Tourists swimming with the fishes...

April 15, 2001 10:30 PM

Tourists swimming with the fishes... Ok, more accurately swimming with sharks. Summer is coming and with it my little coastal town is starting to endure the first surges of tourist crowds. With the changing of the seasons comes the eternal question, just what can you convince tourists to spend money on? I live in great white shark country so it's unlikely that this particular tourist activity will take off locally. However, we have had problems with commercial shark chummers in the past.
posted by rdr (8 comments total)

Jeb Bush can get his brother to fix things. Toss a few Democrats to the sharks to keep them happy. Leave alone the registered Republicans.
posted by Postroad at 5:33 AM on April 16, 2001

It's not like we haven't had this problem in another form before.

I remember when I was a kid, there were already restrictions but there was still a strong tradition of feeding bears in national parks. Photos of people rolling down the window of their car an inch or two as a docile monster pokes its nose up and nuzzles for food. Weren't they cute? Wasn't it special? Honey, what's that outside the tent?
posted by dhartung at 10:27 AM on April 16, 2001

"I like the feeling of something that is really scary but you know it's really safe," said Ms. Patunoff, a teacher from Plattsburgh, N.Y.

But it's not really safe. This isn't a rollercoaster, it is a wild animal. The "sport" of Darwin Award winners...
posted by J. R. Hughto at 1:01 PM on April 16, 2001

Years ago on our honeymoon, my new hubby and I took a helicopter ride over Panama City Beach in Florida......we will never forget watching the crowds of swimmers frolicking in the surf......while unknown to them a school of rather large sharks was hanging out less than fifty feet beyond them....needless to say we did not go swimming that day.
posted by bunnyfire at 5:57 PM on April 16, 2001

You could see the same thing in any helicopter ride over Florida coastlines, Bunnyfire. Discovery Channel runs footage every year during Shark Week. The ocean's teeming with them, but almost all of them are harmless. I live two counties north of Volusia County (Daytona Beach) in Florida, which has one of the highest rates of shark attacks in the world.
posted by rcade at 7:03 PM on April 16, 2001

I bet the average tourist has no idea.....of course no one told me about Palmetto bugs before I moved down there either.......(for the uninitiated these are roaches the size of a small motor vehicle -and every house has them.)
posted by bunnyfire at 3:48 AM on April 17, 2001

Here in Northeast Florida, the biggest danger to tourists and locals isn't sharks; it's rip currents. Three people have drowned in the last month, including a 16-year-old athlete. He apparently didn't know what to do when you get pulled out (swim parallel to the shoreline until you get out of the current, which is usually no more than 200-400 feet wide).
posted by rcade at 6:19 AM on April 17, 2001