THE Surf Report- Early Edition

I'm pretty sure the Easter Bunny is around here somewhere.

SURF:

Seems like spring has arrived early. Big NW swells are gone, small SW swells are starting to arrive, and we've got the return of low clouds and mild temps. 

Not much surf this past week expect for small SW swell and nice conditions. 

Tonight a new small NW swell is filling in along with the leftover SW for chest high surf Friday and shoulder high sets in SD. Those swells back off Saturday morning and as it does, showers will fill in too for bumpy small conditions. As the weak front clears out by Sunday, we'll have breezy conditions from the NW as well as W windswell/groundswell for shoulder high sets. In summary: some fun clean surf tomorrow and bigger bumpier surf on Sunday.

Tides this weekend are:

• 4' at sunrise
• -0.3' at lunch
• 3.5' at sunset

And daylight hours are:

• 6:15 AM sunrise
• 5:45 PM sunset

Water temps are high 50's and if you haven't heard already, Daylight Saving Time is next Sunday! So the sun will be coming up around 7 AM and the sunset will be around 7 PM. Can't wait to surf after work again. 

 

FORECAST:

Have some fun surf lined up for the next 2 weeks (but maybe windy/wet weather along with it). For Monday, the windswell from the weekend backs off and we'll have chest high surf from the W. 

Tuesday look small then we get a unique WSW swell from a storm taking shape early next week off our coast. That should give us head high swell late Wednesday into Thursday. 

Behind that is a fun chest high+ SW swell around the 10th and more shoulder high WNW swell around the 11th/12th. 

And behind those swells, models show a storm forming off Antarctica that may give us a chest high SW again mid-month. Nothing big in the near future but waaaaay funner than what we had this past week.  Make sure to keep track of the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.  

WEATHER:

As advertised above, we have a weak cold front coming through late Friday into Sunday morning. Basically a weak 1/2" on Saturday. That blows through on Sunday and we'll have nice conditions for the first half of the week. Models show another weak storm mid-week and we could get another 1/2" late Wednesday into Thursday. Behind that, more small cold fronts may move through towards next weekend. Very spring-like the next 10 days. 

BEST BET:

Tomorrow with fun NW and clean conditions. Or Monday with leftover NW and clean conditions. Or better WNW the 2nd half of next week but showers? And the same for next weekend? Time your sessions accordingly. 

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

A couple times I've reported on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (here & here) and the harm it is to our oceans and environment. Basically there is TONS of trash/plastic in our oceans and it pollutes our waters and our friends of the sea. The Atlantic reported recently that all that trash in our oceans just doesn't sit at the top layer of our oceans- it goes to the bottom too. Like the deepest darkest parts of our oceans. And that's not good for the ecosystem. I'll let The Atlantic explain:

Alan Jamieson remembers seeing it for the first time: a small, black fiber floating in a tube of liquid. It resembled a hair, but when Jamieson examined it under a microscope, he realized that the fiber was clearly synthetic—a piece of plastic. And worryingly, his student Lauren Brooks had pulled it from the gut of a small crustacean living in one of the deepest parts of the ocean.

For the past decade, Jamieson, a marine biologist at Newcastle University, has been sending vehicles to the bottom of marine trenches, which can be as deep as the Himalayas are tall. Once there, these landers have collected amphipods—scavenger relatives of crabs and shrimp that thrive in the abyss. Jamieson originally wanted to know how these animals differ from one distant trench to another. But a few years ago, almost on a whim, he decided to analyze their body for toxic, human-made pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which have been banned for decades but which persist in nature for much longer.

The team found PCBs galore. Some amphipods were carrying levels 50 times higher than those seen in crabs from one of China’s most polluted rivers. When the news broke, Jamieson was inundated with calls from journalists and concerned citizens. And in every discussion, one question kept coming up: What about plastics?

The world produces an estimated 10 tons of plastic a second, and between 5 million and 14 million tons sweep into the oceans every year. Some of that debris washes up on beaches, even on the world’s most isolated islands. About 5 trillion pieces currently float in surface waters, mostly in the form of tiny, easy-to-swallow fragments that have ended up in the gut of albatrosses, sea turtles, plankton, fish, and whales. But those pieces also sink, snowing into the deep sea and upon the amphipods that live there.

