Monday, December 12, 2005

Let us create a bold new world without sharks

Two things you need to know before you read my brilliant idea below:

1) My wife is an actual, certifiable genius (in the sense of having an exceptionally high intelligence quotient, not in the sense of being either a tutelary deity nor in the sense of being "slightly smarter" than average people).

2) I have an actual phobia of sharks. Not a reasonable, "One should not swim with carnivores larger than you with many rows of sharp teeth" but a "I don't like to swim in swimming pools in the dark just in case a 15 foot long shark somehow got in here" and "I am a little nervous about posting pictures of sharks to my blog" full-fledged phobia.

MY IDEA: What if we lifted all the hunting restrictions against great white sharks and killed them all dead?

MY ONLY CONCERN: Would this create a huge imbalance in the ecosystem that would eventually cause the earth to spin out of orbit and into the sun?

MY THESIS: No, it wouldn't. We would be fine, in fact better without the nasty sharks everywhere. Yuck! I don't like them one bit.

MY RESEARCH: Krista's (my wife) thesis for college was called "Stability in a two-population predator-prey interaction". In this paper she proved mathematically (using chaos theory math and a whole bunch of other voodoo) that the introduction of a certain predator fish to this lake in Africa would inevitably result in the destruction of the native species (she was right). So I figured she could give some insight into this question of whether destroying every great white shark on earth would mean minor inconveniences or a happy happy place for all of us.

Krista falls into the "skeptical of the benefits of killing sharks" camp. She claims this would create a massive shift in the ocean's ecosystem (although she admits it would likely balance out eventually). Her argument is much too lengthy, intelligent and probably-right for me to include it here (it would undermine my own argument).

As a rebuttal to her arguments, which I will not include here, allow me to say: I bet there would be more dolphins and more fish we like to eat if we eliminated sharks.

As to her disturbing question, "Don't you think God made sharks for a reason?" allow me to answer, "Yes, as a punishment for eating from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."

CONCLUSION: I know you agree with me. Look, for instance, at the following pictures. One is the ocean with sharks, one is the ocean without sharks. One is a picture of the tooth of a significantly-larger-than-a-great-white megalodon, all of which are extinct and I think we are doing just fine without them. Okay, to be honest I chickened out. I am not putting even a picture of those things on my blog. But you know what they look like.

Christmas list addition: harpoon gun.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:59 AM

    I am on your side! I also have an incredible fear of sharks...including the whole swimming in a pool when it's dark out phobia...you just never know! So yeah, I think the world would be much better without them, and much safer. Michelle claims my phobia comes from watching too many shark attack shows and knowing too much about the odds of what kind of shark will most likely attack me where, but I would much rather be safe than sorry. I'm still unsure about this whole "snorkeling" in Thailand thing...even though I did research it and the only sharks in Thailand are whale sharks, which aren't even technically sharks (they eat plankton). Anyways, I'm glad we share this common fear...and no it's not irrational.

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  2. Anonymous7:25 AM

    I read a book on sharks when I was in the 6th grade. From that book, I learned that sharks can attack in water as shallow as 1 foot deep. This is why I hesitate to even go wading. Shark-fearers, unite! Our fears are logical!

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  3. And now we can say "100% of the commenters on Burning Hearts Revolution agree that sharks should be erradicated."

    Seriously, does anyone out there actually *like* sharks?

    Remember, they can smell a drop of blood from a mile away! They are vicious biological eating machines!

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