Fresh Water Sharks

[Buffalobob]

I have been canoeing on the river for a week and I got the opportunity to tell my favorite story. This story can only be told to a very polite adult during the hot part of the day while there are several boatloads of kids within hearing distance. The story is adaptable to any river so you can change the name of the city and the River.


ME: Hey John, look at that rock formation. Isn’t it neat. I studied a little geology in college and I believe those rocks were formed during the Pleistocene era.

JOHN: Oh I don’t know much geology.

ME: I don’t either. I am an engineer but I have some geologists and fisheries biologist that work for me. In fact my chief fisheries biologist said that last year during the big flood on the James that the Richmond Aquarium was washed away and the last three freshwater sharks from the Pleistocene era got away.

John: I never heard about that.

ME: Well in my business it was big news because those were the only living fresh water sharks that have ever been discovered. Maybe you read about the night fisherman that disappeared last month down the river from here about a couple of miles?

John: No I can’t recall that.

ME: Yeah. They found a few parts of one of them and there were bite marks so they got the Virginia Fish and Game to set out some big nets and they caught the smallest of the three freshwater sharks but the two big ones are still loose. We will probably see the Fish and Game biologists down here in the deep hole where they have their nets set out. My staff told me that the biggest shark is about fourteen and half feet long and has a 29 inch bite radius.

John: That interesting. Maybe when I get home I will look it up on the internet.

ME: Well, I am going to get my camera out in case they catch one of them as we paddle through the deep hole.

Know It All Kid: There is no such thing as a freshwater shark!

ME: That is what I thought too, but apparently there was this isolated population that was found a couple of years ago and they have been keeping them in the Richmond Aquarium and the scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science have been studying them and trying to break down their genetic code.

Other Kids -slowly pull their hands and feet out of the water and move into the middle of the canoes and look around for their parents.


Dry land camping variation is about the Sumatran tigers escaping from the zoo at the nearby town. This story is told at the evening meal. It is always told to an adult in a conversational manner so that the kids believe they are evesdropping. It must be spiced up with just enough facts to sound credible.

[stxhunter]

BB bull sharks will travel up rivers and live in fresh water for years they have been caught hundreds of miles up the mississippi and live in lakes in central america and in the zambizi river in africa

[Roll-Yur-Own]

Stxhunter, thats what the movie jaws was based on. Some kid in Jersey got killed by a bull shark. They of course changed it to a great white in california.

[stxhunter]

bulls are nasty critters we caught a 498 # and 502# 2 summers ago state record was 508 then. A guy in Aransas pass caught a 515# new state record last month in the bay sure made the wade fishermen around here nervous. When ever someone gets bit around here its almost allways a bull shark.

[screech]

when some buddy gets bit around where i live you can bet in was a canine [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Eaglet]

Nicaragua is the largest country of Central America. It borders Honduras in the north and Costa Rica in the south and it houses two big lakes: Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua is the biggest lake of Central America and has the only fresh-water sharks in the world!

[philny1]

Great story. But every kid knows fresh water sharks are vegetarians!! Except the ones in NJ!!