Brooks eventually found plastic fibers and fragments in 72 percent of the amphipods that the team collected, from all six trenches that they had surveyed. In the least polluted of these sites, half of the amphipods had swallowed at least one piece of plastic. In the 6.8-mile-deep Mariana Trench, the lowest point in any ocean, all of the specimens had plastic in their gut.

Does a single fiber really matter amid all the sediment and detritus that amphipods regularly swallow? Jamieson thinks so. For a start, PCBs and other toxins can stick to plastic, turning fibers into sinks for other contaminants. Also, many of the pieces that his team found were relatively huge. “The worst example I saw was a purple fiber, a few millimeters long, tied in a figure-of-eight in an animal no longer than a centimeter,” Jamieson says. “Imagine if you swallowed a meter of polypropylene rope.”

If trenches from places as distant as Japan, Peru, and New Zealand can be contaminated, it’s likely that humanity’s plastic fingers have stretched into every part of the ocean, including habitats we have barely begun to understand. No marine ecosystem is untouched. “It builds upon a growing body of evidence suggesting that the deep sea, by far the largest habitat on the planet, may very well be the largest reservoir of plastic waste on the planet,” says Anela Choy from the University of California at San Diego.

“It’s not a good result,” Jamieson adds. “I don’t like doing this type of work.”

When he submitted his findings to a scientific journal, the researchers who reviewed the paper reasonably asked how he could tell that the fibers were actually plastic. “Our response was, ‘Some of it’s purple!’ ” Jamieson says. “There’s bits of pink in there. This doesn’t come from animals.” To satisfy the critics, his team chemically analyzed a subset of the fibers and found that all of it was synthetic.

They also took steps to ensure that they hadn’t inadvertently introduced plastic into the trenches. The landers that they used to collect the amphipods have some plastic parts, but they are all bright green and yellow, and no such colors were found in the specimens. Even if the amphipods had eaten plastic from the landers (or from the bait used to attract them), the team only dissected the last of the creatures’ several stomachs to avoid sampling their most recent meals. And they performed those dissections within a special chamber, where continuously rising air stops fibers from their equipment or clothes from settling in the samples. Given these precautions, Jamieson is confident that the fibers he found had sunk into the abyss on their own.

Other scientists have also found plastic litter in the deep; just last year, one team documented a plastic bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Until now, no one had shown that abyssal animals were actually eating those fragments, but in retrospect, it seems obvious that amphipods would. They are exceptional scavengers that excel at finding food. By deliberately pumping water over their body, they can detect the faintest plumes of odor, and with taste buds on their legs, they can forage with every footstep. When a morsel hits the ocean floor, amphipods turn up in droves. “We can catch 10,000 in one day with just a pipe, some bait, and a funnel,” Jamieson says.

Food is scarce in the deep, so amphipods can’t afford to be fussy. They’ll eat pretty much anything, which makes them particularly vulnerable to plastics. And since they sit at the bottom of the trench food webs, their catholic appetite can doom entire ecosystems. “They’re like bags of peanuts,” Jamieson says. “Everything else eats amphipods—shrimp, fish—and they’ll end up consuming plastics, too. And when the fish die, they get consumed by amphipods, and it goes round and round in circles.”

“What you put in the trench stays in the trench,” he adds. Which means that the plastic problem “is only going to get worse. Anything going in there isn’t coming back.”

That’s a hypothesis the team can test in later studies. If Jamieson is right, then amphipods from deeper parts of the same trench should have higher levels of plastics than those from higher up. But Choy says, “We certainly don’t need decades of further scientific study to necessitate more responsible behavior and policies now.”

 

PIC OF THE WEEK:

• Age of the oceans: 3.8 billion years old. 
• Age of this town: 3000 years old.
• Surfers in the line up: 0 (better than the other two numbers above I guess)

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

Enjoy the Finer Things In Life

Start My Residency At The MGM Grand Las Vegas Next Month!

Watched Rory 'The Dog' Russell Chase Miki 'Da Cat' Dora Up A Tree Once

THE Surf Report

Sunshine, on my shoulders, makes me happy. 

SURF:

Pretty sure I can see the sun again. But it may be frozen. Regardless, sun's out, water is somewhat clean again, and the surf is cleaning up. 

Today we had leftover NW windswell and a new small SW for chest high surf. This weekend is looking small and clean as both swells back off and we're left with waist high+ combo swell. At least the skies and water will be clear. 

