OK - now you've piqued my interest, as I've been on and in Blackwater more times than I can count and still head back every now and again. Never seen anything too alarming up that way save for the occasional "biggun" in a two-piece that might better have considered a one-piece.
Also done some canoeing a little further east near Florida Caverns State Park and saw countless gators, many of which seemed fairly interested in my canoe. Not a chance I'd enter the water out there, but Blackwater always seemed pretty safe.
That said, I believe I remember that a shark (small bull?) was caught in Blackwater a couple years back, believe it or not.
Back in the day, before the earth's crust had completely hardened, when I was in HS,(
) we canoed the Blackwater fairly often. Saw many a snake--and I'm a certified snake-o-phobe--but never really felt threatened. We were always w/ a group & were usually pretty loud & raucous; thus, the snakes we saw were in a hurry to de-snake the premises. I heartily concurred with their desire to leave.
Never saw any gators back then, though I 'spect they were there.
As to the Gulf, it's pretty simple: there are
always sharks not far from wherever you're swimming. Always have been. I grew up on the NW FL coast, & saw a bunch of them. It's amazing how fast a non-competitive swimmer can swim sometimes. :biggrin: We once flew along the coast in a small plane; it was a LONG time before I wanted to get back into the water, after seeing a number of sharks not far from oblivious groups of swimmers. Obviously, the vast majority of the time, the shark's not interested. Now if you're in the Gulf early in the morning & at dusk,...well, just consider this phrase: "feeding time."
Back to the original, that's an amazing picture! I knew there were such critters around up in the AL mountains of my family heritage, but have never seen photographic evidence of that. I
have seen photographic evidence of a rather large black bear down in SW AL (Washington County up north of Mobile).
Similar pic, taken from a motion-activiated deer cam (or whatever those are called.)
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