Deep Observations

Silent Hunter, Ancient Relentless Killer

Yes it’s an FLA as opposed to the rampant TLA )Five Letter Acronym as opposed to a three letter acronym) , but I went through a lot of permutations to come up with that one and probably someone far more intelligent and observant than I has already done it , but I did arrive at it under my own steam.

I can’t really remember when I first became aware of sharks , there were comics and lets face it where there is water , the menace is generally sharks (sometimes squid or octopi) but you always are told to fear shark infested waters.

It may have been in a James Bond film, or later in the sixties the Adam West Batman which as a kid I found awesome , but as an adult I find hilarious, and apparently Burt Ward and Adam West had to do multiple takes of every scene because they kept cracking up on screen. Of course by that time I was moving towards being a teenager so obviously more aware of the existence of sharks which moved down my horror ladder as more sophisticated and gruesome monsters appeared.

The thing is Sharks are not evil, they just do what they do , but I would not like to be in water , a target for a hungry shark.

Also Sharks have been on this earth for more that 400 million years and have maintained the same basic design with some variations. The whale shark is up to 12 metres long , the hammerhead shark , well, has that hammerhead , and the other day I saw a picture of a Salmon Shark which looks actually cute. Yes, a cute looking shark. Not the sort of thing you expect to see.

Then in 1975 Steven Spielberg gave us “Jaws” that really put sharks in the shop window and that Great White opened the floodgates for hundreds of imitations , some good but mostly terrible. Also at the the time I remember one of the spin offs was “Finilla” flavour ice cream among many other things.

In the late eighties I first came to Newcastle and discovered Viz comic (written by Chris and Simon Donald and cohorts , which was very rude at a schoolboy level (and is still going strong today) and one of the stories featured “The Pathetic Sharks” a group of sharks who were not very good at being sharks and therefore that led to lots of humorous situations. My girls loved them but I had to be careful with the rest of the comic as it was not suitable for school children.

Sharks are everywhere if you look closely enough, in clothes badges and logos and vacuum cleaners .

The image of the unstoppable , immovable , relentless , organic , killing machine is something that taps into our psyche. It’s one of those things that you would not like to be in a one on one with. The unblinking eyes , the teeth , the pure power that the shark exudes is something that we all probably secretly admire while also being a little afraid.

Sharks have also found their way into a lot of music , there was a band called Sharks formed by Andy Fraser of Free with Chris Spedding, and there’s the Sharks and the Jets in “West Side Story”, and the song lead for this piece will be “Sharks Teeth” from the album “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

As you go to sleep tonight imagine being in a dark , deep , blue tank of water , just you and a relentless predator that will be waiting for the slightest excuse to taste blood.

There is no scientific evidence in this piece , just my own shark observations, so always check things out first.