Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Attacks That Inspired Jaws - The 1916 Shark Attacks Part 3: The Hunt for the Maneater

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

The third and final installment of the series has Wes covering what is still described as the "largest scale animal hunt in history" to try and finally put an end to the nightmare. Some bad New Jersey accents are attempted, and Jeff and Mike come up with some inventive methods as to how they would have stopped the shark. ~~ 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

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our wildlife biologist and animal expert, West Larson, in the house. In the house. Is that a gorilla? Is that just you? He's just a grunt. You're just cheering me. And then we got people with animal knowledge also here.

Yep. Limited. We've got Mike Smith and Jeff Larson. Yeah. This is part three, so you don't need a real introduction to. us. No, if you're starting here, go back and listen to part one and part two of this series. Yes. Do it right now. Unless? Unless what? You like just starting at the end, like mom. Yeah, unless you read the end of the Harry Potter books before the start. Like Cyrus.

Like our brother. Yeah. Mike, you got some macaws hanging from your mic. Yeah. I thought, may as well decorate while I'm here. I give you an octopus. People are not going to know what you're talking about. He's got like some beaded little macaw trinkets that are hanging. hanging from his microphone. Right. I actually did try hanging up your octopus first, but like the eight legs, you know, how many legs? That's too many legs.

Octopities have. Yeah. They spread out a little bit too much. They tickle my trachea while I'm talking. Okay. Fair enough. Well, I like your macaws. Thanks.

We were just talking about post grunge rock bands a little bit. So that's like, I think it's kind of the sweet spot in between grunge and new metal. Sweet's a weird. Yes. It's not the right part. But we're talking about like. Bush, filter, fuel, lots of one-word band names. And we brought up the band Filter, and Mike said that the guy from Filter,

they had that song, Hey Man, Nice, or Hey Man, Nice Shot. But I looked up on Wikipedia, and an interesting tidbit about that guy. His brother is Robert Patrick, the guy that plays T-1000 in the Terminator movies. Yeah. And they look a lot alike. So isn't that, that's neat. That's crazy. It'd be neat if I knew who he would.

But I don't. He's the least singer of the band filter. Well, just think about T-1000. Yeah. I know who that is. Yeah, so you've got it. Just picture him as the front man of the band. Yeah.

I can see. Yeah. Oh, that's neat. Yeah, pretty neat. You can, like, go through prison bars and stuff. Anyway, interesting fact. That's our post-grunge fact of the day. Yeah.

Maybe I'm thinking of T-1,000, who's the gun nut. He could be. No, I don't feel like he would be. You don't? I feel like that'd be hard on his career if he was. He plays a cop a lot, I feel like. I don't know. I'm just still thinking about T-1000, but it's hard to stop. He's not really a cop. He kind of is.

I feel like he's one of those actors that just pops up in everything, you know, and you're always kind of happy to see him. You're like, oh, it's Robert Patrick. Yeah, I like him, especially as a killer a robot. Yeah. Is he even a robot? Do you think T-1-000's a robot or just like goo? He's more of a goo. Yeah. Yeah.

Huh. When they first send him. He's made a medal, though. When he shows up, he shows up as Robert Patterson. Patrick, right, in the movie? Naked. Yeah. So he has a form. Yeah.

Wait, is he naked? Yeah, I think so. I thought everyone else but him showed up naked. No, I'm pretty sure he shows up naked. And he's all, like, kind of crouched into a little ball. Yeah. But, okay. Anyway, I was just curious.

Everyone else? Well, so Arnold shows. Yeah, who's everyone else? Arnold shows up is naked. Oh, and Michael Bean. Michael Bean. He shows up, Connor. He's kind of, like, naked in, like, a trench coat at the very beginning of one.

Right. So everyone's just naked in Terminator. That's kind of cool. Clothes don't go with you. Dudes. Dudes are naked. It's a good little wrinkle. The iguana's naked.

You gotta go naked. Right. Go back and time. Do you think the person manning the machine, it's just like a prank they're playing on everyone? And like they send everyone and they're like, hey, just so, you know, clothes like do go through this thing. Turns into like they actually think that. Once like the guy who started it dies. Right.

Everyone's like, you have to go naked. Right. No one's ever challenged. They send you on that mission everyone's always talking about. We have a chance to go back and kill Hitler, but you're going to show up naked. And the guy's just like, ah, I don't think I'm going to do it then. You got to do it. You got to kill Hitler, even if you're naked.

Yeah, go do it. That's what? I wouldn't kill him. That's my opinion. You don't. Butterfly effect. Maybe it ends the world, I'm not risking that. It's like that terrible book you had me read, the Stephen King one.

I hated that book. 11, 23, 70, 60. John, yeah. John Kennedy date. Real quick, before we get started, I want to get your thoughts on something Mike told me he does. Okay. So he goes to a gas station here in Utah called Maverick, which is like one of the more popular gas stations. They're popular.

Us Americans, we love our favorite gas stations. We love a convenience story. It's a thing. Yep. There is something about him, though. Maverick's a good one. They have the self-checkout lines. That's where I'm going.

So Mike loves it because. they have a self-checkout line. Yeah. But where I think he's in the wrong is he's saying when no one's in line and the cashier's just like stand in there staring him down, he still goes to the no checkout line and does it all himself. I feel like that makes the situation a little bit more awkward than just going to the cashier and like saying like, oh, is it still raining outside?

Nope, it actually hasn't rained in like three days. But wouldn't you love to not have to have that little. conversation. I think I'm with Mike on this one. But then like don't they still talk to you? Not usually. No, they don't. They just stare at you? I don't make eye contact. I do like every every little body language sign I can make to like I'm not available. Plus if you use the self-checkout one, you can steal. Well, when you're in a grocery store, that's not. That's West, speaking of himself. But when you go to like a grocery store, do you do you use self-checkout lines or do you always go to a cashier? I go to self-checkout every time. So why is all these people in line at

the always i will walk it's like a separate area the cashier's not standing like right foot away from yeah waiting for something to do this is actually interesting you bring this up because the other day at walmart i realized i walked by like three completely open lanes with the checker yeah to go the self-checkout if i have an open lane i'll go to the check out but that's because i'm enrolled in walmart's rewards self-checkout rewards program and for all everyone out there who works Checkout, Lane. It's not you, it's me. I'm just anti-social.

I don't want to talk to them if I don't. Exactly. Yeah. I'm sure they're awesome, pleasant people. I just went to the local convenience store here where we're recording. And as I was checking out, they were like, oh, lots of green, huh? Because I bought two things that were green. And it ruined your day, right?

I was like, yep. Sure is. I don't, I feel like I'm sound like a crank here. But I just, sometimes you just want to buy your products and get out of there. Get in and out. Yep. No, I think grocery stores are completely different, though. If the employee's, like, two feet away from you waiting and then you go self-checkout,

like, that's a different vibe. But if I put myself in there, we're talking about this maybe too much. But if I put myself in their shoes, I'm the kind of person who would, like, be stoked if someone went to the self-checkout line instead of making me do stuff. There's no way that person that's checked out, like, 50 people already that hour is, like, I really wanted to talk to him, you know. Unless they're working commission or something. Yeah. They're doing a bad job if that's the case.

I've never heard a sales pitch for the beef sticks I get. Well, that's interesting. But I'm with you on that one. I'll always use self-checkout. Thanks, dog. You're welcome. Me and you forever. Do you guys want to talk about sharks?

I'd love to. I want to talk about sharks. Me too. I'd love nothing more. I'll say this. We've been doing this series for a little while now. We decided to release them on our typical schedule, so biweekly.

So it's giving me a lot of time to think about sharks. I've been thinking about sharks for over a month now. I'm ready for a change. Traveled to Utah to do part three with us. And pretty quick when he got here, he's like, I'm ready to be done thinking about sharks. I've been thinking about them a lot. I've been dreaming about him.

I've been reading everything I see that pops up. Right now my Discover feed on my Instagram is just sharks, which honestly it just used to be sharks and dinosaurs, but now it's just sharks. Need dinosaurs in there. Yeah, I'll do a dinosaur episode. A three-part dinosaur episode next. Anyway, so we're going to get in part three.

We're talking about the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks. I think if you are looking at shark attacks in the world, this is probably like the Titanic of shark attacks. This is like the one that everyone talks about that kind of redefine the way that we look at sharks, especially in the United States. It's a really interesting story. It's one that I had no idea was as complicated and nuanced as it is. I've read two books on it. The books that I'm mostly using for the episodes are 12 Days of Terror by Richard G. Furnacola. And then I'm also using Close to Shore by Michael Capuzo. So those have been my main sources of information, but also a number of different articles that I found online, a number of different studies. A couple I'll reference today. It's been a real journey learning about all this. Those authors sound like they could be from Jersey.

Especially Michael Capuso. I know. Herdaquoli. I love this is such good names. Yeah, they do sound like sandwich shops. Anyway. Well, I'm excited. Okay.

I mean, the third part of the trilogies are always the best one. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, sure. Godfather. Return of the Jedi. Yeah. The Ewox.

You know, Return of the King got the most Oscars out of all those. But we all the best. Yeah. Yeah, that movie's terrible. It's not. It's great. All right, so a quick recap. In part one, we talked about the deaths of Charles Vansant and Charles Brooder.

Two 20-something-year-olds that were killed by sharks while they're out swimming in the Jersey Shore. On part two, we talked about the attacks in Madawan Creek. So that was the deaths of Lester Stilwell and Stanley Fisher. Lester Stillwell was the 11-year-old. Stanley Fisher was the 20-something-year-old that rescued him or tried to rescue him and died later. and then the attack on Joseph Dunn, who was the 12-year-old kid that almost lost his leg to the shark in Madawan Creek as well. So that's the recap. We've had these five attacks, four fatalities, which is pretty insane, and it is completely shook the country. This is something that just has never happened before. So what used to be just this kind of local paranoia about sharks on the Jersey Shore the week previous is now countrywide hysteria.

Like people cannot get enough news about these shark attacks. Like this is what's dominating the news headlines. Sounds fun. Yeah. So four people had been killed, Joseph Dunn still recovering in the hospital. Lester Stillwell's body still hasn't been recovered. And this Madawan man eater, they were calling it, is still at large. So they took steel mesh nets and they placed him over the entrance to Madawan Creek, where it goes into Raritan Bay.

