Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Mako Shark Attack - Shark Encounters in the Bloody Red Sea

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Wes shares three different violent encounters that humans have had with mako sharks, and then gets into some interesting biological info about the world's fastest shark. Watch this episode here: https://youtu.be/MXA9of5KvHo ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Rules and restrictions may apply. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We got our wildlife biologist and Hollywood, blue-eyed, West Larson with us. Like Paul Hollywood? Or Frank Sinatra? He's got some real light blue eyes. Paul Hollywood.

Right. He always reminds me of, oh man, now I'm, forgetting his name. Bradley Cooper. Ah, thanks, Jeff. That's nice of you. I heard Bradley Cooper was slated maybe potentially to play a Sinatra in a biopic. I had to watch

it. Yeah, I'd probably watch that. Sure. Why not? Anything with mafia ties, I'm kind of, I'm into. I'm there too. I just finished my rewatcher Sopranos, which you know, makes me just want to... Is that about the mafia? Anything mafia? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Wes, we did an episode without you. I know. to it? I didn't. I actually, there's a point where I was like, you know what, this is going to be really fun to listen to an episode that I'm not part of, that I haven't heard already. And I started it. And then I was on my plane and I fell asleep.

And then I just, I just didn't listen to it. Oh, we count those as listens. Okay, sure. Yeah, I think we probably got the number. No, yeah, I'm counting that. You listen. All right. You probably, let's just ask you this.

We drafted an entire football team of animals. Like they turn into humans pretty much, but they're still animals, you know. Just tell us who you would want as your quarterback and as your coach. So I got to the point where you guys were like describing your rules behind this, how they were like BoJack Horseman animals. And that's kind of when my eyes started to glaze a little bit. But I, so I'm not totally sure I'd be picking right. But if I were to pick...

This is incredibly insulting, if I'm being honest, but go ahead. If I'm picking a coach, I'm probably picking a raven because I think they're clever birds and they're smart. And if I'm picking a quarterback, I'm going to go ahead and pick, um, huh, I want to pick a chimpanzee, just because I feel like they kind of have the best of all worlds. They're fast. They're strong. They're intelligent. They're agile.

Rip faces. I think you're getting caught up. on just like they have hands like a human. I was just trying to think of an animal that's like good at kind of everything and that's one that came to mind. Mine was a rattlesnake which I really like the more I think about because they have the fastest strike. So I think it's just going to be throwing lasers to the wide receivers at that.

It just puts it like on its head or something, the ball. Yeah, it spits it out. I picked a mongoose to play on my defensive line to kind of scare the snake a little bit though. So I got a good counter. That's enough of that, though. This was a subscriber episode, right? Right.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Well, maybe someday it'll get released wide and everyone can hear what we're talking about. Maybe someday you'll listen to it. Yeah. Mike's here with me in Montana.

We're in the same house, but not the same room right now. Because you'd think we have figured this little thing out, but we don't know how to record in two different places with, Like two of us in the same place, but one of us in the other place. Yeah. But, yeah. So, hey, Mike. Hey, Mike. I have some theories.

What's up, Wes? Yeah, we'll get this figured out. And Jeff's coming up here tomorrow, or maybe the day after. Yes, sir. And we'll all be together. We'll see. And then we're going to Borneo on our first trip. Oh, that's exciting.

With listeners, yeah. Would you be more excited to see a wild orangutanan or wild sloth? In Borneo? Yeah. A sloth in Borneo would be pretty interesting. Or wait, sloth bear in it. A sloth bear in Borneo would be pretty interesting too. Sun bear.

A sunbear. A sunbear would be pretty cool. Yeah. I'm into the sun bear. So for me, it would be a wild sun bear. Yeah, without a doubt. That's like the number one target for me there, but it's not very likely that we'll see one. Target.

Are you shooting at them? No, Mike. I mean, Target is in. Yeah, with a camera. Mike. Yeah, with cameras. That was the joke. Oh, Jeff, you're funny like me.

We're funny together in the same way. We are going to the Sun Bear Conservation Center, which really famous. If we don't see any bear, I'm going to be pissed. We'll see a bear. And we might get to meet Wang T.Siu, I think is his name. Dr. Wong, he's like the sun bear guy. Oh, cool. To Sun Bear research.

Is he the guy that was dressed up like one in the zoo? No, he's not. I consider him the sun bear guy. Fair enough. Yeah. That was actually a sun bear. People, you know, we talked about that, but it wasn't a guy. Yeah, they just look like they have baggy pants when they stand up.

They sure do. All right. Well, I think we might as well just get into this thing. It's kind of funny how I came on this subject for this episode. And it was a really roundabout way because recently we brought up Pacific Rim when we were talking about our favorite rag doll in pop culture when Jeff did his alligator episode. And one of us, I think it was Jeff, said that the, like, Pacific Rim scene where the girl finds the rag doll in front of the big Kaiju was like your favorite rag doll scene. Wasn't that you, Jeff? That was Jeff.

Yeah. You got it in the movie, but I couldn't, but that's my favorite ragdoll. But we couldn't remember the name of the character in the movie. And someone wrote us. Yeah. Yeah. Someone wrote us and it was like, it's Mako. And it bothered me because I knew that.

I always remembered the scene where they're like fighting with their training fighting and he like calls her MAKO and I always thought that was such a cool name. And I think that just kind of stuck in my head. And I was thinking about MAKO a lot. And so I was like, you know what? Let's do a Miko episode. It's been a minute since we've done a shark and we'll just do a MAKO episode. Let's go. You know what?

Let's Miko this episode. Yeah. MAKA da episode. MAKO is Spanish for MAKA, right? Almost works. Sure. Anyway, so we're going to do Mako Sharks. And I think this is an interesting one because this isn't necessarily,

I think if you were to do a list of all the sharks that we would feature on the podcast first, this isn't one that would make that list. And I guess that kind of makes sense because we didn't feature it first. But we've done, yeah, we've done great whites. We've done Oceanic White Tips. We've done tiger sharks a couple times. We've done bull sharks. Am I forgetting any other sharks?

I think that's it. And so this is... Mike did his old-timey sharks. Like ancient shark? Yeah. I think that was speculated to have been a tiger shark, though. Yeah, I think we've brought up some like reef sharks and some other types. But as far as full episodes devoted to a certain species,

I think this is kind of following our heaviest hitters. And makos aren't necessarily that shark. Like, they don't necessarily belong in that group. This isn't a shark that really attacks people. that often at all. But when they do, it's actually really interesting. There's some really interesting facts about them and some, they're a very different shark from some of the other sharks we've talked about. So we're going to get into it. So I have two and a half stories. Originally, it was like two different stories and then I found a third one that I really liked.