Water temps are a chilly 58 degrees and the tides this weekend are 0.5' at sunrise, up to 4.5' at lunch, and down again to 0.5' at sunset. 

FORECAST:

Not much surf for the work week but models show some storms the next few days that will send surf towards the weekend. 

First up is small storm that will send us waist high+ NW swell late Wednesday the 26th. That will fill in more for chest high sets on Thursday along with small waist high SW. The NW will last into Friday. 

We have a larger storm on the charts that may give us head high+ WNW surf around Sunday the 2nd- along with rain unfortunately. I'm pretty sure one of these days we'll get big clean surf again. Just not sure when. Make sure to keep track of the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.  

WEATHER:

Heaps of snow in our local mountains yesterday and lots of cold temperatures at the coast. Feels like Wisconsin around here. No, seriously. The sun is here to stay for a few days fortunately but we won't get over 60 degrees for a majority of the week. The warmth finally kicks in towards Thursday with temps near 65 but models show another storm approaching for the weekend. Get outside while you can! And for those of you playing along at home, here's where we are for rainfall this season:

• Newport Beach: 16.05" so far. Seasonal average is just 13.6"!
• Oceanside: 12.4". Seasonal average is 13.3"
• San Diego: 10.5". Seasonal average is 10.3"

Basically anything new from this point on will definitely help with our wildfire season this summer and fall. 

BEST BET:

Next Thursday with new NW and clean conditions. Bigger next weekend but it may be stormy...

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

According to the Washington Post last week, the jet stream that brought us beneficial rains last week also brought unexpected air travelers a boost. The jet stream, the high-altitude air current along which storms travel, is furious. The river of air was clocked at more than 230 mph over Long Island on Monday. That measure comes from the 250 millibar pressure level, meaning it was at a height above 75 percent of the atmosphere’s mass. It sets the record for the fastest 250 millibar wind speed ever recorded over New York and, probably, the country.

The 250 millibar level generally tends toward 30,000 feet to 35,000 feet. That’s about the same height at which commercial planes fly. Unsurprisingly, the jet stream can have big implications on how quickly aircraft reach their destination. With a speed max currently over central Pennsylvania, airplanes flying through the jet will either be sped up or slowed down big time, depending on their direction of travel. It’s like the moving walkway at the airport. You have your own forward speed, but if you continue this velocity in an environment that is itself moving, it can propel you at an impressive rate.

A Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles to London peaked at a whopping 801 mph last Monday evening 35,000 feet over Pennsylvania. “Never ever seen this kind of tailwind in my life as a commercial pilot,” tweeted Peter James, a jet captain. It appears that’s a record for the Boeing 787-9 twin jet, which in the past has flown at speeds up to 776 mph. The ordinary cruising speed of a Dreamliner is 561 mph, with a maximum propulsion of 587 mph. Any speed gained on top of that is thanks to Mother Nature’s helpful boost. Although the plane didn’t remain in the “jet streak” — the zone of maximum wind embedded within the jet stream — for long, it still arrived 48 minutes early. And you might notice something suspect about the 801 mph reading — it’s above the speed of sound (767 mph). However, whether air travel breaks the sound barrier is dependent on its airspeed — not its ground speed.

Ground speed is the speed an airplane has relative to a point on the ground. It can be visualized as how quickly the plane’s shadow would move across the surface. Airspeed, on the other hand is the difference between ground speed and the wind speed. “On a perfectly still day, the airspeed is equal to the ground speed,” NASA explains. “But if the wind is blowing in the same direction that the aircraft is moving, the airspeed will be less than the ground speed.” In other words, an airspeed exceeding the speed of sound was not attained. Commercial aircraft are generally not designed to fly at supersonic speeds.

In addition to the 801 mph ground speed clocked Monday, several other notably high speeds were recorded. An LAX-JFK Delta flight Monday night hit a ground speed of 678 mph at 39,000 feet over the Ohio Valley, while a 737 from Chicago to New York passed 700 mph at 8:43 Eastern Tuesday morning. Likewise, flight times from Dallas to Boston dipped below three hours Tuesday, with an Embraer ERJ-190 twin jet achieving 739 mph in the jet streak. Looking ahead, Chicago to New York/Boston routes will be shortened to 1 hour, 24 minutes Wednesday instead of the usual nearly two-hour flight time. But odds are that if you’re flying west, you won’t find the jet stream helpful. Departing flights out of New England and the New York area will probably incur 20 or 30 extra minutes of travel time, either slowed by the jet streak or forced to divert around it.