And then they launched this really big shark hunt. So everyone wanted to kill this shark. And throughout Madawan, especially, there's the sound of dynamite going off in the creek, sun up to sundown. People are just chucking dynamite in the creek. They did all these. They did these photos shoots where they got these beautiful women to point guns down in the water and stuff. And when you look up images of these attacks, you will see those images often, like these women standing on the shore, pointing like 12 gauges in the water. But even though this large hunt was launched in Madawan, they didn't find the shark.

So a number of different rewards were offered for the responsible shark. And there was even a Madawan wanted poster that was nailed to like every post in town. Did it have a bounty? It did. It was a $100 reward for anyone killing the shark that was believed to be responsible. Oh, man. Wasn't that other guy, who the rich CEO guy was like $5,000? $500, which was like, I can't remember what we said.

Somewhere around $7,000. How many berries do you think that is? Berries? What is the bear? You guys lost me on that. That's a lot of berries. Yeah, I lost a lot of people on that. So News is traveling really fast about these new attacks.

Once again, bathers refused to go in the water up and down the Jersey Shore. A lot of people that had trips planned for the Jersey Shore that summer canceled. The resorts, the shops, the hotels, the restaurants, they're all losing tons of money. In fact, hotels were reporting 75% vacancies throughout the rest of the summer because pretty much everyone that was coming to the Jersey shore, a big part of their plan was to swim in the ocean, and they didn't want to do that anymore. So they're just canceling their trips. And it's thought that about $7 million in today's money was lost because of the sharks, which honestly isn't that much. That doesn't, yeah. But I think also money gets spent a lot more freely these days than it

did back then. It was a big hit. It was enough to where it was substantial for a lot of these businesses. Sure. They need that mayor from Jaws. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't. He'll put people back into water. He'll force them back in. So a big part of all this, though, the reason these hotels are losing money is because of all the news headlines that are coming out about the attacks. For months, the news and all the major newspapers around the country was World War I. That was what everyone was talking about.

It was always the first thing you would see when you open your newspaper was World War I. And I think, in my mind, I bet the newspaper men were kind of excited to have a change. They had something else to talk about. And so these attacks started being on the front page nationwide. And then there's this really kind of storybook aspect to this where this little boy was killed and Stanley Fisher dove into the water and essentially fought this shark to try and recover the body. It's this whole, like it was hard to even write a story this good. So it's pretty interesting.

And then Joseph Dunn narrowly escaping also being killed by the shark. It's just really interesting. So this is a headline in the New York Times on July 13th, 1916, my birthday. Happy birthday. I was in a live though. The bald guy and the old guy. Oh yeah, also the bald guy. Patrick Stewart and Harrison Ford.

That's their names. We know your listeners. All right, here's the headline. Shark kills two bayers. This is the headline and like the sub headline. Shark kills two bayers, maims one, near New York. Swims 10 miles from sea through Raritan Bay and into small creek for its prey. Boy torn from hip to knee, another dragged down to death by monster fish.

Leg of third, twice bitten. Town scorns two warnings, man-eater seen in Matwan Creek on Sunday. One boy seized in three feet of water. Shark kills two bathers, maims one. So not only are they talking about these attacks, but they're also blaming this town kind of saying, like, you were warned because that Thomas Cottrell guy did try to warn him. Sure. And the boy that got, what was his name, Reni Cartland, also tried to warn him. I like how old newspapers read.

It's almost like staccato. Yeah. Because they're just saving every letter is like more ink and more page space. They're trying to save every little millimeter possible. It sounds like someone translating like the Morse code. The Morse code. Exactly. So both the general public and the scientific community are starting to look at sharks in a whole new way.

How do you think that headline would go today? It would be like. It would be a tweet. Oh, man. Yeah, it'd be a tweet. Monster killer shark on the loose. Yeah. There'd be something.

Got taste of blood. Politics. It's savagely, yeah. Eating young boys. And then it'd be like, Elon Musk says he doesn't care or something. Yeah. Yeah, these 17 celebrities react to the shark attacks.

Elon Musk says he'll bring the boys back to life. Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. And calls local marine biologists a pedophile. Yeah. All right. So the scientific community is waking up now to these shark attacks.

They're starting to look at sharks a whole new way. So Frederick Lucas. who again we talked about was kind of the main naturalist in the area. He made a public omission that he was wrong. He was one of the two that said that this was likely an orca, along with Nichols, John Nichols, I think, his associate. But he made this public omission. He said he was wrong.

The victims were indeed killed by sharks. So on July 13th in New York, he set up a meeting with Dr. John Nichols and Dr. Robert Murphy, who was from the Brooklyn Museum, so that they could all put their heads together and come up with a theory on why this is happening and what might be happening. So they came up with a few different ideas. One was that the bodies from naval battles and sunken ships had given sharks a taste for human flesh. So there had been these, you know, the Lusitania was sunk, a few other ships that had been sunk, plus these naval battles near Europe.

And maybe sharks had started eating more people and it'd kind of been passed along among sharks that people taste good. So that was maybe one thought. Another was that U-boats patrolling the water had led to less sea traffic. So there's fewer people going out in ships. And people at that time in their ships would dump waste, sometimes animal waste over the side of the ship. Oh, interesting. And their thought was maybe sharks that had been feeding on all that waste

that had been dropped into the water had lost that source of food. So they were now turning toward people as a source of food. They even talked about a really kind of out-there theory that maybe the Germans had developed some kind of weapon that weaponized sharks. So they, like, some sort of, like, microwave gun that when they shot in the water, it made sharks turn into, like, ravenous monsters.

Yeah, I like that one. Yeah, me too. Someone needs to make a movie about, like, Nazi sharks. About weaponizing sharks. Yeah. They did that with Jurassic World. Although these weren't Nazis. That's true.

Locust. It's really efficient if you think about it. Right. Because you can point a laser at someone, and then the raptor will kill them instead of shooting them. It's so much easier. than just pointing a gun at them and shooting the gun. All right, those theories were all pretty much dismissed by these scientists.

These aren't dumb scientists. They're very smart. And what they thought was most likely, Nichols especially, Nichols was the one ichthyologist out of the three of them, so he was a fish specialist. He thought it was most likely that an upwelling of warm water from an El Nino event had made their local waters more appealing for large predatory sharks. That sounds like the Meg.

Yeah, kind of. But also not like a big opening in the crust. of the earth or whatever the naked. Yes. Oh, is that the, man, I still, I got to watch that movie. Yeah. That sounds great. There's these sharks, there's like megalodons, but they're stuck so deep in the ocean

that the pressure they can't come up unless there's like, yeah, that's what it was. Something that breaks that seal for him. Yeah, that's smart. Like a hellenia-type storm. All right, so he believed that a large tiger or great white shark had followed the warm ocean currents north and was now exploring a new hunting ground. where food was more scarce, that shark was turning to non-typical prey. So they're pretty smart.

They are. No, I mean, these guys are like the guys for the time. And the other thing is, I wanted to make a note of this. As we're talking about them and kind of the things that they got wrong, you have to remember, collecting information back then was so much harder. And based on the amount of information they had and the data they had and their ability to collect information, they're pretty ahead of their time when it comes to making these kind of inference.

about sharks. They couldn't get Einstein on the job? They probably could have. He was the top scientist back then. Yeah, he was around. Yeah. He was doing stuff. But that's just me.

That is just you. All right. So Dr. Lucas decides to send Dr. Nichols to Matawan so that he can gather up some eyewitness accounts, learn everything he can about these attacks. So the scientists aren't the only ones trying to figure out a solution at this point. The shark mania had made its way all the way

to the Oval Office. And President Woodrow Wilson, who spent part of his summers on the Jersey Shore, was inundated with calls and letters and all these things from his cabinet members and his officials that wanted something to be done about this man-eater on the Jersey Shore. If you ever want a politician to address a problem,

make it known that it's messing up his summer vacation plans. Yes, he's going to want to solve that. They will address it immediately. He's facing re-election in the fall. He wants to seem like a strong and effective leader. wants the economy to seem really strong. So he calls like a full war cabinet meeting to talk about these sharks, which is insane. That's great.

Like the Dr. Strange Love roundtable. Yeah. Considering like world war ones going. Right. Right. And it's like, all right, I need like all my like army people in here. Like they're all like coming in like, okay, we got a plan finally for the Nazis. Yeah.

I guess they were Nazis yet. Yeah, Germans. And then he's like, okay, so how are we going to kill this shark? Right. Well, it's really funny. DefCon 1. I remember in my research, I found one headline that was from the UK that was like, oh, there's some sharks attacking people in the U.S. And then you have to think, like, their other headline was like another 300,000 troops die on Purdue or something.

Yeah. Yeah. So they must have just kind of been like, oh, great. Glad the Americans are busy. So he finally decides that he wants to put some money toward this. So he approves $5,000 with the approval of Congress, and that's about $140,000 in today's money, and that's to go toward this hunt for the shark that's responsible for these killings. So again, not a ton of money, but a pretty groundbreaking amount of money for a hunt like this.

What kind of hunt is it? A shark hunt. Shark hunt. You got to say that real careful. Got them. A shark hunt. Yeah. Anyway, so I stumbled on a paper actually that I didn't really include it all, but I really want to read that is called do sharks attack or do shark attacks influence presidential elections reassessing a prominent finding on voter competence?

What? Need to read this paper. It's amazing. I think they found that it didn't, but that there for a long time was this kind of consensus that if there's a lot of shark attacks in a year that the incumbent president will probably lose. So it's an article that you didn't include. But I just included it. But we're happy you did. I didn't, what I'm saying is I didn't really read the whole thing.

All right. So the authors, just so you know of that paper, Anthony Fowler and Andrew B. Hall. Okay, back to the story. So President Wilson, he actually, he assigned all this money, and then he also assigned the Coast Guard Navy and National Marine Fisheries Service to come up with solutions. So he's taking this really seriously. The ideas for solutions were pretty, let's just say, wide-ranging. They had a lot of different ideas.

They took some public input, and an immediate solution was to put metal netting around beaches and areas where the shark might want to go. So this netting was actually shown to be a less than perfect option pretty quickly, though, because as you remember, I just said, they'd put that netting at the mouth of Madawan Creek, and the shark had bitten through it. Like a few days later, they checked it, and there was a big hole in it where the shark had gotten through. shark-shaped hole. Yeah, it's a perfect shark-shaped hole.

So it was installed in popular beaches, but people didn't necessarily believe in it as a fail-safe protection. So here are a few of the other ideas that people came up with. Create a dummy that looked like Lester Stilwell, the little boy that was killed, and stuff it with the strongest poison available. That one got might. It's just, I don't think the shark is attracted to Lester's still. himself. It's like, oh, I thought I killed this little Yeah.