So one of the original ones is getting condensed because I really wanted to include this third one because it was pretty interesting and pretty graphic actually. And I got some photos for you guys that you're not going to like, but I'm going to share them anyways. So once we get to them, we will share them. So in 1974, there's a 20-year-old woman who's unnamed and her boyfriend, and they were vacationing at the Red Sea. They were from Germany. They're taking a vacation to the Red Sea. And they were just having a really nice time on the beach, in the sun. The Red Sea is like a really beautiful, deserty area. So it's very sunny and hot.

And then the water is crystal clear and blue. It's a very popular destination for people to vacation, to dive, to do a lot of different things. It's not split anymore, right? When Moses did that, it's gone back to normal. I think it's back to normal. I don't feel like there's like a walkway through it anymore. I feel bad for all those fish that just swam through the wall onto dry ground. It's sad.

I feel bad for all those Egyptians that were just like. Like, all they're trying to do is, you know, preserve their way of life. Sure, we can say that. No. The ones that got swallowed up in the sea? Yeah, I don't actually feel bad for them. Chasing. As I went down that train of thought, I realized what I was saying.

They were just trying to get their slaves back. I mean, can you blame a guy? Okay. Wes, do you want to disavow that? I disavow that. I actually don't feel bad for the Egyptians at all. Egyptians at all. Okay. I actually don't believe that ever happened, but, you know, I'm just going to put down there. I don't think he split the sea in half and walked across it. I personally, you're crazy.

Yeah. I did, I mean, it's, that's a cool scene in Prince of Egypt and in Ten Commandments. Okay. So, these two are vacationing the Red Sea. It's 1974. They're having a great time. And they had this idea. They see this freighter, a big ship that's about 200 meters, now 500 meters offshore. And They're a pretty athletic couple, and so they decide what they're going to do is they're going to swim to this freighter and then swim back. They want to take a swim. They want to do something a little bit more athletic and they think, okay, that'll be fun. We'll swim out there and swim back. You think when they get to the ship, they'd be like, fray there and then swim back?

Probably. Instead of hay there. That'd be afraid. Sure. So this woman, and this wasn't an interesting note, this was actually a scientific paper I found. about this particular incident. And they noted that this woman was menstruating at the time of this incident.

Be careful for bears. No, we don't have to worry about that. And we're going to talk about sharks too. But she'd actually just changed her tampon and she was just like heading back out into the water, eagerly followed by her boyfriend. All right. Any kind of danger, any kind of threat

is far from both of their minds. But there was a danger present. There's a pelagic predator, which it's used to life in the open ocean, and it had been drawn in by livestock boats and passenger vessels that were throwing animals and meat into the water. This Mako shark had been busy feeding on pork and mutton that had been thrown overboard. Like if animals die in these cargo ships or something? Yeah, it's kind of, remember we talked about that guy, the Russian guy that got killed in the Red Sea by the Tiger. shark that was like horrifically filmed and and we all watched it this last year it's like if a

livestock boat has animals that die they just chucked them in the water and then also these passenger vessels would have leftover food and they would just chuck it in the water and so maybe it's like Indiana Jones in the last crusade when he's like no ticket and he throws the Nazi over the side of the blimp it's probably they're also probably eating some animals didn't have tickets yeah the shark had been busy had been feeding on pork and mutton, and it was intrigued now by the splashing of two people headed toward it. It swiftly changed its direction in the water, dove deeper, and started following the swimming humans on the surface above it. The woman was starting to lag behind her

boyfriend, who's about 20 meters ahead of her, when suddenly something exploded up from the depths beneath her and grabbed her by the left wrist. She looks down surprised, and it dawns on her horror that her wrist is caught in the jaws of a shark and she could see these hook-like teeth slicing into her flesh around her forearm and she remembers that really clearly that the teeth were distinctively hook-shaped. Before she can fully process what's happening, the shark tries to pull her underwater by her arm. So the shark's diving with her arm in its mouth and it's pulling her head underwater and she's fighting as hard as she can to keep her head above water as the shark's trying to pull her down.

and she's screaming at her boyfriend, doing everything she can to get his attention, and it's just trying over and over again to pull her underwater. It's about a six-foot shark. So finally, she reaches over with her other hand, her right hand, and grabs the shark's mouth and tries to pull it open. And as she does that, she just completely slices open her fingers, her arm, her wrist.

It's just like a knife through hot butter. So she's panicking. and as she panics, the shark actually lets go, and she frantically starts swimming toward her boyfriend and screaming for help. And as she does that, the shark charges back in, and she remembers it just being incredibly fast, these really fast bursts of speed. And this time it bites her several times,

further injuring both of her hands and both of her forearms. So the boyfriend now kind of knows what's going on. She's screaming shark, she's freaking out. So he notices several paddle boats that are nearby. and he swims to the closest one that has two men and a woman aboard. This part's the crazy part for me. This boat paddles to the girlfriend who's still being attacked and bitten by the shark. And they reach for her and they start to pull her from the water.

And as they do, the shark continues biting her legs. And she's screaming out in agony and bleeding profusely from her arms and her legs. And as they pull her from the water, this woman in the boat becomes like really scared and disgusted by the amount of blood that's coming. out of her that she tells the two men to drop her back in the water. No. Oh my God. What? They just put her back, which is fucking crazy to me. That like she's screaming for help.

They have a boat. They're literally like a few inches from like popping her in this boat. And this woman gets disgusted and they put her back in the water. Oh, that's, that's criminal. That's insane to me. Yeah, it should be like manslaughter. Yeah. So she at this point,

is so torn apart by the shark on her arms and hands that she can't swim with them anymore. They're completely, like, useless. And so she's just kicking her legs to try and stay afloat. And because of that, the shark really starts to focus on her legs and launches a lot more bites and is biting both legs. Luckily, this other boat isn't full of total cowards. And the men in that boat paddle up and they pull her from the water. But they watch as the shark gets one last bite on her legs as they're,

pulling her up and then it follows their boat for a bit as they rode ashore this woman has just been pulled into her boat by this other paddle boat the one that isn't full of total assholes and she's taken ashore and she's rushed to the hospital where doctors do their best to treat her wounds and she's lost a lot of blood they put 3.5 pints of blood back into her just to get her to a point where they can read her blood pressure, which is already, like, obviously dangerously low. And even though she, a crazy thing is even though she'd been bitten 12 times by the shark, she really hadn't lost much tissue. It had just been, like, biting, but not necessarily ripping off big chunks. So she was losing a lot of the blood because she was still, like, had veins and arteries and stuff that had been severed, but it's not

like she was missing, like, really big chunks of herself. These bites are still really extreme, and she would have died of blood loss had they not gotten her there even like a few minutes later. But pretty much all of the tendons, veins, and arteries in her left wrist were completely severed. And I'm actually going to show you guys a photo of her left wrist from this medical paper that I was able to pull up. Oh, no, Wes. No. Let me just grab it real quick. Don't do it, dude.