For the jet stream to get cranking this much, there must be a big storm brewing somewhere, right? Surprisingly, it’s the opposite (the closest developing storminess is in the western Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday). Storms cause the jet stream to bend, cresting and dipping into waves that ride across the Lower 48. Just like kinking a garden hose, it causes the flow speed to decline. In the absence of large-scale weather systems, a zonal west-to-east jet is free to gather considerable speed, much like how we reach our fastest highway speeds on straightaways. The jet stream can usually get to speeds this high only in the winter because temperature differences between the north and south are maximized. Temperatures on Tuesday hovered around minus-10 to minus-20 in eastern Canada while soaring well into the 80s over Florida. Such large differences in temperature (and pressure) power the wind.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

This is what you get one you cross surfing with snowboarding. I call it 'snowsurfboarding' or something like that. 

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

The Bomb

Jumped On the Padres Bandwagon. Again. 

Going Snowboarding Until The Surf Gets It's Act Together

THE Surf Report- Early Early Edition

Hope you own a big umbrella.

SURF:

Wanted to get ahead of myself with the storm that's coming tonight, so here's an early early edition of THE Surf Report. 

Let's start with the surf though. Had some NW early in the week that was replaced with small and clean early season SW yesterday. Today we had leftover waist high SW (better in the OC) and increasing S winds from the impending storm headed our way. 

For tomorrow through Friday, look for stormy conditions: strong SW winds, heaps of rain, and overhead bumpy NW surf. Saturday cleans up in the skies above but the water will be DIRTY from the strong storm. 

Models show another couple weak fronts coming through on Saturday/Sunday which will increase our surf from the NW for overhead surf- along with our winds and showers. Long story short- a jumbled weekend. Water temps are still a chilly 58 degrees and tides this weekend are 6' at sunrise, down to -1.2' at lunch, and back up to 3' at sunset.  

FORECAST:

After a mess of a weekend, the surf backs off fairly quickly. Monday should be clean with chest to shoulder high sets in the AM, and by Tuesday it's pretty small. 

Charts show a storm coming off Japan today that may give us a long period inconsistent chest high+ WNW late next week. 

Charts also show a small disturbance off Antarctica/Chile that could give us waist high SW around the same time too. Long story short- small early next week and not much better by next weekend. Make sure to keep track of the waves and weather Twitter/North County Surf. 

WEATHER:

Call you what you want- atmospheric river, pineapple express, El Nino fueled storm, whatever- we're going to get a TON of rain tomorrow. My usual rating systems for rain is as follows:

·         1/4" or less is nothing to get excited about and the ground absorbs most of it

·         1/2" is a good round of showers and makes a dent in our drought

·         1" is a solid storm that I look forward to each winter

·         2" happens every few years and makes a minor mess of things

·         3" is a solid El Nino type storm and makes a mess of everything. Guess what we may get tomorrow…

Forecast models show a plume of warm moist air/clouds stretching from Hawaii to California and it's getting drawn into a large low pressure system off the Pacific NW today. As the two weather features combine, they'll 2-3" of rain at the coast, up to 4" inland, and maybe 10" in the mountains. Unfortunately, since the plume is tropical in nature, the storm will be warm with snow levels starting above 8000'. That means a lot of the snow we received locally at our lower levels will melt quickly and increase the chance of flooding in the foothills. And for you Mammoth/Tahoe people out there, yes, they're getting 4-6' of snow today at most resorts and strong hurricane force winds. After the rain moves through the next few days, we should have clear cool skies to start the work week and maybe some more weak showers the 2nd half of next week. Man has it been a busy winter.

BEST BET:

Do you like big and lumpy or smaller and smoother? If big and lumpy- Sunday. If smaller and smoother- next Thursday.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

Pop quiz! Tell me the 5 hottest years on record for the planet Earth. If you said 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, you win! (Not sure what you’ve won, but I’ll dig something up). Our friends at National Geographic reported this week that the last five years were the hottest ever recorded. The planet is warming up, and there’s no sign of stopping. All aboard the heat train!

According to new reports published Wednesday, the last five years—from 2014 to 2018—are the warmest years ever recorded in the 139 years that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has tracked global heat. And 2018 was the fourth hottest year ever recorded.

