This story interested all the swimmers in our class
Sharks, as the new movie "Open Water" shows, are the predators of the deep, lurking beneath the high seas. So it's a little strange to hear they could also be lurking a little closer to home.
Like in the Mississippi River. It's possible - although unlikely - that sharks could be swimming around in the Big Muddy. One species, called the bull shark, is capable of living in fresh water.
"It's very realistic. It's not something that probably happens with a lot of regularity," said Glenn Parsons, a shark expert and professor of biology at Ole Miss. "They probably move up into the Mississippi certainly with more regularity than we are aware of." In September 1937, two fishermen near Alton, Ill. - 1,400 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico - pulled a 5-foot-long, 84-pound bull shark from their nets. Bull sharks have been found hundreds of miles up the Amazon; in Lake Nicaragua, a freshwater lake in Central America; and 160 miles up the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana, among other spots, Parsons said. In 1916, in one of the country's most famous shark attacks, two boys were killed and another seriously injured while swimming in Matawan Creek, a small tributary - 40 feet wide at its biggest point - in New Jersey several miles from the sea. Although a great white has often been blamed in those attacks, it's considered likely that a bull shark killed the boys. Still, experts say you shouldn't get too worked up about the possibility of spotting a dorsal fin on the Mississippi. "If you think of the odds, you have a better chance of winning the lottery," said Jack Grubaugh, an associate professor of biology at the University of Memphis. "This is like the chimpanzee writing 'Hamlet.' "
- Jody Callahan: 529-6531