Please. There's her left forearm, which you can see is completely torn up. That looks like the Terminator's arm when he turns real. robot. It kind of does when he cuts it open and shows the guy. I thought you said it didn't get much tissue. It looks like a lot of tissues gone there. That was definitely the worst spot. Like her left wrist got got it the worst. But for all the bites on her legs, you really, if I were to show you those ones, it just looks like a bunch of incisions because the shark was just biting it, it wasn't tearing off. But her left wrist was really bad. And the doctors did their best to reconnect those veins,

reconnect the arteries, but about a week later, they noticed that sepsis had set in on her hand, and they actually had to amputate her left hand. So she lost her hand to the shark. So her right form was also pretty torn up. I'll spare you guys that photo. It's not quite as bad, but it's still bad. And a crazy thing, like the day after the encounter, this bite or the bites, they showed her a lineup of sharks, which I'd never really heard of before. But I'm sure they do this with a lot of these victims. They gave her like a bunch of photos of different species of sharks

and she pointed at the short finn maco. And she was very confident that that had been the shark that had gone after her. And then not long after a short fin maco was caught in the area where she had been swimming and they measured the bite radius on that particular shark and it perfectly fit her bite marks. So it was very likely the responsible shark.

So the other story that I had that I decided to kind of cut, and I'm just going to sum up quickly, was this guy Martin, Martin Richardson. And this was on a documentary that Disney Plus and Nat Geo did called Saved from a Shark. And these are all stories of people that were being bitten by a shark where some other kind of animal intervened and saved them. I was thinking they were like baptized by the shark. Yeah, saved by a shark's religion. Yeah. Yeah, saved.

It was in quotation marks. And yeah, the shark baptized them and they found Jesus. Anyway, so this guy, Martin Richardson, was also in the Red Sea. He was diving. He was actually doing his open water course, like becoming certified as a diver. And after he was diving with his buddy, they were kind of just dinking around in the ocean and just swimming. And his buddy... You think he knows Mike's a master diver?

I don't know. They probably heard of me over there. I'm sure they have. I'm sure they have like the Mike Smith equivalent level course where you just learn to become an absolute master. The slogan is no dinking around here. No dink, no dinkin allowed. We don't dink.

They were dinking though. And his buddy had thrown him a rope and he was towing him through the water at about half knot speed, which isn't very fast. But it was, there's a few shark experts that weighed in on this program and they talked about how like that for a shark, especially a shark like a Mako shark that is used to attacking pelagic fish that are fast moving,

it's kind of like a lure, like if something's being pulled through the water, that can be very attractive to them. And so he's just getting, yeah, he's getting pulled and suddenly a Mako comes in and starts kind of doing similar thing that it did to this woman in the Red Sea where it just starts biting him and circling him and biting him.

And his buddy's trying to get to him with the boat and he keeps getting bit by the shark. And then he thinks he's about to die and he flips on his back and is kind of just giving up and experiences this moment of supreme euphoria because he knows he's about to die. When suddenly the shark stops and there's a dolphin pair with a baby dolphin that were swimming nearby that popped up right next to him. And apparently these dolphins had chased the shark off. Whoa.

So then I think our human intuition thing is to say, those sharks were protecting him. But most likely, they'd already, yeah, they'd seen these. You messed that. Sorry,

these sharks. It's fine. Dolphins are protected him from the shark. He said it again. What the heck. No, I just said these dolphins protected them from the, okay.

You said sharks and then dolphins. I almost did it again. Anyway, I think they had already seen the dolphins in the area, and it's very likely that the dolphins were just getting the shark out of there. They don't care at all about what's happening to him personally. it's just that they don't want that shark around their baby dolphin you know so they decided to get it out of there and it just he just was lucky that there happened to be dolphins in the area but i do just yeah

i think it's i think it's an interesting conversation when that kind of stuff happens but i don't think we can ever say like oh i think it's a possibility it is a possibility without a doubt but i did i found a great representation of what was likely happening which is this photo of a maco shark with some dolphins uh there are kind of like ghost dolphins. Yeah, they're glowing a little bit. Forest dolphins. Yeah. So we might share that photo.

I hope we do. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts,

we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. All right, let's get in to a little bit of biology. So we haven't ever talked about mako sharks before. It's going to be an interesting one.

They are a mackerel shark. They're part of the mackerel shark family. So some other mackerel sharks that are really famous are great white sharks. And you'll notice that maco sharks have a very similar appearance. to great white sharks. They have really pointy nose. They have this really distinct bicoloration where they're dark on top and light on the bottom. Is that what makes macrules, macrules?

Not necessarily, but that is something that's common among several the mackerel shark species. Like salmon sharks would be another good example of that. The thing that makes of sharks... How many types of sharks are they? There's lots. There's lots of groups of sharks. But mackerel sharks are one of my personal favorites. I think they're just really classic looking.

You better start, if your platform you're running on is sharks, Jeff, when you become president, you've got to start learning a little bit more about them, I think. Yeah, seriously. All right. I'm not, I'm just- I'm gonna save sharks. All right. Don't get into like the little details of it.

I'm just saying as someone, I'm just assuming I'm going to be part of your cabinet. I'm giving you suggestions. Well, that's one of your jobs. Teach me a sharks. Okay. That's on me then. That's my fault. Literally anything about sharks.

So, Jeff, since you're a shark expert, what is the thing that Maco sharks are the most famous for? Probably the Katie Perry show. The dancing sharks? Left shark. Yeah. That's not the answer I was looking for. It's their speed, right? It's their speed.

This is the fastest shark, and it's one of the fastest fish in the ocean. If they had a bomb and they couldn't go slower than 50 miles an hour, they'd be good. They'd be okay. Well, how long? No, no, sorry, they can't go slower than 50 miles per hour. They're in trouble. Like in the movie speed, isn't that 50 or is it 30? 55.

It's 55. But I think it was 55 in speed, wasn't it or was it 50? I think it's 50. Okay, okay. They would be in trouble. So a lot of the stuff that I read said they top out at 45. there were a few sources that said they can get up to like 60 miles per hour and one that even said 80 it's definitely not 80

um most of them said 45 they're good with like the speed rules just to so we don't have to do a correction corner no they have to be over 50 well you have to get to 50 to trigger the bomb oh good point that's right they're getting there so they're fine yeah they're good that bomb's never getting triggered okay Ah, that's good to know. We should probably have a category, like, would this animal die in a movie speed? Just a yes or no category? Every animal is again.

