When I was 16, I swam out to a buoy and back in Lake Erie in mid April. As I recall it was to win a bet. The stakes were huge. I think a McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese was in play. The water was so cold I almost had a cardiac arrest when I first jumped in. By the time I reached the buoy, my muscles had stopped working normally and it felt like I was swimming with mannequin arms. I remember thinking “I’m going to be one of those assholes you hear about on the news”. Local boy dies in lake accident. Details at 11.
I made it. I was cold for literally three days afterwards. If I had a leathery old grandmother, she would have said “the cold got in his bones!” as she shook her fist. I should have spent the next two days with my feet in boiling water with a blanket over my head. Instead I ate that shitty hamburger and rode my bike back home. Ah, the Golden Years of Youth...
The only reason I mention this at all is I have discovered a small but dedicated group that swim in the San Francisco Bay. Why someone would willingly swim in the cold choppy waters for pleasure, I can’t be sure. I think that human beings can get used to almost anything. Pain, be it physical or mental, becomes normal. Maybe you jump in to win a hamburger as a boy, and the next thing you know, it’s “your thing”. There are people that swim every day amongst the seal lions and seals in the cove as part of their daily ritual.
An interesting twist is that this year something unusual has been going on with the sea lions. No one knows why, but they have been getting aggressive with swimmers. In the last year there have been ten recorded incidents of sea lions biting swimmers whereas in the last decade there was one. I would imagine that a sea lion goes from a fun little ocean dog to a big fast terrifying water bear when that beast chomps down on an arm. I was reading a story of a guy that swims daily that looked down and saw a sea lion staring at him with his arm in his mouth. He whacked him in the face and saw his bones and muscle tendrils flopping in the water. This would be categorized as “a disappointing swim”.
He made it back to shore on adrenaline, and went to the hospital to discover he was at risk for “seal finger”. Apparently old time sealers (and who knew that there was such a term as “sealer”) would get bacterial infections from handling seals that would result in insanely painful fingers. The cure at the time was amputation, which frankly sounds worse than the seal finger infection itself. I read this little passage that gave me a shudder. “It was not uncommon that a patient at sea on a fishing voyage would demand amputation of a finger to avoid losing valuable working time and wages”. Ye Gods.
At first the belief was that one sea lion had gone rogue. I like the idea of a rogue sea lion. Maybe he was the sea lion the other ones looked at and kept a safe distance from while sunning themselves on the dock. “Dude... something is just off with Charlie...”. One rogue sea lion could really turn their comfortable world upside down. One minute you’re eating fish the tourists toss you. The next you’re being harpooned as a menace. I would think the others would want to chill that rogue sea lion out.
The rogue sea lion theory went away after the attacks mounted. The new idea is that there has been a chemical change in the water that’s making the sea lions crazy. That seems like some armchair scientist tomfoolery to me. The most complicated explanation gives someone a chance to show their educational chops. It’s probably a much simpler explanation. I’m thinking the sea lion is swimming around in his world, sees a swimmer plodding along and thinks “what does that guy think he’s doing out here in the cold? You know what... fuck that guy. You don’t see me laying around his workplace barking. I’m going to teach him a little lesson.” Pow. It’s as reasonable a theory as any.
Swimming in cold water is a bad idea. Swimming in cold water and being bitten by a pissed off water bear is worse. Having to chop your finger off because you were voluntarily swimming in cold water with angry water bears is the worst yet. There’s no reason to be out there at all. Well, unless you can win a cheap hamburger off your buddies.
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