There are sharks in the ocean, it’s not some sort of freak occurrence. Here in NC it’s not at all unusual to see hammerheads and other, smaller sharks fifty yards away from surfers when looking down from a pier. The sharks are just beyond the breakers.
A strong suggestion would be to stay well away from fishing piers when swimming or surfing. Stay well away from people surf fishing, too, and not just because of the lines and the hooks. Ocean swimming in low light and at night is more dangerous as well.
When I lived in Subic Bay as a kid, we used to go down to the beach at night, and they had a water ski raft about 50 yards off the beach.
I remember the water it was anchored in being about 15-20 feet deep.
We used to swim out to that thing and swim all around it, horse playing, throwing each other off, racing to see who could swim to the bottom and back the fastest.
Never even gave a thought to sharks. Not once.
Before anyone misinterprets that...it wasn’t bravado or anything like that. We were just too stupid to even think of it, so caught up were we in the fun of it.
Me and a select few friends spent all of our time in the water. We would bring our snorkeling gear to school, and when done, bolt on the busses down to the beach. On weekends, our families often went, and when they didn’t, we did.
We spent so much time in the ocean that we felt completely comfortable in it.
I shouldn’t admit it, but it is true: when I saw “Jaws”, it changed a lot for me. I thought back to all those hours I spent at night with friends swimming in those tropical waters, and it made me shudder.
I didn’t shudder because of the danger, because I can’t really gauge just how dangerous that is or was, but...I shudder more at the mere obliviousness of my twelve year-old self in retrospect.