I really like that. That's not, no, like a cheetah would die. So we got one. They would run over 50 for like a minute and then blow up. Right, so they'd die. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I see.

Right. All right. So honestly, though, when I got into this and I dug into this, measuring the speed of a fish seems to be really complicated and there's a whole wormhole that we could get into about how speed is measured among fish

and compared among fish and adjusted for size and whatnot because I was thinking about it like little tiny fish that dart around they have to be going super fast as they're darting but they kind of do this whole extrapolation of size

like a 40 yard dash it's not beating a mako shark a tiny little fish yeah so we're just going to kind of stay out of those weeds for today. Maybe we'll get into it. But let's just say these sharks are fast as hell. They're one of the fastest sharks. They are the fastest shark.

Oh, nice. Cool. They're one of the fastest fish in the ocean. This is a very fast animal. There's some really good videos on YouTube of people dragging like a camera through the water and the shark swimming behind and doing these like charges at it. And it gives you a really good feel for just how fast they are. They're incredibly fast sharks.

Just super streamlined and powerful. All right. So the name Mako comes from the Maori language. It's not actually from Pacific Rim. And it means either shark or shark tooth. There's like a little bit of disagreement which of those it means. So they're just called shark sharks. Apparently.

If you're Maori. That's fun. The name, sorry, there's two species of Mako shark. There's the short fin and the long fin. The short fin seems to be the one that's more widely distributed. it's the one that's implicated in these incidents. So it's the one that we're talking about today. They can be quite big sharks.

They can reach over 13 feet in length, and they can weigh over 1,300 pounds. Yeah, so they can actually get really big. But on average, they're about nine feet long, and they weigh about 250 pounds. Like most sharks, they are sexually dimorphic, and the females are quite a bit larger than the males. Girl power.

Girl, yeah, girl power. In my opinion, they're one of the most beautiful. beautifully colored sharks. They have a brilliant metallic blue dorsal side. And then it's like an underside that's so white, it's almost silver. So they're really beautiful. They also have some of the most distinctive teeth of any shark species. Their teeth kind of jud out in full view. And on their, especially their lower jaw, you can see several rows of those really hook-shaped teeth. Yeah, I was going to ask, is it like literal hooks, like a fish hook looking kind of tooth or is it yeah i mean let's go back to that photo really yeah i'd like to see dolphins um

is that a show you okay yeah uh it's like you can see they're very angular they hook back and they kind of point back into their mouth and you can you can tell then like what type of food this shark most likely eats what do you think it is just looking at its dentition what do you think would be the the type of food that this would be that a shark like this would specialize in What do you guys think? Fish? Backwards. Hook shape.

Hook shape teeth. Yes, fish. It was like a trick question. You kind of were setting us up. No, I wasn't. These are fish eaters. This is a shark that really just goes mostly after fish. Are there sharks who don't eat turtles and stuff?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, think about like great whites are mostly marine mammals. And they have these really big, like Jeff's Megalodon tooth, they have really big serrated teeth that are used for like cutting and tearing flesh whereas mako sharks have these really hook-shaped teeth that are great for catching fish so they're just kind of trying to snag fish in their teeth and then figure it out from there exactly um they kind of have huge eyes they do they have really big eyes we're gonna they look like a deep sea shark a little bit

these are great points and we're going to talk about why that is really quick they are pelagic sharks. So they're found throughout tropical and temperate waters around the globe. They have a pretty similar overall distribution to their close cousins, the Great White. Do you guys remember what the word pelagic means? Like they're more out in the ocean? Yes. Open ocean.

These are open ocean sharks. They're not sharks that you typically find near coastlines. They're more out in the open ocean. But they can be in by coast too. It's not, this isn't a hard rule. As we mentioned, they're mostly eating fish. They're going for everything like tuna, mackerel, bonita, swordfish, other sharks, and then they also eat a fair amount of cephalopods like squid.

So they're one of the only endothermic sharks, which means they're warm-blooded and have self-regulating body temperature. And they also have an extremely high bite force. And a maco shark near New Zealand was coaxed into. actually biting the device that measures bite force, which is, it's really hard to get things to bite this thing just right. And they got a mako shark to bite it just right. And it registered 3,000 pounds of force, which is the highest for any shark that's ever

been officially recorded. Wow. So this thing, they can bite really hard. Yes. All right. So they're Ovo Vivi Paris, which means they have an egg inside of them that has a yolk sack that feeds the young. And then that egg essentially hatches inside of the mother's belly.

And then she gives birth to live young. So it's kind of this. Isn't that how humans work kind of? No, it's different because like in a human, we have an egg. But then the embryo develops and is like fed through a direct connection with the mother, you know, through like an umbilical cord. But in this, it's like the egg has all the food that the baby needs. So it actually like feeds off the egg.

and then it hatches inside of the belly and then it's born. So it's a different system. Yeah. It's kind of this intermediary between like what humans do, live birth, and like just laying an egg. It's kind of in the middle. Do they give birth to one shark offspring at a time? No, it's somewhere from like four to 18 young is typical for a meiko shark.

So they're just like partying in their mom's stomach. Yeah. Yeah, they're born and they're just like, Oh, I'm out of my egg, but where the hell am I? Yeah, exactly. They're thought to be one of the more intelligent sharks. They have quick learning in experiments with researchers. A really interesting thing, and Jeff kind of mentioned earlier about their big eyes.

They're not thought to rely on their ampile of Lorenzini, nearly as much as other sharks for hunting. So they predominantly use their sharp vision, actually. So this is a shark that really relies on its eyesight for hunting, which is really unique among sharks. That's not typical. Yeah. And then their sense of smell is very important as well.

And they, like we talked about in this first incident, they'll actually go below their prey and then they rush up vertically in this really fast attack. And they'll bite at back fins and flanks and do these really quick bites to disable their prey. So then they can then go in and feed a lot easier. So that's kind of what we're seeing in those two attacks is like shark rushing in and biting. not necessarily trying to kill the animal right off the bat, but like biting it enough to disable it, so then it can then go in and feed.

That just doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't. You should bring it up with sharks. You're supposed to have the high ground, and they're actively getting the low ground, yeah. Yeah, you know, but you don't have to worry about lava when they're doing these sort of things. I guess water rules are different.

All right. So in our first story, we talked about how they obviously can potentially attack humans in our first two stories. And the International Shark Attack File Database, which is maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History, that we bring up quite often on this here show, has a total of 18 unprovoked bites on record that have been attributed to Mako shark species and one fatality. There's also a lot of bites from these sharks on boats because they're one of the more popular sharks for fishermen. So these wouldn't count as unprovoked attacks.