They like go to the parents' house and ask if they can borrow some of his clothes. Yeah. Would you please draw your son's face on this dummy? Put a dead horse. Oh, another one you'll like, Mike. Put a dead horse in the water and shoot any sharks that come close. Make a dummy again and stuff it with dynamite. Attach meat, like a ball of meat, to a spring-loaded dynamite raft.

So the idea behind this one, I kind of like this one. I don't like it because I don't want to kill any sharks, but it was an interesting idea. The shark would pull on the meat, and when it does, it triggered a thing that would then trigger the dynamite to explode. Oh, wow. And then they also just said, we should just use all of our available submarines to hunt the shark.

Sun Marines are new technology. People are really interested by submarines. So just use those to hunt the shark. I'm confused about the doll full of diamond night. Dynamite, yeah. Because then, like, what, do they expect the bite to, like, make the dynamite explode? Yeah, I should have given you more context. They had, in that idea, they had, like, a wire running out of it to a battery, and then a person sitting there that would, like, put the wire on the battery when the shark started attacking the doll.

They also got some pitches from some very quinty kind of mariners, some people that very much seemed like Robert Shaw's character in Jaws. These guys said they had extensive experience killing sharks, that they would be able to kill the man-eater for the right price. This included some professional fishermen from Florida, people from places where there were a lot more sharks. So one thing they did do was mobilize the Coast Guard and plenty of volunteers to start patrolling the waters around the Jersey Shore and to shoot or catch any sharks in the area. So hundreds of sharks were killed. Many of the fishermen that killed these sharks were convinced they'd caught. the man eater. So each time they would catch a big shark, they would bring it to shore, they'd cut it

open in front of everyone, and they would look for this body of Lester Stillwell to spill out. Because at this point, the general theory was that Lester was inside of a shark. Each time they were disappointed or maybe relieved. I don't know. Sure. I think disappointed. I think people watching were probably like hoping they saw a body spill out, but also kind of happy that they didn't.

I don't know. So this hunt is considered to be the largest. scale organized hunt in history. Wow. It's pretty crazy that even the president of the United States got caught up in this. This summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup, and Kraft Singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly milty cheese and thick, rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and Kraft.

So, on the morning of July 14th, it's reported that this monster shark has been caught. We've got this big hunt going on. Everyone's looking for sharks. No one's found Lester Stillwell's body yet. And on the morning of the 14th, it's reported that they finally caught this shark near the mouth of Madawan Creek and that Lester's whole body was found in its stomach. So everyone's confident that this man eater's caught and the hunt is pretty much called off. Kind of like in Jaws with the tiger shark. This was actually just a rumor.

Lester's body had not actually been found in this shark, but his body had just been found that morning by a Madawan resident. Oh. Harry Van Cleef was doing his customary morning walk when something caught his eye under a bridge in a shallow pocket of water. As he got closer to see what this mystery object might be, he realized in horror that it was the shredded corpse of a small naked boy.

Lester still had been found, and the hunt for this shark was relaunched. Remember he's naked because they all skinny did. Right. I would have taken the body and then just put it in a shark and got that reward money. Oh.

Van Cleef could have done a better job then. And you would have saved a lot of sharks because they would have stopped having to win win. So his Lester Stillwell's body paints a really complete picture of what happened to him. He definitely got the worst out of all these victims. Even though four of them died, he's the one that got chewed on the most. The shark was able to feed on him a bit before it was interrupted by Stanley Fisher. So here's the description of what his body looked like when they found it. The boy's left ankle was chewed off.

His left thigh was mangled from hip to knee. His left abdominal region was ruptured, and the intestines herniated and torn open. Jeff, you know what herniated intestines feel like. Yeah. Pretty bad, huh? I mean, yeah, when you bench 200 pounds. Yeah. So you pretty much feel, you felt this.

You know exactly what Lester went to. No, mine was worse because it happened three times. Yeah, and you survived. Yeah, you have to live with the thing. You know, say it. All right. The right hip, right chest, left shoulder, as well as several fleshy areas of the body, were all eaten away, and the flesh between his right hip and thigh were mangled.

His face was untouched. Oh, wow. So you do, I was just thinking about this, it's got to affect you for the rest of your life if you find this corpse, and it's just completely mangled, but then his face is like untouched. Yeah, actually the guy did report that he like, he never told anyone but the coroner about this. He wouldn't talk about it. So I should mention, too, a thing that I forgot to bring up again in the last episode, we mentioned that Stanley Fisher had taken out a life insurance policy right before he was killed by the shark.

Yeah, I was wondering about that. They did pay out. So they ended up paying out $7,500 to his family. It was a $10,000 policy, but I think you usually just get a percentage of that. Still suspicion. You think Stanley and the sharks planned it out with each other. Or maybe his family. And they were like, hey, we can drive you to the hospital. And he's like, nope. Put me on the train in two hours. His family ended up using a lot of the money to pay for a huge stained glass in the local Methodist church in his honor. That's what I would have done to. Churches need more money, right? Yeah, more stained glass.

So with Lester's body, with like a great white eating a seal, does it eat a lot more of the seal? Not always. Sometimes, though, just eat the like blubber off the seals. So sometimes you find seals that have huge ragged bites out of them. But the main parts of the seal are still there. They've just eaten all the fat off of the seal. So there's theories that the shark was feeding on Lester. There's also theories that these were just a series of exploratory bites.

But he was such a small kid that like two or three exploratory bites by a shark was enough to kill him. I tend to believe that it was feeding on him because Stanley Fisher, when he swam down, saw the shark like rolling on top of the body. Yeah. Which to me is what a shark does when they're trying to rip off chunks. of flesh. Gotcha. And for another reason that we're going to talk about soon. All right, some other really important things happen on July 14th.

Samuel Harding, a 35-year-old local from Newark, New Jersey, decided to go for a swim in the Shrewsbury River near Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. Not long into his swim. He came across the stronger than anticipated current, and the river tired him out. He's struggling to stay afloat in the water. He throws his hands up and starts yelling for help, and there's a few other really strong swimmers on the shore and they start running out to help him. Then suddenly someone starts screaming shark and they yell that a shark had been attacking this guy and these rescuers stop and they don't

go out to try and help him and he drowns. Really? Yeah, he drowns. So 20 minutes later, they find his body. It's recovered from the river bottom without a scratch on it. So he wasn't attacked by a shark, but the shark paranoia had gotten so intense and people had all heard that Stanley Fisher had been killed trying to rescue someone that no one wanted to help with a shark attack. Oh, that's rough. So because of that, he died. So a lot of people do consider, or they think that Samuel Harding should be considered the sixth victim of the 1916 shark attacks.

Big asterisk on that. No, I'm not. I'm not a cat's a stat. This is a bubble championship. Yeah. Mickey Mouse ring. Also on the morning of the 14th, two unlikely men decide to join the hundreds of fishermen. to try their hand at catching the responsible shark.

It's 40-year-old Michael Schleiser and his 28-year-old friend, and they launch a two-man wooden motorboat into the waters of Raritan Bay for some fishing. So they're just going fishing with a net, and they're thinking, if we get lucky, we're going to catch this shark while we're fishing. Schleiser's... With a net? Yeah. Oh, like, but it's a big...

A big, like, trawling net. Schleiser's no stranger to trophy hunting. He's 5'5'6, he's wiry, he has this big handlebar mustache. Slisher. What a name is. I think I'm saying, Schlicer. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm saying it right. He's a taxidermist and a professional lion tamer for Barnum and Bailey.

Oh, wow. He'd travel the world hunting big game. He'd expertly prepared and presented a number of different trophies. He's a really good taxidermist. He has a pet bear, a pet wolf, multiple pet alligators, and a lot of other animals at home. I'd expect nothing less from a slicer. Yeah, that's Schleiser, for sure. If you didn't know that that person had a mustache, Jeff, what odds would you give him for having a mustache or not?

Because it would be like minus a hundred thousand. Six out of a hundred. Okay. That makes perfect sense. He's an interesting dude, and this is a guy who's really not afraid of much. So when he and his friend are dragging this net and the boat suddenly just slams to a stop, he immediately reacts. He can see a massive tail of a shark that's like slashing through the water. and he knows this net that they were dragging behind him has caught something really big.

And the only weapon he had on board was a broken handle of an oar. So the shark is starting to fight so hard that there's a real danger that the boat's actually going to sink because this net's getting pulled underwater. Yeah. And they're like, we got to do something. So Schleiser starts to slam. This is a hard sentence to say. Slicen, yeah, he's slicing the sharks.

He starts slamming the oar handle on the head of the shark trying to kill it. And when he does that, the shark actually turns around and launches half of its body up onto the stern of the boat. And it's snapping at him trying to grab him. And so this is what he reported. Like, who knows? You know, this guy's traveled the world hunting animals. So he's probably a bit of an entertainer. He's like a zoo.

Yeah, and he's a lion tamer. Yeah. But this is what he said happened and his friend. So he starts slamming the oar handle on the shark. He's hitting in the gills. He's hitting on the head. The shark's trying to bite. It's inching closer and closer to him.

it again reminds me of Jaws at the end where the shark slams itself up on the boat and he keeps hitting it and finally he hits a hard enough that the shark dies and slides back into the water and into the net. Whoa, he killed it. He kills it with the ore handle. Man. So this is about an eight foot shark, but it's a big shark. It's like a very bulky eight foot shark.

They tie the prize to the boat and they head for shore. They're not sure if they've captured the responsible shark, but they know that they've found a particularly aggressive shark. Yeah. So they get to the dock. They're really tired and rattled. Schleiser tells the onlookers that the shark fought harder than any grizzly bear lion that he'd ever killed.

And he says he's lucky to survive the encounter. And he even has scrape marks on his knuckles from the sandpaper skin of the shark. But who knows? He punched it. I think it was from like hating it with the o'er. A few times his knuckles hit the shark too. But he also may be because he is such a storyteller and showman. He might have like rubbed his knuckles on the shark.

That's what I would have done. Yeah. People are really excited to see this shark. A lot of the sharks that have been caught to this point are like sandbar sharks or blue sharks or sand tiger sharks. And they're not sharks that look particularly menacing to a person. Like they still have the teeth and everything, you know, the sharks always look a little menacing.

But they're not necessarily like a shark that you would pull out of the water and think that's a shark that could kill a person. A shark that you're like, that could have taken my finger off. Right. Yeah. I mean, they're obviously capable of more, but it's not, they didn't look like man-eaters to these people. But this shark was different. It was eight feet long, dark gray on top, bright white on the bottom.

