a moment, then it dawned on me: He doesn’t know about Sharktober.I shall now state the obvious: Sharktober is a mashing together of the words “shark” and “October,” and a term that came about because West Coast shark encounters are more likely in late summer and fall. This is borne out by Shark Research Committee statistics, which note a dramatic uptick in attacks during August, September and October — 63 percent of recorded occurrences happened during those months.Now you know.Another friend recently reminisced, after reading last week’s column on Scott Stephens (“Sharktober Part 2,” Oct. 12), how after the attack, a dude had been hanging out in the hospital parking lot trying to sneak in a six-pack of Great White beer to give to Scott. You’d be forgiven for thinking, “Wow, what poor taste,” but surfers are kind of sick in the head — again, I state the obvious — and Northern Californian surfers especially so. It’s not exactly sane behavior to tug a thick neoprene skin over your bare ass on a beach shrouded in fog just so you can go paddle out into cold water and big waves.Which brings me back to gallows humor. We know cracking jokes about stressful or scary situations helps us poor humans cope with such things. So it’s no surprise when Sharktober rolls around and, even as everyone is tensed up over the increased likelihood of an attack, the humor ramps up along with the swell. In addition to other cute nicknames, like “the man in the gray suit,” great white sharks are known as “the landlord” and to get hit by one equates to “paying the rent.” Because most of us, regardless of where we were born and as comfortable as we might be in the water, understand that we will never be the true locals in the ocean. That designation belongs to the dolphins, seals, sea lions, sharks and all the creatures to whom the ocean truly belongs. (For the record, I find sea lions very scary and have been stink-eyed out of the water by them more than once and, also, they can run faster than us on land.)Keep Reading
