Harold Holt

[Garfield Heathcliff]

Harold Edward Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, went swimming in the ocean south of Melbourne on December 17, 1967. Disappeared from the face of the earth. Body never recovered.

Garfield Heathcliff

[Cerulean]

That's a happy thought, Garfield.  Australia is notorious for sharks. Where I live the body of a guy who drowned himself was just recovered from the ocean.  There are some sharks in the general area.  When bodies are lost at sea, they turn up more often than you would think.  I don't have statistics but it is probably 20% or more, even 40% of the time.  I hate to say this, but they even find body parts or clothing in the bellies of sharks too.  What a body will do at sea is far from predetermined.

[Garfield Heathcliff]

Yes, and the point is that Holt was no ordinary Australian. He was the Prime Minister and nothing ever turned up. One wacko conspiracy theory is that he was a Chinese agent and rendesvoused with a submarine. Sharks or rip currents seem far more likely.

Does anyone know whether they have sharks off Aruba? There was a shark attack in Northern Florida either today or yesterday.

[diverpam]

I've been diving in Aruba several times... never saw or heard about sharks.

[Cerulean]

Sharks are omnipresent in the ocean.  The predominant types of sharks, and the number of sharks, varies from place to place.  Their viciousness varies from place to place, for instance Florida has far more shark attacks than Hawaii.  Generally the type of sharks that would eat a person stay outside of reefs.  Statisically, the likelyhood of a shark harming a living person is very low.  When they do it is often because they mistook the person for a seal or turtle.  

I don't know if it's true but I read that in Aruba they feed dead animals to sharks on the rough side of the island, possibly to steer them away from the tourist side.  It's likely that the custom started just to dispose of dead animals when there were more animals on the island.   Something like that was done where I live in the past.

Rip currents can drown someone but they can't dissapear the body.  Given the visciousness of the sharks in Australia, that is a likely answer.  How awful.  I'm sorry for that guy.