{"id":257019,"date":"2025-12-29T23:51:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T23:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/257019\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T23:51:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T23:51:10","slug":"a-shark-were-gonna-need-a-bigger-bottle-of-sunscreen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/257019\/","title":{"rendered":"A shark! We’re gonna need a bigger bottle of sunscreen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The blue-ringed octopus is very pretty and only about the size of your hand, but carries enough venom to kill 26 humans simultaneously, if 26 humans were to simultaneously annoy it enough.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not aggressive though, explains my daughter: \u201cOnly if you get on its nerves.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the beach, about to climb into a tide pool because the actual sea seems too dangerous to swim in, a man is mildly telling his kids that someone\u2019s just seen a blue-ringed octopus a few feet away in this very tide pool… the way Irish kids might see a crab in a rockpool.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey kids\u201d, he says cheerfully, \u201ckeep away from the rocks on the left, yeah?\u201d<\/p>\n

I try to imagine what would happen if a small sea creature with the capacity to kill 26 humans turned up on an Irish beach. There\u2019d be media helicopters overhead, snipers on the roof, the military on stand-by. It\u2019d be on the evening news.<\/p>\n

Not here. Not in Australia.<\/p>\n

Instead, Australians love nothing more than to swim in seas not just teeming with lethal blue octopi, but churning with giant waves, ferocious currents and deadly riptides. Seas that are full of sharks.<\/p>\n

Next to the tide pool containing the blue-ringed octopus, the happily splashing kids and the unconcerned dad, I notice a white cylinder attached to a lamp post. It\u2019s a Shark Bite Kit.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Calm As Shark Bite First Aid Slam Pack. Picture: australiawidefirstaid.com.au\u00a0<\/p>\n

It contains a tourniquet, bandages, dressings, a thermal blanket, gloves, a whistle and step-by-step instructions on how to treat a shark bite. You have to admire their optimism.<\/p>\n

My daughter, who has lived here for two years, seems to have absorbed some of this native sang-froid. (Not that your sang would be froid after a shark attack; no, your sang would be all over the sand).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing is,\u201d she says earnestly, \u201cthey\u2019re not aggressive either. It\u2019s just that they use their mouths to investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which of course makes perfect sense. The poor things don\u2019t have hands \u2014 they can\u2019t reach out and touch a surfboard or a swimmer\u2019s leg with their shark fingers. Which is why they reach out and bite with their shark teeth instead.<\/p>\n

They mean no harm. They\u2019re just being curious. They\u2019re just having a nibble.<\/p>\n

I nod sagely at her explanation, which she finishes with Australia\u2019s favourite statistic: you\u2019re far more likely to die in a car crash. Which is true of course. You are.<\/p>\n

\n I decide to give the tide pool with the blue-ringed octopus a miss, and head between the lifeguards\u2019 flags on the beach, to the narrow stretch of water designated safe to swim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The waves are huge. As the surf crashes around my plump tasty meaty thighs, the air fills suddenly with a high-pitched siren like the sound of a cartoon police car, wailing across the vast expanse of beach.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shark alarm. I leapfrog over the waves back onto the beach, my heart banging. We are only a headland away from where a local surfer confounded car-crash statistics in September by being eaten by a huge shark, but when I look around, nobody seems that bothered.<\/p>\n

The shark alarm stops, and everyone carries on frolicking in the waves.<\/p>\n

I lie flat on the safe dry sand, wondering if I might be having a heart attack. My daughter hands me a tube of Factor 50 and gives me a lecture about the dangers of the Australian sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can kill you, Mum\u201d, she says sternly. \u201cYou need to take it seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The blue-ringed octopus is very pretty and only about the size of your hand, but carries enough venom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273],"tags":[18,19,17,133,461],"class_list":{"0":"post-257019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115805544963310739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}