Shark Attacks in North Carolina -- and Things in the Ocean I've Learned About

  I learned on Monday morning that a 12-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy lost their left arms and suffered other serious injuries in separate shark attacks in Oak Island, North Carolina, according to a newscast.

I found this info on the Internet: “The youths are hospitalized at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, said Martha Harlan, a spokeswoman for the hospital. The girl's left arm was amputated below the elbow, and she suffered lower leg tissue damage, Harlan said, while the boy's left arm was amputated below the shoulder.”

Sunday's late afternoon attacks happened less than 90 minutes apart. The girl was attacked first; the boy was attacked about two miles away – both of them were said to be in waist-deep water.

I am praying for the victims of those attacks.  

When I heard that report, I thought about the times I stood in waist-deep ocean water in Charleston (S.C.) or Myrtle Beach. I sometimes ventured neck-deep from shore, never thinking much about sharks. I guess we didn’t hear a lot about shark attacks in the 1950s and ’60s, when I lived near Greenville, S.C.

During my 1971 stint in Vietnam, I was privileged to leave Long Binh for a one-day excursion to Vung Tau’s beautiful beach. Little kids sold us pineapple slices on sticks before a bunch of us GIs splashed into waves rolling in from the South China Sea.

We later heard this message over a loudspeaker: 

“Get out of the water! Get out of the water!”

We clamored to shore and asked, “Why?”

A short distance down the beach, some GIs were gathering. We hurried to see what they knew about that get-out-of-the water warning. They were looking at a dead, 3-foot black snake lying on the sand.

“That’s a sea snake,” one of the soldiers said. “There’s a herd of them going up the beach. They can kill you.”

(A group of snakes is generally called a bed, den, pit or nest – not a “herd.” I was later told that a bite from a sea snake is not usually fatal. But I think tangling with a sea snake could possibly scare you to death.)

According to “Wikipedia,” sea snakes, also known as coral reef snakes, are “the Hydrophiinae” and are found in warm coastal waters from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Sea snakes are a subfamily of “venomous elapid snakes that inhabit marine environments for most or all of their lives.” They are closely related to venomous terrestrial snakes in Australia. All have paddle-like tails and many have “laterally compressed bodies that give them an eel-like appearance.”

Yes, there are things in the ocean that can “get you.” 

As a youngster, I used to read about electric eels and wonder if one might “get me” when I went to the beach. And on occasions when I’d hear my pastor preach about the account of Jonah and the big fish that swallowed him in one gulp, I'd remind myself to “get right with God” before moseying into the briny main spilling onto Myrtle Beach.    

I guess you won’t find the kind of sea snake we saw in Vietnam swimming off the coast of North Carolina, but you may find sharks, and sharks are the sea creatures that seem to terrorize us most.

The movie “Jaws,” a 1975 thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name, put shark-phobia into lots of folk. In that fictional story, a huge great white shark attacks beachgoers. A police chief, a marine biologist, and a shark hunter tangle with Mr. Shark. The music in the film is pretty spooky, too.

At my age, I don’t intend to “bathe” in the ocean, anymore. I enjoyed doing that as a young person. But, now, I don’t move very fast, and I’m a bigger shark-bait than I used to be. And I know lots more about things in the ocean that can “get you.”