But the most impressive thing about it was its mouth. It had a large mouth that looked capable of swallowing a person whole, and it was lined with rows of large triangular serrated teeth. That's nothing. That's nothing is what Jeff says. All right. So Schleiser gets a photo with the shark. Compared to what? Yeah.

The war? Oh, the war, yeah, you're right. We've got to keep things in perspective. He is right there. The war definitely had bigger teeth. Okay, so Schleiser gets a photo with the shark. It's the only existing photo of it to date. And then to the dismay of all these onlookers,

he refuses to cut the shark open in front of everyone. He's going to take it home to his house. He's going to properly taxidermy the shark. So once at home and in his taxidermy studio, he decides to empty out the shark's stomach. And in the dim light of his basement, he examines what he found. Inside is 15 pounds of material that seem to be mostly composed of human flesh, human skin, and human bone.

Wow. So he's confident that these remains are human, but he personally knew Frederick Lucas, that kind of main naturalist that works at the Natural History Museum. And he figures that a scientist is going to be able to say, without a doubt, whether or not these remains are human. So he puts everything in a bucket and just ships it to the Natural History Museum. Oh. So you got to, like, think that's a pretty big surprise for Frederick. Lucas, you just get like a delivery. Or like the person who ships things.

Yeah, was it just like a bucket with a label on it? I mean, I don't think they had. Ice wasn't readily available back then. I don't know. Maybe it was. I don't know. I bet this was gross. Yeah, I'm sure it was.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I would bet anything that it was gross. So Frederick Lucas must have been pretty surprised opening this. But when he did, he immediately shared the conclusion that Schleiser had come to that these remains were indeed human. He had several other scientists look at the bones, including specialists in human anatomy, human bones. They all concluded that without a doubt these remains were human, and they could have been from Lester Stillwell, Stanley Fisher, or even Charles Bruder.

So the news of this catch went out, and the local paper where Slicer lived, the home news, ran the story the next day. And here's their headline. Harlem Man and Tiny Boat kills a seven and a half foot man-eating shark, like a Tale from the Stone Age, the story began, where man went four single-handed, armed with nothing but a club, to slay ferocious beasts. It's a story of two uptown men, one of whom, with the broken handle of an oar, held off a monster man-eating shark after a terrific battle and finally killed it. It's pretty good headline to have written about yourself. Yeah, I'm not as a great,

I mean, it's impressive. He killed it that way. It is. He ended up taking the mounted shark on tour and he would tell this story of his battle with the giant fish and this oar wherever he was able to draw a crowd and at one of these retellings dr lucas dr nichols and dr murphy were in attendance so he wasn't as scarred as that guy who found lester's body uh Stanley fisher oh oh no the other guy yeah would never talk about no I don't the body I think maybe had a face come out of the shark it would have been a little bit scarier he's going the opposite direct of just telling a story to make some money after this thing. That's true.

Yeah, it would have been pretty morbid if the guy that found Lester was like, I need to make some money off this corpse and taxidermy to mount. Lester's face. On a dummy full of poison. Now, the sharks would love that thing. So these doctors are at one of these kind of retellings of the story, and they're there for a very specific reason. They've had these theories of what type of shark might be responsible,

and Dr. Nichols, again, who's the fish specialist, he is there to properly identify the shark. So they go, and as soon as Schleiser's done telling his story, they go look at the shark, and as soon as they see it, they know what it was. So as soon as Nichols sees it, he says, this was a great white, or as they often called it back then, a man-eater shark. And it was almost certainly the shark that was responsible for the attacks that had defined the previous 12 days of terror. It was a female shark And the hunt was called off

And after this, no more attacks were reported For the rest of the summer. Why would they call it a man-eater shark If they didn't think sharks ate people back there? Because there were still rumors That this was a shark that was capable of eating men. The hunt was called off. No more attacks were reported that summer.

I put my bird feeder in the house And a bird just bumped the window Trying to get it. Gently. It flew off. It's fine. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps. How much did we save? Enough.

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So in the wake of all the panic, all the terror, all the tragedy, there's a big question left unanswered. Why did all this happen? So we talked about this a bit in part one and part two, that the general consensus up to this point was that sharks look scary. They seem to have the potential to harm humans, but we thought of them as relatively harmless creatures and pretty low on the list of marine creatures even to be worried about.

People were more worried about turtles and orcas and other animals up to this point. Yeah. Orcas makes sense. Yeah, turtles not so much. The 12 days of terror really changed all of that. Sharks were now widely feared. Scientists around the country had to rethink the way that they saw sharks. But even by today's standards and understanding, the spate of attacks seems pretty remarkable. Especially considering the facts that there's some pretty decent evidence that a single shark may have been responsible for all of the attacks.

So we're going to dig into that a bit now. And I think I want to start by talking about the species of shark that might have been responsible for all of the attacks. I thought you already told us that. Well, I've been talking about one species, and I'll tell you why, but we're going to get into some alternative theories. So when I first heard about these stories, when I first started doing the research even, this was another one of those episodes that I really like or a series of episodes because my mindset changed as I researched more. Which one can you like? I don't know. I like all over episodes, but there's some that I like more than others, and I tend to really like the ones where I feel.

like I was able to learn a lot as I was doing it. And this is one of them, because when I first really heard about these stories and when I kind of did my initial research where I just did a brief overview into the story, I thought, oh, this was definitely different sharks. In my mind, it was like the attacks on the Charles's, the two men on the Jersey Shore. The trucks. Yeah, they weren't brothers. They had the same name.

Their first name. Twinsmen. We talked about this, Jeff. We don't need to go into this again. I'm confused. They both seemed like great white attacks to me. Both involved an open ocean shark, an explosive rushing attack, and a devastating bite. So those are all things that really line up with a great white shark bite.

Charles Van Sant did have the shark following back into shore, and it displayed some really, like, a lot of tenacity, which to be honest, does seem kind of bull sharky to me. But it's not outside of the realm of possibility for a great white. They can do that too. In fact, there's a mini story in 12 days of terror. that I wanted to read to you guys that really made me think that this isn't necessarily unheard of great white shark behavior. So in New South Wales, Australia in 1966, there was a 13-year-old boy named Raymond Short, and he's treading water just outside of the surf when a shark shoots up out of the murky water

beneath him and grabs him by both legs. He starts screaming and punching at the shark as hard as he could, but it wouldn't let him go. Some lifeguards swim out to him and they grab him, but in this murky, churning, he's right the surf so they couldn't really see in the water and they didn't realize that the shark is still clamped down on his legs when they grab him so they didn't really even believe him they just thought maybe he was drowning or something and then one of them reaches into the water and it can feel the shark's head on his legs oh man so they realized like okay he's being attacked by a shark actively and they start dragging him and the shark up onto the beach yeah and they managed to drag both of them

all the way up onto the beach wow yeah and the shark still refuses to let go of this kid, and a surfer runs over and starts slamming his surfboard down on top of the shark's head. And finally, it lets go. He essentially lost all of the muscle and flesh from his right calf, and his tibia bone was even full of bite marks from the shark. And it was identified to be an eight-foot female great white shark. So this was very similar to the attack on Charles Van San.

Because if you'll remember, his friend Alex, who was the lifeguard, ran out, grabbed him the water was pulling him to shore and the shark came back in and attacked him repeatedly. Yeah. And they pulled it up onto what they thought was the sand too. So it's not unheard of for great whites is the point I'm trying to make here. But to me, both Van Sant and Bruder, their attacks feel like a great white shark bite. Plus the description of a bi-colored shark with a very dark dorsal side and a really light ventral side fits the description. That fits a great white shark.

but it's not too far off for bull sharks either. They are dark on top and light on the bottom. Yeah. Their bites also seem like great white bites to me. They're large, ragged bites, the high amount of tissue loss and even bone loss. Once again, though, none of them have bites that couldn't have been caused by a bull shark or even a tiger shark. There's not a single bite here that's like the radius is so big that it would have to be a great white

or they didn't like pull a tooth out like they do in jaws on the boat. There's nothing here that just screams. this was definitely a great white shark. And I will say, you know, I've been talking about both of these books a lot. And I've kind of preferred Capuzo's book close to shore when it comes to the narrative of the stories like revolving around the attacks. I think for Nicola's book, Twelve Days of Terror, is much better when it gets into this part of the story.

Talking about, you know, which shark might be responsible, talking about the actual anatomy of the bites. He really dives into all of that. So these are both great books. I do recommend both of them a lot. And there's a lot here that I'm not covering. Like, there's a whole, the whole second half of 12 days of terror is just about this. All right.

So we haven't ruled out of either sharks still. And I've been saying bull shark a lot. And there's a reason for that. Can you guys think the one piece of evidence that points possibly this being a bull shark instead of a great white shark? That it swam up the river? That it swam up the river. Oh, man. Good job, Jeff.

You could be a shark biologist. Yeah, that's all it takes. I'm kind of considering myself an expert. I'm starting to. All right, so it's this Madawan Creek attacks. Great whites don't often enter estuaries or fresh water. And when they do, it's often by mistake and they tend to just want to get out. It would appear that this shark, though, was looking for food in Madawan Creek,

which is much more likely to be bull shark behavior. When I first read about the creek, I was convinced that it was probably Great Whites that attacked the men on the Jersey Shore, and then likely a bull shark that had attacked these people on the creek. Many fishermen and scientists that year reported higher than average counts of sharks all down the coast, maybe from this El Nino event that Dr. Nichols was talking about. So it's not crazy to think that multiple sharks had decided to bite people this year, that it could have just been like, there was a ton of sharks in New Jersey.

So a couple people happened to get attacked by a Great White, and a couple people happened to get attacked by a bull shark. That's not outside of the realm of possibility. Bull sharks are on record biting people in freshwater. They commonly leave the ocean for brackish areas. They can even swim hundreds of miles up river. Like they've been found 500 miles up the Mississippi River, a thousand miles up the Amazon River.

They can go really, really far up river. So that's really good evidence for a bull shark. But the shark caught by Schleiser and Raritan Bay was not far from Madawan, and it really makes me think that it was probably a Great White that attacked these guys. A single Great White for all of all. I'm not sure about that. We'll get more into that. It's pretty hard, though, to explain a way that they found 15 pounds of human flesh and bone in that shark,

and that a lot of that material appeared to come from a young boy. So Leicester Stillwell. Eight feet is a little small for a Great White to be attacking people. Like generally juvenile gray whites don't attack people. but the one that we just talked about in Australia was eight feet long, the one that attacked that kid surfing. So it's not unheard of. Also, George Burris, he's a shark scientist,

he's the former director of the International Shark Attack File, which I use often for shark stories. He investigated these attacks and even took salinity measurements where the attacks took place on Madawan Creek. And he found that the salinity of the water there isn't that different from the ocean. So it's not unlikely that a Great White could make it up there.

