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An Omen-ous New Year

I have a tradition (since 2000, I think) where, sometime in the first week of the new year, I drive to see the sunrise at Cocoa beach. I like to spend a few hours watching the beautiful scene, giving myself time and space to pray, meditate, wander around, and generally get centered for the upcoming year.

This year, T-Bone accompanied me to Cocoa, where we were greeted by an absolutely amazing sunrise, replete with a flock of gulls that would zoom and flutter about, putting on an amazing show:

But then, a few minutes later, we saw this:

Look at the middle-left of the image: that’s right! A shark was cruising through the water, not 30 feet off the beach (notice the pigeon for scale). Actually, there were two sharks, though I only got a shot of one. The fins were only above water as the waves would break over them, so it was hard to get a good view. Was this shark a sign of some kind? Was God warning us about something?

Later on, not realizing that if two sharks were a sign of anything, they would surely import “DON’T GO IN THE WATER!”, T-Bone and I took a swim in the ocean. What could be more relishing than being able to go in the water on January 2nd? It was a bit cold, but quite bearable and refreshing. And, as we have now proven, shark infested. Unless, of course, one of you is a marine biologist and believes the picture is actually of a dolphin.

By Jonathan Lipps

Jonathan worked as a programmer in tech startups for several decades, but is also passionate about all kinds of creative pursuits and academic discussion. Jonathan has master’s degrees in philosophy and linguistics, from Stanford and Oxford respectively, and is working on another in theology. An American-Canadian, he lives in Vancouver, BC and has way too many hobbies.

4 replies on “An Omen-ous New Year”

Typically with sharks you see the caudal or tail fin above water along with the dorsal fin. With dophins there is only a dorsal fin. In your photo, you only see a dorsal fin, leading me to believe that the photo could be of a dolphin. That doesn’t, however, rule out the possiblilty that they were sharks. The size of the dorsal fin in the photo is a bit disturbing. Whatever the case, you are both lucky to be alive.

Trent, it was a SHARK, dangit! Don’t rain on our parade! Besides, dolphins aren’t 22 feet long and don’t come flying out of the water with a bloody surfer between their jaws like this one did 30 seconds before Jonathan took this picture!

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