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Swimming with snakes
Erik - 7/05/2008 8:01 AM
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Category: Educational
Comments: 1
Swimming with snakes
Perhaps there are certain things left unsaid. Really, whatever IT is, is not known to people, because no one says anything about it. For instance, a lot of the things that go on are selectively documented. Before coming to Grenada I was interested in what it had to offer. One of the most “comprehensive,” and available to everyone databases available is the CIA World Factbook. It gives all sorts of statistics, important facts and otherwise legit material. However, no matter where you look, you will find flaws with the data. The literacy rate in Grenada is supposed to be 96%, which can be easily debated by simple observation of the islanders. Either I keep meeting the 4% or that fact is a bit skewed.

These type of missing facts can be related to diving quite easily. I saw a poisonous sea snake the other day while snorkeling at one of Grenada’s beaches. It was only 3 feet underwater and I didn’t notice it at first. My ‘dive buddy’ pointed it out to me. What disturbs me is that I’ve been checking around and there are no accounts of people dying or even getting bit from sea snakes here on the island. Good news, right? Well, then I thought about how the World Factbook wasn’t quite accurate, and I applied that to the reported sea snake bites. See where I’m going? It occurred to me, what if there are no injuries due to sea snake bites because either the people who have the bites are dead and not able to tell why they died (and lazy autopsy finds the diver died of water in lungs) or that the people bit don’t know what bit them (maybe they think it’s a fish).

Comments

Rye - 7/06/2008 8:53 PM
i see ur point