I mean, it's unlikely, but it's not impossible. So especially a juvenile that's kind of wandering around and still hasn't totally figured out how to be a shark yet. Yeah. So Burris and a lot of other shark biologists have talked about this series of attacks. A lot of them tend to believe that it was a great white. There are definitely a percentage of shark scientists and researchers that think that a bull shark could have been involved

or that it could have been multiple species. Both Fernacola and Capuzo, the authors of these books, think that it was a great white, they are kind of now the de facto experts on this because they both put so much time into researching it. I just think it's kind of become a fun debate for shark scientists. It's long enough ago that it's not like a really heated thing, it seems, but there is still a lot of debate over which species were responsible.

I generally think they like really enjoy talking about it. But I do tend to agree there was probably a great white. Do you guys have any input? after hearing about it? I mean, just like you were saying, it seems kind of like a slam dunk to me that it was a great white since they found like young boy remains in it.

Yeah. And like I know that's not open, closed case kind of evidence, but it seems like the best piece of evidence that exists. Yeah. Yeah. And especially just because at this point

everyone is terrified about sharks, so any attack is going to get reported. And so really the only attacks that had happened were the ones that we're talking about. So it's not like they just happened to find a shark that had killed someone else that didn't get reported. It would have gotten reported. Yeah.

I'll go Great White. Okay. We're all in agreement. Whale shark? You think you're ruling that? No, whale shark. I'll go. Bold.

Sea turtle? Bull shark? Do you say bold shark or bold? Great White just don't go up rivers. Yeah, but this is like a tidal creek. It's a salty one. Yeah. Salty river.

How would it turn around? It was 30 feet wide. That's a good question. We'll table that maybe. In part four, we'll talk more. All right. Well, if you agree with me and Mike and George Burris and these authors and some of the other people out there that this was probably the work of a great white shark or multiple great white sharks, it's worth looking at a different theory, which is the rogue shark theory. So the idea behind a rogue shark theory is that a single shark will switch its feeding habits twice.

humans and it'll continue to feed on humans until for whatever reason it switches to another prey or until it's killed. This is behavior we sometimes see in big cats. The lines of Savo are a really good example of this. There's circumstances that lead that particular animal or animals to decide to start killing and feeding on humans. For whatever reason that happens in cats, there isn't really up to this point. No one's really documented this in sharks. But this was a theory that was especially interesting to an early shark researcher named Dr. Sir Victor Copelson, a surgeon in Australia that had been knighted by the queen. Dr. Sir.

Dr. Sir. I was going to ask, if you guys are a doctor and a knight, which one are you putting first? Sir, doctor, I think, is what I do. Sir doctor. Yeah. Well, it was like, Dr. Sir sounds better. It sounds funny to me. Dr. Sir.

But also, like, there's not many knights out there, and there's a lot of doctors. Yeah. So I'm going Sir Doctor. There's a lot of nights. I don't think so. I feel like every celebrity is like knighted now. I don't, I guess. Wasn't that juvenile counselor, warden guy in holes?

His name was Mr. Sir, wasn't it? Was it? Mr. Sir? I don't remember that movie. Yeah, I like Holes. It's a great movie. Shia LeBuff, you guy. That's Jeff's guy.

Oh, Jeff's guy. Kanye stole his hat. So this guy, Copelson, he is a surgeon, but he's also kind of a shark researcher. Back then, you could diversify, I guess. He had treated shark bite victims, and he's really fascinated with this idea of a rogue shark. So he looks into some incidents at Koji Beach in Australia in 1922, where over a period of three years, two people were killed and two people lost limbs at the beach from shark attacks. The attacks seemed to end when a single great white shark was captured in the area.

He also believed that rogue sharks might be attacking people in really patterned ways, and that anniversary attacks were a thing. So like a shark would attack a person again on the year anniversary of when it first did. And this is an excerpt from the book Close to Shore. Copleson observed rogue sharks in Australia often took human victims in the same area near the one-year anniversary of an earlier killing. What Cappelson considered the most spine-chilling attack known in Sydney Waters was part of an anniversary pattern. Zeta Stedman, 28, was swimming with friends near Bantry Bay in January 1942, standing in waste deep water when a friend named Burns warned her not to go too far.

Zeta had just turned to go back when suddenly shrieked and a huge shark was clearly visible to her friends, mauling the young woman. Burns grabbed an oar from their rowboat and began smashing at the attacker, but to no avail. Burns then rammed the shark, which shrugged off the boat and kept attacking. The shark struck Stedman with such ferocity that it was throwing itself into the air and begin to draw its prey into deeper water. In desperation, Burns pulled Zeta Sedman away from the shark by grabbing her long, dark hair. Stedman had been bitten into. Oh, man.

Later than a year later, while standing in the same waters, 15-year-old Denise Birch was torn apart by the same shark that killed Zeta Stedman. Coppelson believed. So, pretty crazy, to grab someone to save them in their body, just like half their body floats out. Yeah, I don't like that. I wouldn't want that to happen to me on either side of the equation. Yeah. So this guy, Copleson, he's convinced that not only are there rogue sharks, but they sometimes attack on the anniversary. He combs through shark attack records from around the globe.

He finds what he thought to be many cases of rogue shark attacks, and he compiles these results and publishes them in a medical journal of Australia. And for a long time, this theory is somewhat accepted. People say, yeah, sure, rogue sharks. Why not? Modern shark biologists have debunked this theory. In the international shark attack database, there are only two or three. cases where an individual shark is thought to be responsible for multiple attacks, including the 1916 attacks, and only one of these is really backed up by reasonable proof. In that case, the attacks happened in a matter of five minutes and were considered provoked attacks,

which I think is these ones in Egypt I'm about to talk about. So one big bias to the data in Copleson's research that I noticed is that the spate of attacks he investigated, it's often following people that are starting to use the ocean for some new purpose. So for example, these attacks in 22, where there's a number in that Koji Bay, they happened right after surfing became popular in the area. So suddenly there's lots of people... Recreating in a new way, they look kind of like a prey item for sharks, and sharks are just like investigating a lot of new people in the water. There's also like a lot of other confounding cases and facts that might be happening with these things. A good example are these 2010 shark attacks in Egypt.

Four people were attacked by Oceanic White Tips sharks. People thought this might be another example of a rogue shark. But then right after it came out that the dive guides had been feeding Oceanic White Tips, all of the people that were attacked were bitten right on their hip. And that's exactly the same spot where the guides had been keeping the fish that they had been feeding the sharks. So the sharks had worked out. That's where the fish are. And that's exactly where they bit these four people.

So there's these confounding factors in all of these. Or maybe the sharks knew that that's what we would figure out. So then they were like, we can bite these people's hips. Thinking one's the perfect crime. They'll blame the people for keeping their fish day. Perfect crime. Sharks are smart. So I have to believe that there's a lot of extra human and environmental factors that lead to these multiple attacks.

Things like war motion currents, overfishing, a dead whale. There could be so many things that he didn't look at. into that lead to multiple people being attacked over a period of time. And then another thing I thought about is this idea, because I was kind of believing it for a second when I was reading about it. So I was like, well, if they kill a shark and then suddenly they stop. But the other thing is a lot of times they launch these massive hunts. And I think the shark attacks would have stopped anyway, but then they managed to kill

a shark that they're like, oh, this was it. But because they're killing so many sharks already, no one else is getting attacked regardless. That makes sense. Sure. So aside from being scientifically unsound, a big problem behind this rogue shark theory is that if you put that theory out there, people lose their minds.

Like people, this idea of a rogue shark attacking like Jaws is just too much for people to deal with. So in New Jersey, hundreds if not thousands of sharks were killed as a result of the attacks. I mean, there's a full-on war cabinet hearing for these shark attacks. In South Africa, 100-pound depth charges were dropped along the coast as a result of spate attacks blamed on a rogue shark. In Australia, they do huge shark coals when someone's attacked that have resulted in the death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of sharks and other marine life. It's just really destructive for sharks whenever this idea gets out in the public.

And Jaws, even though it's a great movie, it definitely resulted in a whole new perception of sharks as well. So after Jaws came out, a lot of people kind of felt like we just need to get rid of sharks. We don't want sharks in the ocean. I'd be happier if there weren't sharks in the ocean is what a lot of people felt. So it is really, I mean, that's just like a really unfortunate thing. So I did read this paper. It's called Science Policy and the Public Discourse of Shark Attack, in quotation marks, a proposal for reclassifying human shark interactions by Christopher Neff and Robert Heuter.

And the authors of this paper argue that the term attack is criminally overused when it comes to shark interactions and that attacks on humans should be reclassified into shark encounters, shark bites, and fatal shark bites. What do you guys think about that? Yeah. Good. You like it? Yeah, because not all of them are, they're not always trying to hurt us. Yeah.

They just do hurt us. A lot of time is just a bite. When Wes bites me, I don't say Wes attacked me. I say Wes bit me. I'll fight when you wrestle. Do you? Fight a lot. I'll say this like I do agree with it.

We do use the term attack pretty often in this podcast. We've talked about that in other episodes. It is just kind of the term that's used. Colloquially, colloquially, that is what people say to refer to these things. It's really hard to do an episode about the 1916 shark bites. You know, like you do tend to use the word attack. But I do agree with these authors that not all of these attacks, are attacks, especially with sharks where we've talked about this at length in other episodes,

this isn't an animal that can come up to you and like grab you and feel you with its hands and be like, me, I don't think I want to eat this. The only thing they have to investigate outside of all their sensory organs is their mouth. They can't use their fins. They can't use anything else, really. Do they have tongues? Could they just like lick us? Maybe.

I mean, they have like really sophisticated sense of smell, all of that. And that's why we don't get attacked a lot more often by these guys is they almost always figure out beforehand that we're not a prey animal. But then every once in a while, sharks, like, man, I'm going to bite this and see if it is. And that's why I think shark bites is a really good term for it. It'd be interesting if shark bites, we did a study on the sharks that bit us and they all just had stuffy noses that day. Yeah, I just couldn't smell us right now. They all just had COVID. Calm and cold.

