coolmelbourne.org

Aaah, summer: the heat warms your frigid winter toes, the sun finally reaches your glowing white legs, your woollies and thermals bid a hasty retreat to the back of the wardrobe, and the air on those blissful, warm summer nights smell like the ocean.

You can’t fight it any longer. The ocean calls to you. In your minds eye you see the sparkling blue water and gentle surf. You give in, pack your togs and boardies into the boot and hit the road.

Aaah, the sea: it’s good as you remember it. And you’re finally in. The bliss, how good is thi……..errrr, did you see that??? I swear I just saw a shadow over there. Yeah, seriously, just behind that wave. Nah, must be just imagining….ooohhh, was that a fin….? Ha ha ha, I must be paranoid! Probably just a wave….hang on, that looked like a fin though, just over there….might just go see if I can see anything from the beach, sure it’s just my imagination though….

Maybe it’s just us, but we’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve had that conversation with mates/family/boyfriends/girlfriends/ourselves. The fear of the shark is inherent in almost every beach visit.

Someone around you always has a great shark story.

Someone always knows someone who’s been ‘this close’ to the mouth of a Great White.

Every summer the newspapers pander to the idea that we are the tastiest shark fodder on the planet and they busy themselves by publishing shots of giant killers from planes alongside blurry footage taken from a beachgoers mobile phone alongside a host of ‘statistics’ and close calls.

But what the papers mention is only half the story. There is another side to this story that rarely features in the media fear mongering.