Kill Ontario’s sharks — before they kill us
The Discovery Channel stunt may have been a hoax. But it woke us up to a deadly aquatic menace
Ontarians were relieved this week to learn that a YouTube video purporting to show a bull shark in Lake Ontario was, in fact, a hoax perpetrated by the Discovery Channel to promote its “Shark Week” programming. Understandably, there had been terror on the beaches. Experts believe the bull shark is responsible for most of the 75 or so annual shark attacks on humans around the world — an unacceptable rate of roughly 10 per billion. Not only that, but bull sharks are notoriously amenable to fresh water. They have been sighted as far up the Mississippi River as St. Louis!
What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that’s all. And how do Ontario’s politicians react?
They downplay, they criticize, they pooh-pooh. The Mayor of Wolfe Island, near the purported sighting, called it a “dumb thing” and a “wild hoax.” Premier Kathleen Wynne questioned Discovery’s judgment. And even before the hoax was revealed, with swimmers for all we knew in mortal danger, Ms. Wynne’s Natural Resources Minister, Bill Mauro, made a crude joke of it: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water,” he said, quoting Steven Spielberg’s documentary Jaws, about the tragic 1916 bull shark attacks in New Jersey that took four lives. NDP leader Andrea Horwath, meanwhile, called the report “bullshark,” and suggested she would be happy to take a dip in Lake Ontario.
These responses range from appallingly blasé to dangerously irresponsible. Knowing what we now do about bull sharks’ alarming mobility and savage violence, swimmers may be in just as much danger today as they were last Friday, when the fake video was posted. Indeed, Discovery has done us a great service: This bull shark was a hoax, but it so easily could have been real.
As such, Ms. Wynne’s government must not be content to ignore this problem until it swims up and bites us on the ass. Recreational users of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River will not rest easy until these waters are certified 100% shark-free, and they deserve such an assurance.
Mr. Mauro should immediately implement a bull-shark bounty of $50,000 or more, to harness the energies of the province’s sport-fishing community. Rural militias with sufficiently large boats should be properly deputized, mobilized and equipped. Prime Minister Stephen Harper should order the St. Lawrence Seaway Corporation to study the feasibility of shark nets at strategic points along the waterway. And if experts deem it necessary, he should set aside his differences with Ms. Wynne and deploy military forces to aid in shark-detection — and, if necessary, eradication — efforts.
Until we have a handle on the situation, Ontario’s beaches must close, and guards must be posted to ensure reckless citizens — such as Ms. Horwath — don’t place themselves, and others through their example, in terrible danger. Though this will come at a significant cost in cancelled tourist visits, empty restaurants and unrented canoes, to put even a single life at risk would be unthinkable. The last thing Ontario needs is a panic on Simcoe Day.