Global air temperatures have warmed steadily over past decades, shifting up and down slightly from year to year depending on natural climate oscillations like El Niño, but following a consistent upward path. Land temperatures, they said, were more than two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average. “It’s a long-term trip up the elevator of warming,” says Deke Arndt, the chief of the global monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in North Carolina.

A warming climate doesn’t simply heat up summers and keep winters from getting as cold as they used to: It can also disrupt weather patterns, making storms stronger and rain events more intense. It can change when and where snow falls or lakes freeze. And it may reprogram the very ways that oceans circulate. "2018 was an exclamation point on a trend toward more big rain," says Arndt.

But the ever-increasing heat is also a challenge for humans and living creatures around the world. Heat waves from Europe to Australia roiled the planet this past year, breaking temperature records and fueling devastating wildfires. The European heat waves, scientists discovered, were about five times more likely because of human-induced climate change. The wildfires that wracked the western U.S. were also intensified by climate change, scientists have determined, as heat and drought sucked water out of vegetation, leaving it dry and flammable as kindling.

Rising temperatures also contributed to a growing inventory of weather-related disasters. In 2018, NOAA says, there were 14 weather and climate events that cost the country hundreds of lives and $1 billion dollars or more, for a total of at least 247 deaths and $91 billion in damages. Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which devastated the communities through which they ripped, were the most destructive, with western wildfires following closely behind.

The forecast for coming years points to more of the same. The U.K.’s Met Office predicts that 2019 will likely be even warmer than 2018, at least in part driven by a developing El Niño event, which nearly always bump global temperatures up. But scientists stress that greenhouse gas emissions are the primary factor pushing temperatures higher both in past decades and into the future.

So there you have it. No matter what side of the political fence you’re on, you have to agree, it’s time to upgrade that air conditioner.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

Long wave with a long walk across the reef. Worth every nick, cut, and scrape I'd say.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

Soothing

Every Day Should Be Valentine's Day (So Says My Wife)

Going Green By Making Surfboard Wax from Earwax

THE Surf Report- Early Edition

Rain, rain, go away...

SURF:

Are we having fun yet? Lots of rain this past week (and I mean lots of rain) has unfortunately washed a lot of junk (and I mean a lot of junk) into our surf this past week and unless you have a hazmat suit, it's been best to stay out of the water. 

Surf hasn't been that good either with lots of wind messing up any chance for a fun session. Today things cleaned up fortunately, but since we're in the middle of an El Nino winter, that will change in the near future. Look for waist high surf on Friday and clean conditions. Then a weak cold front comes through late Friday/early Saturday for light showers and junky conditions again. 

Surf will pick up to the chest high range for late Saturday into Sunday then another weak cold front comes through Sunday night. In summary, a couple weak cold fronts this weekend and smallish surf. 

Water temps are a chilly 58 degrees and tides are 3' at sunrise, up to 5' mid-morning, and down to 0' at sunset.  

FORECAST:

The above mentioned cold front on Sunday night will bring shoulder high NW wind slop for Monday. That will drop quickly on Tuesday for chest high+ surf and cleaner conditions. 

Wednesday morning looks small and clean then models hint at another bigger storm hitting the region towards Thursday. If that's the case, look for messy big surf again and more dirty water late Wednesday into Thursday. Where's all that big offshore sunny surf we had back in December?! 

And if you trust the models 7-10 days out, we have have another big/messy storm next weekend. Make sure to keep track of the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.  

WEATHER:

I'm going to make a wild prediction here and say that it won't stop raining until the end of February- 2021 that is.  So just how wet was that last week? Here's some numbers to chew on (or drink I guess):

• Lytle Creek (in the San Bernardino mountains): Almost 12" of RAIN
• Big Bear (and nearby ski resorts): 24"-36" of SNOW
• Most coastal locations between 2.5"-3.5" of rain
• Some inland locations: 4"+ of rain
• Deserts: roughtly 1/2" of rain
• And for our friends in the Great White North (i.e. Tahoe and Mammoth): A whopping 72"-132" of snow respectively

As I mentioned in the surf forecast, we've got nice conditions today (but cold) and then a couple of weak cold fronts for Friday night and Sunday night. We get a break in the action for Tuesday/Wednesday then another El Nino fueled storm may arrive the 2nd half of next week. AND... maybe another big one next weekend (if you trust the models that far out). At this point in time, we're almost at our seasonal rainfall totals- so any additional rain this season is just icing on the cake. Here's where we stand so far:

• Newport Beach = 13" so far. Seasonal average is 13.3"
• Oceanside = 9.2" so far. Seasonal average is 13.6"
• San Diego = 9" so far. Seasonal average is 10.3"

Can't wait to wash down my driveway this summer- or let my sprinklers run all day! 