Those would be provoked because they're like, That's fair. Like you're in, you're just like out of the water with a hook in your mouth. And they are extremely athletic and they can jump way up out of the water, which has made them a really popular target for sport fishermen. And there's even a growing community of catch and release fly fishermen that specifically target Mako sharks.

And we're going to get a bit more into that during our, conservation point and during our next story, which is coming up right after this ad. Okay, so as I mentioned, our last story is going to be a little bit about fishermen and people fishing for mako sharks. So this is kind of, this is actually the story that made me want to do a Mako Shark episode. It's very different for many stories we've ever done in the way that it kind of unfolds. So just bear with me on this one, but I think you guys are going to find it interesting. So in July of 2002, Billy Verbanus was getting ready to his favorite thing in the world.

He's going to go fishing for Mako Shark off the coast of his home state in Delaware. He's a 41-year-old man, and he's known throughout the area as a proficient Mako-shark fisherman, and he spent a lot of his free time out to sea in his boat, either pulling up these really large athletic sharks on his own or teaching other people how to fish for them. He'd regularly held the Delaware records for Mako Sharks, and he had landed sharks larger than 1,000 pounds in the past, which is a really big shark. He was well known for being both happy and religious.

He wouldn't allow cursing or drinking on his boat. So, Jeff, you're not allowed on this boat. You can't. You'll curse. I know you will. And on that particular July night in 2002, he was dressed in shorts, a sweater, and sunglasses, which is a typical outfit for Billy Verbanus. and this boat that he's in is bobbing over the waves of Porman Canyon,

about 7,000 feet of water. He had left at 6 a.m. that morning with some of his friends. They were in his 40-foot fishing boat named Reel Istic. So real is like a fishing reel, and then it's Istic afterwards. So realistic. And on the way out... Would be better just as a curse word, I think. Yeah, I agree too.

But no cursing on this boat, Jeff. You'll get kicked off. All right. So in the way out, they'd get on there and be like, this name's fucking stupid. And you get thrown off immediately. But you don't want to be on this boat because they're fishing for sharks. On the way out, they'd caught a lot of other fish.

They'd caught a mahi. They'd caught tuna. They'd even caught a 200-pound blue shark. But Billy was focused on larger game. He wanted a big Mako, and they'd have to get into deeper, wilder water for that. Like his father before him, he had been obsessed with mako shark fishing his entire life. These big, beautiful sharks jump way up high out of the water. They sometimes even land in boats.

And they present a really real sense of danger to people who fish for them. And Billy just thought about him nonstop. So night starts falling that night. They're doing an overnight fishing trip. And they had their rods set for large sharks in the water. And Billy's cooking up some tuna, starting to get dark outside. and then it does get dark and they're talking with each other, they're reliving their day, and they're keeping a close eye on these rods.

And just a little bit before midnight, one of the rods suddenly bends and the reels starts screaming as line rips out. They'd caught a really large shark and it was running away from the boat. So one of the men grabs the rod, he sits down in the chair to battle the fish, and Billy gets ready on the side of the boat. So the plan is when the shark gets close enough, what they do is, the last bit of line that's in the water is actually wire. So like pretty much from where the hook connects and then like a couple dozen feet, I think,

it's wire. And what they can do is with a glove on, they grab that wire and they pull the shark in next to the boat. And then they actually use a 22 caliber rifle and shoot the shark to kill it before bringing it up on the boat. Because if they bring up like a big snapping shark, it's kind of a hazard, you know? Yeah. So the whole idea is that Billy's going to grab this. wire, he's going to pull it next to the boat, they maybe get a hook in it, and then they shoot it. So twice, the shark comes in close, and twice as Billy grabs this wire and pulls it in,

it bolts, and he has to let the wire go, and once it even slaps its tail against the side of the boat, and he's guessing they've got about a 400-pound shark on, which isn't massive, but it's a big shark, and they're excited about it. The water's getting increasingly rough, the boat's bouncing around in this inky darkness. Remember, this is after midnight. So the only part of the water that's even illuminated is from lights around their boat, and everything else is just pitch black.

There's no moon. They're in a storm, and it's getting really rough, and Billy's starting to get nervous. He's thinking, you know, we really have to get the shark. So he yells, we got to get this fish and get out of here, and the shark's getting close. And the other fisherman watch is Billy gets his glove, and he wraps two lengths of this wire around his hand,

and he says to them we're not letting it get away this time. We're getting a bullet in this shark. The shark had other plans. It's getting closer and closer to the boat, and as he pulls as hard as he could to get its head free of the water so they can get a clean shot at this shark, it bucks, it rips his head away, and it instantly rips Billy out into the water with it.

Oh, wow. So the other fishermen were completely stunned by what they saw. One second, he's standing on the boat, pulling hard on the wire, And then the next, he's gone without a single noise, and he disappears. His feet didn't even hit the side of the boat as he went overboard into the water. So just like was gone immediately. They look at each other for this moment of stunned silence, and then immediately they begin scanning the water for any signs of their captain.

About 90 seconds later, they hear a strangled cry, and one of them sees the shape of a man on a large swell about 200 feet away. so they rip the boat over toward him and three times they try and throw a life preserver to him and each time the wind immediately blows it away so they can't get any kind of flotation device to him and as they're doing this they see Billy actually roll over and go face down in the water

and one of the other fishermen makes the split second decision just to dive into the stormy midnight ocean he actually manages to grab Billy they pull him back on the boat where they find him unconscious and not breathing they start CPR and they're working on him, but even as they do it, they just know, like, he's cold, he's blue, he's not responding at all, and they know he's dead. But a helicopter shows up, takes him in to the hospital, and he's pronounced dead on the scene

at the hospital. On the way back home, one of the men noticed that the line on the rod had snapped and the shark had gotten away. So that is the death of Billy Rubinus. We given the shark credit for that? We're not, but it is an interesting. story very different from our other ones. Yeah, man, that's a hard one to kind of put myself in the shoes of those other fishermen.

Oh, yeah. Just to see him like disappear immediately is so crazy. Yeah. All right, uh, let's get into our ouchies. So we got, we're going to talk about the woman and then Billy Vibanis for outchies. So the woman, I'm going to give her, I'm going to give her nine outgies. I think like her, you guys, you listeners didn't get. to see the photo. It's pretty bad.

