Head to Head

‘That sharks have as much right to eat us as we have to eat them’

Peter Whitehead

More! Sharks have much more right to eat us than we do to chow down on yet another species we endanger. People pose the planet a plague-proportion peril. Sharks occasionally snap at the wrong food group.

The recent injuries to innocent Australians at their work or play have been horrific. Sympathy must go to these folk and their families. But accidents happen in the wild. These incidents are a reminder that the oceans and waterways – even our iconic ‘safe’ Harbour – are places where Nature, “red in tooth and claw,” holds sway.

The salty waters surrounding our island continent are a smorgasbord for sharks. Dressing like a seal and jumping in to this aquatic food hall has to be hazardous: An unpleasant reality that makes the after work dip off the pier at McKell Park merely a fond memory of a time when ignorance was bliss, and we were not unlucky enough to attract a hungry and confused predator. Far better now to swim at surf beaches like Bondi where wet-suited decoys bob on the breakers out the back, making like burley to ensure the safety of paddlers nearer the shore.

Besides, the sharks are not eating us. They may take a bite of the odd bod splashing about like a sea lion but they spit the rubbery confection out and move on to a morsel more digestible.

It’s not like sharks demand chips, potato cakes and a variety of sauces. As a species we have forgotten that we are, at best, humble stewards of Creation. We inanely assume the right to take what we can from the World without taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Thus we have threatened the ecological health of our planet. So we brought about the Global Financial Crisis.

Which is where the truly dangerous sharks have eaten more than their fill. Sydney’s corporate sharks have no right to eat lunch in this town ever again. But they will, without compunction, at the expense of the small-fry, until radical regulators dress them like seals and float them off-shore with their undisclosed assets.

Andrew Woodhouse

Members of the jury, my client is not guilty of over-eating and murder charges. If sharks can’t live happily and healthily in their chosen environment, where can they live? My client has a right to life and a right to eat. Like CBD workers, he enjoys lunch where it’s located.

His media reputation is far more fearsome than his bite, and his teeth are not prodigious pincers. They’re malleable and set into gums, not jawbones and come off easily, as icthaeologists prove. Sharks use thousands of such teeth in a lifetime, the double rows are merely ‘taste-testers’.

My client is NOT a serial killer. He often spits out surfers, swimming away in disgust after nibbling on an old rubber wetsuit. Wouldn’t you?

Claims he fled the scene of these crimes after hearing screams of ‘shark’ are unfounded. No evidence is tendered: the burden of such proof rests on the prosecution and we rely on Magna Carta 1297, clause 29,  which does ‘not deny anyone justice’.

We also rely on the defence of provocation. Massacring 50-100 million sharks annually for consumption, part of my client’s wider family, incites retaliation. And he’s been lured by those masquerading as tasty black seals. Black, one-piece, hooded, full body, skin-tight, wet suits worn by surfers is a form of subterfuge, especially at night in plankton-rich sewage outfalls at Bondi Beach where my client was arrested under cover of darkness. Surfers admit regularly using this risible ruse. This entrapment enjoins the legal doctrine of agent provocateur, a complete defence.

My client eats only 2% of his own bodyweight, far less than humans munch for lunch. He’s not a glutton. He does dinner on the run, part of a 400 million year-old cultural tradition. These are natural eating habits for ‘living fossils’ according to the prestigous scientific National Geographic journal. He could not have the legal intent to commit murder or over-eat. He’s not a trouble-maker.

No reasonable person, such as yourselves members of the jury, can convict my client unfairly or unjustifiably. Acquit I say. Let justice be done and seen to be done.