san diego shark attack

This is horrible news. Happened this morning. Very near where my brother surfs regularly. This stuff terrifies me. I’m fighting the impulse to make a hysterical sister phone call to my brother which would mostly sound like this:

“EEEEEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeee!” That usually doesn’t work on him.

But I’ve been freaked out all day basically.

The latest update is that it WAS a Great White shark, approximately 12-17 feet in size. Ugh. I’m sick about this. So sorry about this man.

You know, there’s an issue here that may very well be a contributing factor. Something that I’ve heard local people talking about today. Nearby where this attack happened, in La Jolla actually, there’s a cement block wall that curves out into the ocean in a crescent shape. The wall has a walkway on top for sightseers, etc. But the original purpose of this wall was to create a children’s pool area. A shallow place for them to play, wade around. People who wanted to nurture this children’s pool area favored a net, a mesh divider, something, to protect the little beach from seals and predators. As I recall it anyway. This goes back a number of years here. Environmentalists howled about that. So as time went on, the area became overrun with seals — to the point where people are no longer allowed to go down to this beach, much less kids. It is now a seal beach. A loud smelly shark bait beach.