Yeah, I will say, I do think there are shark attacks out there still. Like I would say this guy that just died in Egypt that we talked about I would say that was a shark attack that shark wanted to eat him It attacked him but I do think there are also shark bites So I don't necessarily think shark attack is always the wrong term But I do think it's vastly overused Like if we were wrestling and you bit me so many times that I had to go to hospital or died I'd say that as an attack

A West attack yeah yeah luckily that's never happened yet how many how many bites would it take to equal a shark bite from a person. A lot of bites, I think. Well, it depends on the shark. If it was just like a little, like, poor-begill shark or something. Just the full domer on them. Yeah, a lot of bites. All right.

So, to be honest, though, even though we've kind of disproven this rogue shark theory, I do think there's some compelling evidence that in this case it was a single shark. I do kind of think that it might just be this incredibly rare case of a shark just deciding that it's going to feed on humans. for whatever reason. It's really hard to know why it happened so long ago that we don't have any real evidence to talk about. It's probably, if that is the case, if this was one shark, which who knows if it was,

if it is the case, it's probably one of the most rare things we've talked about on the podcast. Like one of the most lightning strike, this never happens kind of things. And because that's so rare and so unbelievable, people are still talking about this series of incidents till today. including us. You know, it's so fascinating because it really stands out from all the other records.

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All right. Well, guys, that's the end of part three. Yeah, that's the story. I do think these are incredibly interesting stories. If you guys are interested out there and learning more about them, again, those books are 12 Days of Terror by Richard G. Fernacola, Dr. Richard G. for Nicola. And close to shore by Michael Capuzzo.

recommend them both. They both are really fun reads. Some great pictures in 12 Days of Terror. So that's it. Any questions about the New Jersey 1916 shark attacks, shark bites? No. All right. So we're going to get into our categories then.

Our favorite pop culture set in New Jersey. I mean, I got to shout out the problem. The problem, Mike, whatever his name is. Jersey Shore. Shoot. The situation. I'll go with the Eli Manning New York Giants. Okay.

Just some really fun Super Bowl games, and people are going to say they're New York, but they play in New Jersey. So I'll go with those guys. Mike, you love Eli. I hate. Oh, Eli. You drive over to my house right now so I can beat you up.

He spurned the Chargers. It was embarrassing. Long-time listener. We just lost him thanks to Mike. I'm going to go with a real low-hanging fruit for me. The Sopranos. Sopranos, I think, was the first prestige TV that I watched, like, real prestige TV. And I just remember at the end of it being like, that was the best thing I've ever watched in my life.

And for a long time, it was my favorite show. And anytime I met someone from New Jersey, all I wanted to talk about was Sopranos. Spoiler. Skip ahead if you haven't watched it. So what did you think of the ending? I love the ending. I think it's a perfect ending. It's so good.

Yeah. I think it's kind of obvious, too. that he died. Yeah. I think at the time, people couldn't wrap their heads, heads around how unfinished it felt. But over time,

as I've let it marinate, I just think it feels better and better. I had to rewind three times because I was like, oh, I must not have paid attention because I got distracted or something. What did I miss? If you think about it, if it showed the next 10 seconds of that,

it would ruin it. Like, it's the perfect ending. Yeah. So what's your answer? Mike. Mine is a little out of left field. Oh, big surprise.

Is it left field or right field when it's unexpected? Left field. I think either field, yeah. Because right field's where you stick your ball player. That's not great. That's where I play. Yeah. Yeah.

So one of those fields is where this opinion's coming out of. You guys ever seen the movie IQ with Tim Robbins and Walter Mathau? No, I've heard of it. It's like a rom-com with, uh, between Tim Robbins and Meg Ryan and they're in Princeton, New Jersey. And, uh, Einstein, it's really funny. It's like kind of just a cute rom-com, but Einstein plays the Cupid character because May Ryan is his daughter.

I remember like trailers for that. It's just like kind of a nice little feel good movie. That is. I like Tim Robbins a lot. Out of field. And Walter Matho. And Meg Ryan. I haven't even heard of it.

They're all great. Yeah. I'll switch mine to this breakfast sandwich I had in New Jersey. That's pop culture. That counts. Sure. Yeah. What was on it?

It was like bacon. It was just simple, but it was so good. Some American cheese, some bacon, some egg. Yeah. And then like really good bread. Kind of like that. sandwich at the beginning of that Harley Quinn movie. Oh, that looked good.

Looks so good. All right, we're doing where Mike and Jeff paying attention. No. And guess what? This can be answers from all three episodes. Wow. What do you guys want to bet? We're seeing Jurassic Park tomorrow.

How about in theaters? It's back in theaters. How about the loser can't watch it through the 3D glasses? Sure. No. Luser buys the winner's ticket. How about when the guy, the lawyer, gets eaten in half, the loser has to yell out.

No, I'm not doing that. Man, he really had to go. Nope. I'm not bothering the other theater goers. All right, those are my least favorite people in the world. Let's just do a billion dollars. Loser buys the winners ticket plus a billion dollars. Okay.

The loser has to, yeah. That had to hurt. That's going to leave a mark. Actually, I got a better. Loser buys popcorn for all three of us. Sure. Yeah, let's do that. All right.

And if I lose, I'll yell out. That's going to leave them, I'm going to leave a mark. Sure. I love that. I'm going to throw you out of the theater. Who wants to go first? Let's have Jeff go. I went first last time.

Which one has more names? I can't remember. I don't want any names. Question one. How many people were killed by sharks in the 1916 attacks on the Jersey Shore? Four. Correct. One point, Jeff.

Mike, what are the two main species that were implicated in this series of attacks? Hs? Humans? No, of sharks. Sorry. Okay. Great white shark? Tiger shark.

Incorrect. Jeff? What are the two main species of sharks? What are the two main species of sharks that were implicated in these attacks? Great white shark and bull shark. Correct. Yeah. That was an easy one.

Yeah, you should have gotten that one, Mike. That was bad. Two to zero. Jeff, who was president in 1916? Wilford Woodruff. No, it was a Mormon prophet. It's Woodrow Wilson. Correct, Mike.

Woodrow Wilson. Oh, Jeff's old life coming back into view. Jeff, what year would the U.S. enter World War I? 1970. Correct. You're lucky you've seen that movie. Oh, wait. Shoot, that wasn't your question.

That was Mike's question because he stole your question. Whatever. I mean, we're staggering. I'm out. Just keep asking questions. Okay. We're going to get rid of that one. So it's still 2.1, Jeff. Jeff.

Well, you can just ask me two in a row. Why? Okay, I'll ask Mike both these questions. Oh, I see. And then I get switched to the- line. That was supposed to be Mike's question. Did you know the answer?

Yeah. Did you really? Uh-huh. Okay, just give the point to Mike. All right, it's 2-2 then. Okay. Okay, it's 2-2. We're giving that point to Mike.

Well, I heard Wes said last night one year later. I've heard Wes say it a couple times. One year after these attacks. If you're confident, you would have got it. Yeah, that's what I was going to guess. Jeff, how many pounds of human material was found in the shark caught by Schleiser. 15.

Correct. Three to two. Mike, what did Stanley Fisher's family spend a lot of the life insurance money on? Big old stained glass window for the church. Correct. Methodist Church. Yeah, good job, Jeff. Give him an extra point.

Nah, two. Jeff, name the titles of the two books that I primarily use for these episodes. Both of them? Yep. Extra point, these get harder as they go on. Extra point if you can name an author. Here's the thing. I know one.

I don't know both. I'm not going to say either. You need to name it. Because Mike can steal. Yeah. I only know one. It's close to shore. Oh, I know the other one.

Oh, my gosh. So can I steal? Can either of you name an author? Caputo. Ferticoly. No. Ferticole. 12 days of tear is one.

All right. 12 days of tear by Furnacola, close to shore by Capuzzo. Neither of you are getting points. Give us both a point. That's fair. Mike, sure, you both get a point. Four to four. Mike, give me the first name of three of the people who were killed by sharks in 1916.

Two Charleses. Okay. Lester. Okay. Good job. Stanley? Four or five. Good.

You got them all. Extra point, baby. No. Jeff. Name two locations where the attacks happened. You asked us this one already. I know. But there's a new location in there now.

I can't think of them. Mike, can you steal? Madawan Creek. Okay. Crystal Spring? No. Beach Haven, Spring Lake, Maddwan Creek.

The Crystal Spring. Where are they? Still 5-4, Mike. Mike, what was the name of the boy who lived? Not Harry Potter. I was going to say Harry Potter. I forget his name. He's the New York guy.

Can you steal it? I have no names. Joseph Dunn. Okay, bonus for all the marbles. Why do we even bother? Yeah. Just wait for the last one. Actually, you know what?

I'm just going to say this is for a point. So there'll be a tie if. Jeff gets it, if not Mike wins. Whose question is it? It's bonus, so it's whoever answers it first. So we tap the table. Okay. Taps the table first.

Bonus. Who was Samuel Harding? He's the one that found Lester's body. Incorrect. No, that was Van Cleef. Yes. Samuel Harding. He had, she was doing something with little shards.

Often considered to be the sixth victim of the 1960s. Oh, he drowned and there was no shark. He drowned. Dang it. Jeff, he owe is popcorn. Okay. All right. And I got a yellow out.

That's going to leave them like. Yeah, that's true. Okay, our next category, something that's overrated. I'll start. I think it's overrated when people call croissant croissants. Overrated, such a funny word to use for that. Yeah, well, it is. I feel like it's just like, you know, call them that if you're in France.

Over here, in these parts, we call them croissants. Yeah. It's an interesting flex to just go, croissant, croissant. I know. There's so many words that we don't pronounce the way that they're supposed to be pronounced. But I feel like that one just sounds so fancy that people love saying it. Crosanne is kind of fun. Crescent.

Which one? Did I say it in French? Crescent. Couss? Yeah. It is fun. But I still think it's overrated. But croissants themselves, they're good.

Delicious. I love them. Big, like, greasy. Yeah. I recently, my friend made me a croissant. Quissant that was toasted and then had some egg salad on it. It's delicious. All right, I'll go.

Okay. Full moons. Interesting. Just the moon in general, maybe, but especially full moons, I think are overrated. Too bright. People get most excited about looking outside at the sky when it's like a full moon, I feel like. And to me, it's way more interesting when it's like a really small sliver, like, crescent moon or no moon. And you get all the stars.

Yeah. I do sometimes on a long road trip really love a full moon. like drive at night because you kind of get to see these weird night shadows and the whole landscape illuminated by moonlight. I like my sky as dark as I can get it. Especially if you're driving by the ocean and you get to see the waves and everything in the fall. No.

