There is panic again on the beaches of Spain, tourists are escaping from the sea with cries of “shark!” – this time a scary swimmer appeared in the sea in La Antilla. However, the police joke with the frightened tourists that this time they will not see Steven Spielberg (the director of “Jaws”) on the beach and urge them to remain calm. But everything is not so simple.
Another video from frightened tourists was presented by the Spanish mass media. “Shark!” – shout tourists on the beach and call their children to get out of the water. It all takes place in La Antilla, Spain, while the others run up and down the beach, fearing that a shark is about to attack. At the same time, the ominous swimmer can be seen throughout the minute-long video “in dangerous proximity to swimmers and children in canoes,” some say.
“This is not a shark, and you won’t see Steven Spielberg with his camera on the shore,” the police joked with tourists in their appeal. The terrified public was assured that the creature was not even another marine predator, an orca, but Cuvier’s beaked whale, a “deep-sea diving record holder” who may have been “stunned by sonar” and “disoriented”. “The animal that paid us a visit is Cuvier’s beaked whale, which holds the record for deep-sea diving but is very sensitive to sonar. Maybe he is disoriented and about to get stuck,” the police added and urged tourists to “keep calm.”
However, it is not that simple, considering that sharks have already come to the coast of Spain and have been involved in several incidents, four of which are said to have ended in death. A blue shark was accused of attacking a holidaymaker in Elchi, near Alicante, in July 2016, and the victim had to be taken to hospital and required stitches for a “horrific wound” on his arm.
We will remind you that after the nightmarish NP, when a shark tore a Russian tourist right on the beach of Hurghada about a month ago, Egypt advocates full anti-shark protection, at least in official statements. In particular, Major General Amr Hanafi, governor of the Red Sea, proposed to install safety nets along the entire beach area as a precautionary measure. However, ecologists doubt the effectiveness of this measure, and, in parallel, a more expensive project of “chipping” all sharks and tracking their movements with sensors is being developed.