And then she had to have her left hand amputated, which is an ouchy that outches your entire life. That's the ouchy that keeps on ouching, you know? Phantom limb pain. Yeah. So I'm doing nine on outchies for the first one. And for Billy, I'm just, I'm doing like four. It really sucks that he died, but like it seemed to be pretty quick. And he just, he died from drowning. So. Well, and the, isn't the red sea like more salty? than most of the oceans? No, you're thinking

Dead sea. Yeah. Okay, because that would have made it a 10 for me, but I guess I got to keep it nine. Still got salt in the wind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going nine as well for the first woman

that we spoke about. If I were her, I would get a hook and pretend to be a candy man and go hunt down that first boat that threw me back in the water. Like your amputated arm is a hook now and you're, Yeah.

After them. Candyman has a hook, right? That's what he has on his other, like his hand. Yeah. Who's Candyman? Candyman's like... The Chicago. The guy with the bees.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, the guy with the bees. The bees guy. The bees. I'm going to give Billy, old Billy, man, that's sad. That's tough. It seemed quick, but, yeah, I'll go with an eight. I don't know.

It seems to, seems hard to go lower for someone that dies. And that's tragic. Yeah. I'm fine with that. He died doing what he loved, though, you know? You don't want my score on him. It's low. Okay.

All right. We'll skip it. All right. Let's get into our categories. So we're going to do our favorite Maco Sharks from pop culture. You may not think this, but there's actually quite a few Miko Sharks in pop culture. So did you guys come up with one for this or no? Deep Blue Sea was the only thing I could come up with.

It's a great. That's a great poll. Yeah. Those are Mako sharks. I'm sure I know other Mako sharks. I just wouldn't identify them as one. So you'll have to... I'm going to go through an exhaustive list, which is like four or five after we're done.

Yeah, you do yours. The Katie Perry sharks. I think they were Mako sharks. They do look like Mako sharks. Yeah. I'm actually taking the bright shark because once I learned the story... So like one of our listeners, Audrey, shout out Audrey is like one of Taylor Swiss dancers. But she, like, knows the sharks and said that the right shark was, like, they didn't have, like, a choreographed thing, right?

The right shark just started doing, like, some really choreographed dance moves. So it's, like, totally the right shark's fault that the left shark looks so incompetent. Because it's just, like, the person just decided to do, like, a whole choreographed routine that, like, made it look like the other shark was messing up. I think that's pretty cool. The right one for like going full choreographed when they didn't need to. That changes everything. New information has come to light and I don't know what to think about anything anymore. You know what's cool, Jeff, is when you get elected president, you can just be like,

oh, I meant these two sharks are the two that I was going to protect, like the left shark and the right shark, and that will be a much easier thing for you. I mean, my vice president will be. one of those shark costumes. Okay. All right. So some other Maco Sharks in pop culture. The Perfect Storm.

The part where they pull the shark out of the water and it like bites Mark Wahlberg's leg. And George Clooney shoots in the head with a shotgun. That's a Maco Shark. The Beach. The movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. I think that's a Danny Boyle movie. There's the scene where the shark swims at it and he like gets it with his knife right as it's about to kill him. that's a mako shark and then actually the old man in the sea the famous book by by Hemingway

features a mako shark that attacks the marlin or swordfish or whatever that he caught so those are some famous mako sharks and mike you got deeply there's some in aquaman too sure probably yeah aquaman too probably as well they're a very like they're a very classic looking shark and then they have these these scary looking teeth So they are featured pretty extensively in different movies and whatnot. Okay. If you guys had to die doing something you loved, what would it be? And I did put some guard posts around this question for you too.

We'll let the listeners guess at what those might have been. I've always had like some, I always daydream. It hasn't been as frequent recently, but I always daydream of like a hero's death. Yeah. Where I like stop like a shooter or like, you know, save the girl I like or something like that. Like a hero's death. Like save a little kid that's like about to get his head chopped off or something. Sure.

So you just want to die a hero, regardless of what it is, you want to die being a hero. Yeah. Yeah. It's not really not really answering my question, but we'll take it. Well, you put your rules in so I couldn't. Just, it was supposed to be something that, like die doing something you love. I love being a hero. Okay, fine.

Sure. Do you know that? Have you been a hero before? Yes. I'm going to, so realistically, I just want to die during, like, an operation where they put me under. That seems like the easiest way to go, right? It is. Operations aren't something you like, though.

Yeah, that's true. This wasn't like, how do you want to die? This was, if you had to die doing something you loved, what would it be? I don't want to die doing any of the things I love. The only answer is like skydiving, but I've only skydived once. Maybe choking on like a banana from a banana split? I don't know. All right.

Maybe like I'm on a roller coaster and the roller coaster is going off the tracks. I get off the roller coaster, save everyone else on the roller coaster, but I die. Okay, sure. Great. My answer was, I really, I don't love, I'm not like a big surfer or anything, but I do love the feeling of like catching a wave, whether it's just on like bodyboarding or on a boogie board or like the couple times I've surfed. I just think it's like such a fun sensation. And so I would love to just die by like catching a tsunami wave and just being like all the way at the top of that. You're going to point break death.

Massive wave. like bigger than that like one like an actual tsunami that's going to be like a hundred feet tall bodie's wave was huge it's not a tsunami he was waiting for his whole life for the yeah the bell's beach i know i know the wave that he caught but i'm talking a wave that would enclips like when the deep impact asteroid hits the planet you're on that wave right i want to be on the crest of that wave so that's how i want to die that's a good that's a great pick okay I wanted you guys also to give me, because of those cowards in that boat, a memorable, cowardly moment from movies or TV. Yeah.

Anyone have an answer? My brain always goes to the guy in saving Private Ryan that has all the ammo. And like in that kind of the last battle scene, he has like a breakdown in the stairwell and doesn't do anything for anybody and just is a coward. It's such a frustrating one. I hate that. It's a really good pick. Jeff, do you have one? My mind went to Theon Greyjoy

Where like his sister broke into Winterfell to bust him out And he wouldn't like leave When he's reached He's just like yeah But that was like some There's a lot to that This story actually reminded me a lot I think it's the 18 villain

Just like how little regard he had for human life Where like the person's holding an umbrella for him And like trips a little And he just takes out a gun and shoots them. I don't think I've ever seen that. Huh. Okay.

My mind just went immediately to Gennaro in Jurassic Park and how the second the T-Rex shows up. He just bolts and leaves the kids behind. For me, that's like the cowardly moment I immediately thought of. Yeah. All right. Jeff, do you have an animal fact for us? So my animal fact is barbaric sheep. So they're one of the only wild sheep in Africa.

And they kind of got some, like, goat attributes they're thinking now, too. But they have grown... Barbarry sheep? What did I say? Barbarian. You said, yeah, you're just kind of making into two syllables. I say, like, they say it in Africa. Okay.