Okay. All right. Barf. Do you ever look at the moon and it kind of snaps into focus and realize that it's just actually a real huge piece of rock? Like rock floating up there? It's so weird. It's just hot in our gravity.

I'm all about the moon. Yeah. My overrated... What else would you think it is? Well, like, you look up at it, and it just kind of looks like a disc in the sky if you just, like, take a glance at it. People think it's cheese.

But you don't really consider it. Or cheese, Wallace and Gromit. Yeah. They discovered it was cheese. Okay. What do you think that people on the moon think of when they look at the earth? They're all on the dark side of it, so they don't even know it exists.

Yeah. Mike, what do you think is overrated? Folk music. Or least like 99% of it. I'm here. Here's where I come down on it. If you are emotionally affected by three chords and weak allegories, that tells me more about your emotional state than the quality of the music.

I think you need help if that's changing your life. Wow. Okay. Shots fired. Especially when it's usually some guy and like any warbly cries into the microphone. Yeah. Get out of here. All right.

You're not sad. You're in a recording studio. Yeah. Stop. He could still be sad. I doubt it. This was definitely one that was on your list because I can tell you're first. fired up about it. I'll be honest. I like a lot of folk music. It's bad stuff to listen to you.

When I listen to it, I'm like, this is bad. That's what I say. All right. So our next category, what would Mike and Jeff do? And for this one I'm going to do, what would you guys do if you were tasked with hunting and killing the shark responsible for these fatal bites? I mean, this one's easy. What are you doing? I'm just going to build a wall where the ocean and river channel, and dry it out. Dry up the river? Yeah. But what about the ones that happen in the ocean?

Oh, the shark's in the river now. Okay. Oh, so he's in the dry ditch of the river? Before it bites his way through. Yeah, just dry them all out. There you go. Okay. That's a good plan.

Yeah, all right. Okay. It wasn't the ocean that fed the river, though. What was it? It was other streams. So why was there salt water in it? Because it was back and forth between the ocean. The tides would run into the creek.

But it's all right. We'll take the wall. You can build a wall on all those little creeks. You know what I could do is just get that little Lester dummy. Uh-huh. But. You're talking about the dummy, not the little kid, right? Yeah.

All right. And I'd put it, I'd just put it like 10 feet on shore. Ooh, and just make the shark. So then the shark just comes out of the water and dries up. You don't even need poison or dynamite. Yeah, you just get a really good Lester dummy. Well, that was kind of my idea. I was going to get one of those really poisonous puffer fish.

Uh-huh. and get facial reconstructive surgery on it to make it look like luster. So the shark eats the poisonous puffer fish. You love using puffer fish. I mean, you can't resist. I mean, it's foolproof. Yeah. All right.

Unless you got like a really good chef preparing it. Right. All right. So we're going to really quickly, we've talked about sharks a lot. But I do just want to do a quick refresher on what to do to actually avoid shark encounters and then what to do if you are actually bitten by a shark. Are you going to tell us how to kill a shark? No, I'm not going to do that.

So the main thing is pay attention to conditions, to signs. So if you go to a beach and you see a sign warning of shark activity, maybe don't go quite as far out as you typically would or just be really, you know, vigilant for sharks. Look for murky water. Don't swim as much early or late. If you do decide to swim, swim in larger crowds. They really don't like being around big groups of people for the most part.

So if you go to a really popular beach, your chances of being bit by a shark go down, from being minuscule to even more minuscule. If you do see a shark while you're out in the water, keep your eyes on it. If you have anything you can keep in between you and the shark, put it between you and the shark. And just continue to watch it, even if it's circling around you. If the shark knows that you're watching it, it's much less likely to rush in for a bite. If it does bite you, try and hit it on the nose and the eyes or stick your hands and it's skills, and then as soon as it releases you, try and get to safety as quickly as possible.

So if you're just seeing a shark, you want to be really calm in your retreat from the ocean because a lot of splashing and whatnot can attract them. If it's already bitten you, get back as quick as possible. Don't worry about your splashing and stuff. Go full, yeah. Turbo mode. Yeah, Terminator. T1,000.

Yeah, exactly. Go naked. All right, so that's a little bit of information. There's a lot more information online. Do we know what Lester looked like? We'd kind of know it. Because if you look like him, stay out of the water. Yeah, I got a picture of the night.

You think that would work to go naked? That's Lester. That's, I don't think I'm getting a good idea of what he actually looks like. It's a drawing. It's like the Sanchi, the Sondji wanted poster. All right. What were you asking? So, like, I've seen some videos online where people are going to fight,

and then one of the people will just take off all their clothes. and the other guy wants nothing to do with them anymore. It's a bad idea for sharks. It's crazy to fight a naked person. Yeah. Yeah, you don't. So what if you just take your clothes off? No, actually, so that's actually an interesting thing that you bring up.

I know. Because, not because of the reason that you're bringing you up. There's a lot of evidence that the exposed skin can actually be a trigger for a shark to come in and bite. Because the flashing, especially if you're like Caucasian, the like light flashing skin in the water can look. like a fish. So, like, the more skin you have exposed, especially if you're like on a shark dive or something, you want to make sure that you have all your skin. So you're saying if we're showing too much skin, we're asking for it. No, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that it's not a good idea. Don't flash sharks. Yeah. So we're going to move on to Jeff, a random animal fact for the week.

My random fact is that hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards. Interesting. And, like, it's a little bit gray. Like, birds can fly, like, a tiny bit backwards, but it means, like, they can fly, like, a substantial distance backwards. Cool. Interesting. And they can also fly, like, upside down. And, like, it's just all about the mechanics of how they fly is a lot different

than how other birds fly. Cool. Hummingbirds underrated. Yeah. I think they're cool. I love little birds. Oh, yeah. I mean, who's rating them?

Who doesn't think they're cool? I'm sure there's some. weirdo out there. It's like, oh, so they're underrated for that one person. Yeah. All right,

we're going to do some listener questions. I got a couple subscription questions here from our subscribers on Patreon. First one is from Kyla. Kyla says, why do you think Australia

gets such a bad rap for its wildlife? I know you've spoken about how India has more risk or injury of death by an animal, so I'm curious about your thoughts. I made a lot of mates working at a U.S. summer camp who vowed to never visit

Australia because of the animals. That's great. She, or Kyla says, could just be bad friends, too. Yeah, they're bad friends. I would say, I agree, like, it is kind of weird that we have that perception of Australia that some people do, because Australians don't feel that way. They see stuff about, like, bears or big cats or whatever. I don't even feel it as like a top 10 most dangerous wildlife place.

But a lot of people do, and I think it is because there are some really venomous animals there. Snakes in particular. Yeah, snakes and spiders where people, those animals really trigger a certain fear in And sharks. Sharks and saltwater crocodiles. And I also think it's because a lot of us grew up on crocodile hunter. And he was constantly chasing animals that, you know, were somewhat dangerous. But really, Kyla's right.

There are places in the world that are much more dangerous from a human perspective. I mean, and technically they have bears, but they're like the list dangerous. Technically, they don't have bears at all. Koalas? Yep, they're not bears. Good question, though, Kyla. Us Americans need to get our act together. America is pretty high, right?

We got sharks, grizzlies, polar bears, rattlers, rattlers, rattles, We don't have much venom. We do. Florida has the most shark attacks than anywhere else in the world. I was saying venom. I know, but I was going back to sharks. We don't have a ton of venom.

We got more gators than crocodiles. Yeah, but gators do. They take people sometimes. Next question's from Blaine. Hey guys, long time listener. I heard you talk about the big five, Oh, this is a perfect segue into this question. I heard you talk about the Big Five in Africa

and was wondering what each of your personal opinions were on the American version of the Big Five. Yeah. Hmm. So I would say grizzly bear, bison, mountain lion. No, I'm not doing Mountain Lion. Grizzly bear, bison, American alligator. I mean, you've got room for the mountain lion now.

Yeah. If you're struggling, if you're struggling. But like, this isn't just predators. This is all animals. Okay. So I'd say you've probably got to put Bald Eagle in there. And then my fifth one would be rattlesnake. I want a reptile. Or I have a reptile. I have alligator. So I'm not doing rattlesnake. Yeah. I'm trying to think of animals that are like uniquely

American. Coyotes? Yeah, I like coyote. Sure. Coyote. I'm going to go completely different than you. So let's go black bear. And then I'm taking skunks. Okay. Skunks are off the board. I'll go elk. All right. Elk do exist in other countries. But that's okay. Yeah, so do coyotes. Yeah, but they are American, like North and South America. Elk are in, like, Europe and stuff. There's not coyotes outside of America?

No. Yeah, I'm just going. But I made some mistakes there, too. I should have done Black Bear instead of Grizzly. Yeah. I snap that up. Yeah, you do. I'll go rattlesnakes.

Give me diamond back rattlesnakes. Okay. And, oh, this one's going to be the bad one. Okay. I'll go with Clocks ticking Give me Bobcat

Castrol Okay Sure Skunk's a pretty good choice though Because they're kind of an American I believe so Yeah I'm going

Alligator Bison I like that pick Mountain Lion Raccoon Sure Is that okay Wes Yeah

Some of my picks Like there's a European bison Sure There's European brown bears And they're not as cool Yeah You can have Castrol

Mountain lion is actually not bad because they are American. There's got to be a cool shark. Great white. Yeah, great white. Okay, all right. I'm switching beaver for Kestrel. Turkey. Fair enough.

Turkey. Franklin wanted. He liked turkeys. All right, this one's from autumn. If someone took poison and put it in a syringe and injected it into you, would it then be considered venom? No. It'd still be poison that was injected into you.

poison is it's been like evolutionarily formulated to be ingested. Like the way it works is through ingestion or like through surface contact on your skin. Venom has been formulated to work through injection. So I think if you injected poison, like if you took poison from, I don't know, because I guess they kill things with like, with like poison dart works. Yeah, it would probably work. Yeah. It depends on the poison.

But I don't think you'd call it venom. You'd still just call it poison that's been injected. All right. Corey Ho 86 wants to know boneless or traditional wings. People are going to hate me for my answer. Boneless. Boneless. Yeah.

I like both for different reasons. So I'm happy with either. I usually go bone. Yeah, I like bone. I like just gna on them like a dog. I feel like for so long I'd go to wing places and you get like scoffed at if you order boneless. Sure. But sometimes it's just better.

Like it's just fun. It's like easier. Last time we all went to. Buffalo. Wild Wings, I feel like the guy made fun of us. He did. And it's like, dude, you gotta be used to this by now. Right.