BEST BET:

Sunday morning with small clean surf or Tuesday with leftover swell from Monday's mess. 

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

Sure has been sharky the past few years. Seems like some video is surfacing daily of sharks off San Clemente, the North Shore of Oahu, Australia, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to see footage from Lake Tahoe. But is social media over-hyping the situation? The results of the Yearly Worldwide Shark Attack Summary came in for 2018 and according to the study from the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, the frequency of shark attacks had a sharp and sudden decrease this past year.

In 2018, according to the survey, there were only 66 unprovoked shark attacks around the world. For the last five years, the average has been 84 attacks. However, the organization is quick to note that this significant downturn does not necessarily mean humanity’s relationship with sharks is becoming stronger. “Annual fluctuations in shark-human interactions are to be expected,” the survey said. “Year-to-year variability in oceanographic, socio-economic and meteorological conditions significantly influences the local abundance of sharks and humans in the water and, therefore, the odds of encountering one another.” 

But of the entire world, the United States (unfortunately) ranked highest for the most shark attacks last year. Of the 66 unprovoked attacks almost half recorded last year happened in the U.S. (a total of 32), although only one resulted in a fatality. In 2017, the U.S. accounted for 60 percent of all unprovoked attacks in the world, with a total of 53 incidents. For 2018, attacks in the U.S. made up 48 percent of the world total. Much of that decrease came from Florida, where unprovoked shark attacks decreased from 31 attacks in 2017 to 16 last year, according to the report.

The country with the next highest number of attacks was Australia with 20, one of which was fatal. Every other country on the list, including Brazil, Egypt, and Thailand, had three or fewer shark attacks last year (Egypt- really?!)

“Statistically, this is an anomaly. It begs the question of whether we’re seeing fewer bites because there are fewer sharks—that would be the ‘glass-half-empty’ interpretation,” Gavin Naylor, director of the museum’s shark research program, said in a statement. “Or it could be that the general public is heeding the advice of beach safety officials. My hope is that the lower numbers are a consequence of people becoming more aware and accepting of the fact that they’re sharing the ocean with these animals.”

In addition to the 66 unprovoked attacks around the world, there were 34 times when the attacks were provoked. According to the report, provoked attacks “occur when a human initiates interaction with a shark in some way.” Five people died from shark attacks, one of which was provoked, in the past year, which fits the global average of about six fatalities per year. (Seriously- who the heck provokes a shark?!)

If you ever find yourself in a shark attack — which is a one in 11.5 million chance, according to data from the International Shark Attack File — just remember to use this simple self defense move to help make your escape: When on the road, things can — and will — go wrong. The best defense is preparation, even for worst case scenarios.

Say, for example, you’re surfing and then out of nowhere a shark appears and starts heading straight for you. It turns out, there is some truth in the old adage about punching a shark in the nose. Like with any opponent, you should aim for their weak spots. A hard, sharp bop on the nose will likely cause the shark to veer away, giving you time to get out of the water.

George Burgess, the director for the Florida Program for Shark Research, told Business Insider that the eyes and gill slits are among a shark’s most sensitive parts. If, in the event a shark takes you in its jaws, you could still manage to escape by clawing and poking the eyes and the five gill slits, located directly behind the eyes.

Bear in mind, however, that the chances of being bitten by a shark are incredibly rare. Data from the International Shark Attack File puts your chances of being attacked by a shark at one in 11.5 million. There’s only a one in 264.1 million chance that you'll die from a shark attack.

But as every worst case scenario-thinker knows, dangerous encounters with animals can happen on land, too — and this defense strategy doesn’t work for every animal. If, like two California hikers earlier this month, you come face to face with a mountain lion, you probably don’t want to try sticking your fingers in its eyes. Instead, try to remain as calm as possible and avoid acting “like prey.”

PIC OF THE WEEK:

The truth is out there. 

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

Cool As A Cucumber

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