I don't know what to believe. They live high in the mountains, and they've been, like, pretty endangered now because they have such cool skins and coats. But also I was reading they've like introduced them to some states in America. And they're becoming kind of a problem because they're taking over land from bank hoarding sheep. But yeah, just a cool animal that a lot of people probably don't know that. Cool. All right.

We're going to do really quickly. I just want to get into something that I brought up in the first story, which was that this woman was menstruating when she went into the water. And since we didn't, I didn't really have like a full on what to do with this, with the shark because it rarely does attack people. I just wanted to talk about this really quick because we have gotten the question a lot about like what to do if I'm menstruating and I'm around bears, which it isn't something you need to worry about.

But I do think people tend to worry about this with sharks too. And so I dug into it a tiny bit. And what I learned is that if you're a person who menstruates, this isn't something that you really have to worry about. Because when you actually go into the water, the pressure of the water tends to keep that blood inside. So people who are menstruating in the water, it doesn't necessarily like leak out into the water like you would think it might.

There's not any evidence that shows that like sharks are following blood trails to people. And that's from the international shark attack files. There's just not any kind of positive connection between those two things. And actually men tend to get bitten by shark a lot more than women. So I do think, like, if you're worried about menstruating and you're, like, worried about shark attacks, it is one thing you could do to maybe slightly decrease your risk factor of being attacked by a shark. So, like, yes, if that's a concern of your mind, maybe stay out of the water because there could be a connection there. But so far, science hasn't shown that there is.

So it's not something that needs to necessarily keep you out of the water, keep you from diving or doing any of these kind of things. So just so you know. The risk factor is already ridiculously low to being attacked by a shark. Right. So there's no positive correlation between menstruating and shark attacks. All right, we're going to do a quick cage match with this shark. And we're just going to put it up against our other sharks, I think, and our ocean animals. So we already know an orca destroys the shark.

I think even with how fast it is, even with those little quick attacks, Orca is ultimately winning that. Great White Shark beats the shark, Tiger Shark beats the shark. I think where we have a pretty interesting matchup is between a big Mako Shark and a bull shark and a big Mako shark and an Oceanic White Tip. I could see that going either way, especially the Oceanic White Tip

because they tend to be a little bit more slender and Mako sharks can get really big. So I'd actually give the Mako Shark the edge on an oceanic. white tip. What about saltwater crocodile? I'm picking the crock. Really? What about alligator?

I think so. I think I'm picking the shark over the alligator. I think if you're picking the biggest Maco shark versus the biggest crocodile, I don't know. That's a big crocodile. Yeah, but that's a big shark too. What if the Maco shark accidentally swallows a box jellyfish? Is that a thing they have to worry about? I don't think they have to worry about that.

Yeah. I don't think it would do anything. to it. That'd get me pretty bad. Yeah, I think it would get you. You'd kill the jellyfish. It'd be a draw. Yeah, that's true. All right, let's do a couple

listener questions. Okay, so from Indecorous Art, they ask, I have a more serious question that I think about every time you guys talk about rabid beavers or otters. Does rabies make the infected animal hydrophobic? Does it not work does it not work do that to animals that spend a lot of time in their water?

So the last part of that question was like, does that not, does it not make animals hydrophobic that spend a lot of time in the water? Because there's common knowledge that with people, when you get rabies, you can get really hydrophobic. But I actually dove into this little bit and read about it. And what's happening there with people is it actually makes it really, really hard to swallow. And so that's why people have this really kind of negative. reaction to waters.

They can't swallow it. And that's what makes them hydrophobic. Oh, yeah. And it doesn't do that to animals. They don't have that same reaction. So it does not make them hydrophobic as far as we know. Right. So the answer to that question is no.

Interesting. All right. Jeff, do you have some listener questions? Yeah. So this one's from EDW. What's your favorite animal name in another language? I really like the Portuguese name for Jaguar, which is Onza. Onza Pintada actually is like the Jaguar name.

I really like that. It's nice. Painted Panther. In Spanish, I really like cockroach, cucaracha. Cucaracha. Is that really it? No way. That's great.

I like that song. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. Is that song about cockroaches? Yeah. What the hell? I never, that's amazing. I'll go with Grenui.

It's frog in French. Grenui, just kind of a fun little word to say. Okay. SPC 11 asks, would you rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear? So I don't know if you guys have seen this, but it's been going a little viral. And like there's like a TikTok of someone like doing the whole like your chances of being killed by lightning. Your chances of being killed by a bear. your chances of being killed by a man.

And, like, the man is, like, so much higher. But it's, like, obviously, you interact a lot more with a man. Right. Like, I'd rather be in the woods with a bear, but it's just because I think bears are cool and I want to see a bear. Yeah, I enjoy seeing bears. Right. What man are we talking about?

If it's... I'm going to need a man. That's help me survive. If it's, like, like, who's a man I would rather see than a bear? There's probably a few. Oh, yeah. No, there's a lot. Like if Elton John's just in the woods, I'd be like, that's pretty cool.

There's Elton John. It's weird that Elton John's out in the woods. Yeah. I'd probably just, yeah, see if he wants to give me some money. He's rich. He's got it. Or like a pair of flashy glasses he could let me have. He's got all kinds.

He's got to redistribute that wealth. He does. DJ Funky Monk, since you all are Lord of the Rings fans. which would win in a fatal four, or in a fatal four-way tag team death match. The teams are comprised of an actor that was in both Lord of the Rings and another trilogy at the time.

They are Leguess and William Turner, so Pirates the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings, versus Sarmon and Count Dukhu, versus Gandalf and Magneto, versus Elrond and Agent Smith. Oh, it's Gandalf and Magneto. No way. The best.

Agent Smith, there's just like he can make a billion of himself. Magneto can, he could just like rip the matrix apart with his powers probably. And Gandal's magic. Computers do have a lot of metal. Just like the second Magneto wakes up in his little pod, he's just like and just like kills all those spiders and stuff. So he'll go to the city of the machines and just tear it down. I guess I can see that. I'm still going to go, Smith.

I think the matrix component makes it a little weird because the magic is. Super weird. That really throws it off. So does magic and Gandalf. It's definitely not the other ones. It's not like Will Turner and Legalis. They're getting destroyed. He's getting that.

I always thought Magneto is like the most powerful, one of the most powerful characters in anything. Yeah. It's just, I'll entertain that argument. Those Spartans would get worked by him. The Spartans? What, from 300?

There's like the robots in the Matrix. Sentinels. Oh, yeah. Right. My high school is the Sentinel Spartans. So maybe that's why I say in Spartans. I would say it's almost for sure that. That's why.