You work at a weird place. That dude is a dork. They're so different that it's like, they're two different food items. Right. It's not even like the same thing, too. So there's a time and a place for both. I agree. This one we might not have an answer for.

Okay. You for next, want to know, what's the most interesting animal you recently learned existed? Hmm. I'll go with your Snake Island episodes. those snakes. Golden Lancehead. Golden Lancehead. Okay. That's a hard one for me. There's a, you know, I'm going to Ecuador this fall, and I just learned about this animal there called the Alangito, or Olingo, and I've never heard of them. I might see them while in there. It's like a mammal that lives in trees. I think they're closely related to maybe raccoons. But yeah, I'm excited to see

them, hopefully, and I just learned about them. Cool. I'm preparing a bonus episode, a subscription episode right now and I read about the lowland streaked Tenric if you've ever heard of that. I didn't look up pictures or anything about it. I learned that they exist though. What is it? I don't know. I have no idea. I just saw that that was an animal and I was like huh, maybe I'll do something with that. Okay. It looks like it's a little rodent or something. I'd also shout out Red River Hogs when I did the cutest baby animal bracket. Yeah. All right. Good shout out. Hannah, thanks. Yeah. Noah Noel Wilson, most overrated Lord of the Rings character.

Overrated? I mean, I think all three of us would say Mary. No, that's not true at all. Easily. The one I always personally, I overrate is the mouth of Soron. I think he's like the coolest dude ever, but he doesn't do anything and then he gets his head off. He just immediately dies.

Yeah, yeah. But I'm still just like, that dude, he's my, he's the sickest. He is really cool. Maybe I actually go that orc that like in the. The third one, Return of the King, that's, like, doing the inspections of everyone. And he's, like, missing an eye and a nose. Oh, yeah. Then, like, it's obviously Hobbit, and he can't even, like, figure it out.

That guy was overrated in first position. I forget what his name is. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm going to zig a little bit on this one, or Zag or whatever you say. I'm going to say the ring rates. I think they're really cool characters. I think I'm really glad they're in the movie.

movies, they're shockingly inept. Like, they cannot kill those hobbits, and they try so hard, and they just can't figure it out. Yeah. And they really never, I mean, there's the one scene where the one's flying the fell beast, and it gets Boromir's brother, Farramir, and, like, the whole group. But that's, and then, like, Gandalf just, like, shines some light at it and it flies away. Yeah. I just feel like they're not that powerful, even though they are in the books.

All right. See, Maxwell, if you could have a vacation home anywhere in the world. where would you choose? Flathead Lake Montana. So just like an hour from your house? I think so. All right. Anywhere in the world. I don't think I'd pick it. Well, it would be nice so how accessible it is. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's flathead for me. I'll go like tunnels, beach, and Hawaii. I would treat it as like an investment, like the most expensive property, like a penthouse in Tokyo or something. It's just like a billion dollars per square foot. I think part of the reason I like Montana too, It wouldn't feel like I'm building a place.

I like a nice home in a place where I don't belong. Yeah. You know, like I'm like taking someone's land from them. Like Montana, even though it didn't, sorry, I shouldn't say that. Like it definitely used to be someone else's land. Yeah. But I grew up in Montana. I'm from Montana.

Sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I forgot to say I'd give my Hawaiian home to the line. That's what you meant. No, we could tell. Callie Garcia. What's your death row final meal?

I think I want a really good diner grilled cheese. Like the really good ones, the ones where you're just like, wow, this is a good grilled cheese. Sure. And then I want probably just like an amazingly cooked expensive steak too. Yeah. And some fresh pineapple from somewhere that has really amazing pineapple. All right.

It's a weird. That's a weird mix of vitamins. Yeah. I like it. I'm going with a 24-hour diner buffet so I can just keep it. beating forever. Yeah. And like not get killed.

Exactly. Golden Corral. Is that 24 hours? No. Do buffet is our buffets? I don't. I've never heard of. I sure there's like a Vegas one.

Drive-through in Orham. That's a terrible. Drive-through? Yeah. Can you just keep driving through? Is that how it works? That was my first job ever. That'd be good because then you would die of like a heart attack before they could kill you.

Yeah. I'd go pinia colada. Give me a big old steak. Some cheesecake for dessert. Yeah, I didn't even think about dessert. With caramel on it. Desert's hard. I might have cut off some of your name, but you'll figure out who you got.

Trend Daniel Jones asked, On the show you referenced that tigers are the best predator on land and orcas in the water. What's the best in the air? It's a good question. My pick would probably be Golden Eagles. Really? Yeah. For Best Predate?

Not a Perrigan Falcon? No, because Golden Eagles can dive almost as fast as them. Their eyesight's insane. Paragon Falcons is a really good pick. too but I'd probably pick golden eagles okay but I don't know I don't think there's that to like catch a fish is golden eagle the best no that'd be like an osprey or a bald eagle yeah uh slacks yard ass hey guys I know Wes has told his cabin story but do you all have any more ghost stories nope wait I might your mom she's no I don't think she's been dead long enough don't you have

there's in there like I don't know you have to what's your ghost story west showed me a ghost on the wall last night. Yep, that's my answer too. Last night's ghost on the wall. My friend Riley's convinced I have ghosts in my apartment. Uh-huh. And so I'll just like flip off the ceiling and be like, you guys are, you guys are soft, come at me and nothing's happened yet.

Well, I don't believe in him. Yeah, it was right up there on your wall. Yeah. The shoulder was like. I don't believe in ghosts. Now you've pissed them off. They're going to get you right. I'm trying to you, dude.

Do something, ghosts, if you're in here listening. Just wait until I leave to tell him to do that. Rattle some coverts or something. Nothing. That's proof. I just prove ghosts don't exist. Okay, we're going to do a quick conservation corner. So from 1837 to the present, New Jersey has only had 15 unprovoked shark attacks.

There was an attack this year or a bite. It was attributed to the fact that warmer ocean currents had led to an increased number of sharks along the Jersey shore. just like in 1916. So recently, this is really interesting. There's a study that came out where they used drone videos to document juvenile great whites along beaches in Southern California. The study was conducted by Patrick T. Rex. Nice.

And his co-authors. And it's super interesting. So there's beaches in Southern California where juvenile great whites are present pretty much every single day. Those beaches have people in the water pretty much every single day as well. So during this study period, which was between 2019 and 2021, they showed that 97% there was 97% co-occupancy between juvenile gray whites and humans at those beaches. So that means that for these two years, 97% of the days that they surveyed with these drones, they showed both great whites and people in the water at the same time.

Wow. So if you swam in like the L.A. ocean area. This is certain beaches. where there was like aggregations of great whites. But like near L.A., if you swam in the water out there, there's a good chance you were close to a great white. Yeah, if you were in one of these spots. Okay.

Yeah. That's cool. So that means even though these drones showed all these interactions, they'd not once saw an unprovoked attack or any kind of attack recorded during the study. So I think... Are the sharks stupid or something? No, they are juveniles.

And, you know, we talk a lot about the number of attacks versus the people going into the water every single day. We can talk about that for hours. Like every single day on this planet, there are millions of millions of people going into the water. And, you know, there's only a couple hundred shark attacks reported every year, if that. They're really, really, bites. Yeah. And I only think there's that many reported globally. They're so rare, and great whites have shown us again and again and again that were just not a menu item for us, for them. And that's like a perfect, perfectly represented in this paper.

There's this physical proof that we are constantly swimming around juvenile gray whites, which again, the one they caught in this story was a juvenile, and they're just not biting us. It's just not happening. So another thing we've talked about a lot on this show is the statistics on how many sharks we kill every year, and that number ranges from around 30 million to 100 million, depending on who you talk to.

So even on the low end of 30 million sharks per year, that would mean just in the time that you guys have been listening to this episode, about 6,000 sharks have been killed. Oh, man. Which is crazy to think about, you know? And that's across the species of sharks, and a lot of these are like smaller, more common sharks, still a ton of sharks. So that's something that needs to change.

And I think perception is a really important part of conservation. And sharks, unfortunately, are hard to love for a lot of people. And they have been for a really long time. And the last thing we ever want to do on this show is add to that perception that sharks are scary, unlovable animals, or that for whatever reason, they're less deserving of an existence than other animals because they're scary to us. What they are is really beautiful, really efficient, ecologically important animals. Oceans their habitat, we are visitors to that habitat. More so than probably any other habitat on Earth, the ocean is not suited for us. We are visiting.

We're very much a fish out of water, whatever the opposite of that is. You know. The human in the water. Yeah. So I, in my opinion, like, the risk is tiny, but we do have to accept a certain amount of risk when we go into the ocean. It's just not, it's a foreign environment to us. There are predators there. There are animals there that can do harm to us. And that's just a risk that we have to decide. And I think we're really lucky that we get to make that decision and sharks don't like we just go into their environment and harvest them at huge numbers they're just mining their own business and we are pulling them out of the oceans and killing them so i just think

it's it's just something to think about and i do have some good news great whites seem to be rebounding in many places where they had been over fish previously so there was recently a report that i brought up not long ago in a different episode that there's now thought to be over 800 great white sharks frequenting the Cape Cod area where not long ago they were hardly ever seeing a shark there. And now they used to think, they used to think like not long ago that there was only

around 300 Great White sharks around California and now scientists estimate that there's over 2000. So they are rebounding in a lot of places where we thought we'd overfished them and that's because of real concentrated conservation efforts. So this is one of the few animals in my life

that when I've thought about like what's happening to them. I've gotten like legitimately really emotional. I just can't imagine a world without sharks. I think we owe them so much culturally. We owe them so much for inspiring us in so many different ways, even if that inspiration sometimes is fear. They're a big part of our world and they're really important to the ocean. They're incredibly beautiful. And I think we all just are so lucky to live in a world that has sharks. Yeah. No, I agree.

We've definitely proven that we can cause a full extinction of species. Yeah. So, like, it's not do it to them. It's not something that's, like, that you don't need to worry about. Right. It's possible. You know, we need to worry about this. It's a big issue.

And I don't care what your politics are as long as you care about sharks. Yeah. Okay. Like you, anything else? Nothing more to add. You said it. As eloquently as I could. ever hope to, Wes. That's great. Well, we're going to skip our claw ratings because we've done it

multiple weeks in a row. But we all love sharks and we love you guys. So thanks so much for joining us on this journey through our three-part series on the 1916 New Jersey Shark Bites. New Joyce. New Joyce. Thanks, guys. We love you. See you next time.