Map Revealing Shark Army on the East Coast Inspires Overwhelmingly Pro-Shark Reactions

When I was a kid my friend was so afraid of sharks that she refused to take a bath. She was convinced that they could somehow infiltrate her pipes, shrink, and then emerge from the bathwater in explosive Jaws fashion. As a kid who spent summers in Cape Cod (a mecca for Great Whites, and possibly the inspiration for the aforementioned film), the fear seemed ridiculous. In my eyes, the ocean-dwelling, toothy predators were cool as hell.

Opinions on sharks seem to fall into one of those two categories. People are either fascinated by them enough to tune into Shark Week, or scared enough that they keep their swimming to chlorinated pools. Yesterday, Twitter user @punishedstu shared an image that would get a reaction from either camp: a map that shows an arguably impressive number of sharks clustered along the east coast of the United States.

sharks are amassing on the east coast pic.twitter.com/GDI250biUE
— stuart (@punishedstu) December 1, 2021

The map comes courtesy of Ocearch's shark tracking app, which also tracks sea turtles and, on the west coast, fur seals. While the app is beloved by marine biology enthusiasts, it's also serving up hard truths to galeophobes. Sharks are pretty much everywhere - and this here map proves it. While a couple people were probably like "hell no." the tweet mostly inspired some clever responses and celebratory sentiments. We can't blame them. Waiting for the asteroid to kill our pain is a lot less exciting than a real-life Sharknado.

Posted by Ada Elder