Yeah. All right. Let's do Analyze Long. What's everyone's favorite board game? Mine's the game, Sorry. I don't know if you guys have ever played Sorry, but it's not too long. I feel like most people know Sorry. Yeah.

It's not too long. It's hyper competitive and it's just really fun. It's a great one. It makes me want to play sorry right now. Our family loves just like trolling too in board games. So like it's a great one for that just to like hit someone with a sorry when it doesn't help you the most. Like when it like only hurts them, but it doesn't advance you that much. I got to go with risk.

I spent like so many sleepless nights with my roommates in college just playing risk. risk. It'd be like, Mike, you would play her. It'd be like 2.30 a.m. And we'd just finish a huge game. And then we'd be like, well, let's just set up the next one. We'll do one turn. Yeah. I'm going to go with Scyth. It's a game I played for the first time recently. I don't know how into the details we need to get. I don't think many people will have played it. What's it called? Bring it to Borneo. Scyth. It's really. It's really. involved. It's big and long and complicated, but you know, maybe it sounds like the opposite of what I want to play. Yeah, I know. It's great. All right. Thanks listeners. Thanks patrons for the questions. We always love getting them and answering them. I wanted to get into conservation really quickly. This is a shark. So this is an animal that it's really important that we talk about their conservation. I think especially

with a shark like a mako shark that people look at a mako shark and they think this is a scary animal. Yeah, it looks scary to them. And so they might not care about it as much as they do, like a panda or an orangutan. But this is an animal that is similarly endangered. That, you know, we could lose in a similar amount of time as we might lose those animals that we see as like cuddly and fun. And they're really important to their ecosystems. They're really important to the ocean. And they're beautiful.

This is an amazing animal. And so they actually were recently changed from vulnerable to endangered. the IUCN Red List due to drastically declining populations. Those declines are due both to commercial fishing industries and shark finning. Sport fishing is also played a part in that decline. And that really brings us to a tricky point because some of the loudest voices in Mako conservation are actually sport fishermen because they really want to keep this animal around, but it's maybe for like purposes that we don't see quite as noble.

but a thing that I also wanted to bring up quickly is recently I misstepped a little because there's an episode where I told Jeff that if he wants to protect sharks he needs to stop eating seafood and that's not necessarily true that was a bit of a misstep because there are ways to get great sustainably caught seafood and there's places where fishing is essential to local communities and cultures there's even places where shark fishing can be done sustainably but that being said a lot of the seafood that we find in stores or restaurants is not caught sustainably. And even if you're not directly eating shark fins or shark meat, a big portion of the sharks that are killed every year. And remember, we're talking like possibly 100 million sharks every

year. A big portion of that is a result of bycatch. Do you guys remember what bycatch is? Yeah. Yeah. So it's essentially like a commercial fishery might be targeting like mackerel or tuna or something and they end up catching a lot of sharks in that process and they don't throw them overboard like that they end up getting killed or sometimes they do but they still die so it's a lot of sharks get killed by the commercial seafood industry so shark conservation isn't simple you can't just avoid shark fins you need to be sure that the seafood you're eating comes from fisheries that have effective quotas and do everything they can to avoid unnecessary bycatch and that's really hard. It's hard to get sustainable seafood sometimes. And so for me, I just stopped eating it because

it was, it was like tricky to figure out the right way to do it. And you have to ask every time you go out, like, how was this caught? Where was it caught? And so for me, it just was simpler to stop eating seafood. And it's pretty easy for them to just say it's sustainable and they don't really know. Like maybe your waiter doesn't know and they're just like, yeah, you know, we get this all fresh and it's sustainable but like those are questions you have to ask if you do care about this and if it does if you're like me maybe you just stop eating it because you don't want to go through that hassle well and like I don't know I I took issue with you saying that too because I've like seafood's one of my favorite foods and I hardly ever eat it you know and it's because I

want to help the oceans I think that's a route people can take as well like I would eat a lot more often if I didn't care about sharks. Yeah. For me, it's, at this point, it's off the table. Like, I can't. Literally. Eat it unless I know that it's sustainably caught. Right.

And I, like, I won't touch seafood unless I know that. Because you're directly contributing to sharks being killed. And, uh, this is a, but like, couldn't you say, like, that for cows, too? Like if you like polar bears, you can't eat cows because it causes global warming. I mean, you can say it for a lot of things, but this is a very direct correlation, you know. And you're right. Like you can't fight every battle, but for me, this is, you know, this is one that I care about deeply. Like, I don't want to contribute to the shark decline.

And so that's why I stopped eating seafood because it is, that's a very direct correlation, you know. And it's, Maco sharks are pelagic sharks, so they're caught. often by these commercial fishing industries. So they are a very at-risk species of shark. So that's just kind of my soapbox. I'll get off of it. But I do think that's a step that you can take if you're concerned about shark fishing. How to feel to be tall for a bit there on top of that box?

It felt nice. You know? It felt like I could see. It's not all it's cracked up to be. No, I'm comfortable on planes. All right. So we'll quickly do our claw rating for Mako sharks. I'm going to give them a nine.

They're a shark, so they're like top tier for me. But this isn't one of my favorite species of sharks, so I can't give them a 10. But I'll give them my nine because I really like them. I think they're one of the more beautiful species of shark. Nine easy for me as well. I think they're super pretty behind maybe only great whites. I think they're the most beautiful shark. They almost look like they're made out of a precious metal.

Just such a. And again, like when I think of shark, They're probably the shark that the image is conjured in my brain, what I see in my mind's eye, if you will. But, yeah, they're awesome. I'm going to go with it at seven. I think they're a little weird looking. They got, like, huge eyes, and their teeth are kind of ugly. But I still think they're cool, but, like, I just like...

It's cool how fast they are. Yeah, like being the fastest shark is awesome. But I don't know. I just have other sharks. I like more. Yeah, we all have our type. Yeah. All right.

Thank you everyone for listening. This is another shark episode. I think if you stuck it through, you probably learned a bit more about another species of shark, which I think is really nice and fun. And we've got more to get to. This won't be our last new shark, for sure. As always, if you're looking for more content,

check out our subscription streams. We've got one on Apple, the Apple Grizz Club, and then we've got our Patreon. All the same content posted on each. Yeah. Prices have been going up on things and has our subscription price gone up, one measly cent. Never wants. And it never will as far as we know. Yeah, it hasn't. It's 10 bucks. That's like, that's pretty much like what a fancy coffee costs you these days. Just think of that, you know, one fancy coffee a month, you get access to our entire catalog. I love fancy coffee though.

Okay. Well, you can afford both, I think. But if you, maybe some people might, sacrifice their fancy coffee to listen to a little more tooth and clock. All right. Thanks guys. We'll see you later. See it. Bye.