Rabid seals replace great white sharks as South Africa’s top wave terror

An Olympic-sized problem?

The surf apocalypse is well and truly in full swing With hordes of surfers crowding the queues, professional surfers forced to work under the yoke of OnlyFans and now rabid seals terrorizing South African surfers willy-nilly. Yes, the healthy and vigorous souls paddling this cold Atlantic have long had to deal with the terror of the great white shark, but the threat of seals is far more worrisome.

“I was surfing the other day when this seal appeared in the line (of surfers) to sunbathe,” Gregg Oelofse, coastal management manager for Cape Town City Council, told the Guardian“Normally, surfers would enjoy the interaction. But now, everyone was paddling as fast as they could to escape.”

Scientists aren’t sure exactly when or where seals first contracted the virus, but it’s sparking a lot of fear and damage. Last month, a seal bit several surfers in a matter of minutes, leaving one with “horrific facial injuries that could only have been inflicted by an extremely aggressive animal.”

An estimated two million Cape fur seals live in South Africa, and it is unclear how many of them are infected with foamy flu. “We really want to know the rate of transmission (of the disease),” Oelofse said, expressing concern that rabies could become endemic in the seal population or spread to other coastal mammals such as Cape clawed otters. “We are also very concerned about the impact on our seals,” Oelofse said. “And we really don’t want humans to get rabies.”

Clawless otters don’t seem too scary, to be honest, but neither does Covid, to be honest.

The real concern, I suppose, is the threat posed by professional surfers who have a history of contracting exotic diseases. Tyler Wright comes to mind first. with Brazilian Filipe Toledo. He will be heading to Teahupo’o in a few days after taking a year off to recover from his mental health issues. The world will of course be there for him. Here’s hoping the greatest sporting story of all time unfolds before our eyes.

I’m with them and if those damn rabid seals get in their way…

…uh.

I will of course be covering all the action from Paris and will be delighted to entertain all the rabid athletes here. Foie gras, I feel, is a kind of antidote to dark times.

Even more so as the story develops.