You take the high shelf, and I'll take the low shelf...

Earlier in the week, I noticed that the alternative reality gamers I follow on Twitter, apart from getting over-excited about this weekend's ARGfest-o-con, were mentioning something called Frenzied Waters, a promotion for the upcoming Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. The Frenzied Waters website is slightly sinister and seems to be documenting a number of shark attacks, the first two of which (Asbury Park, 1916 and Coral Sea, 1942) have short, shark-lunch eye view videos. My favourite part of the site is the Facebook link up where you find your profile plundered for photos that drift into the depths along with your luckless corpse and newspaper articles asking for, in my case, new postdoctoral researchers at UCSF.

In addition, as a new shark attack video is released each week, so too are 11 sets of coordinates that correspond to 11 capsules around the US, in various cities for people to claim. The San Francisco coordinates for the second week (Coral Sea) lead here:


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826 Valencia is a pretty well known address locally as it is the site of the Pirate Shop, set up by Dave Eggers of McSweeney's fame, and the best place in San Francisco to buy eye-patches and Jolly Rogers. The perfect place for hiding shark memorabilia! I made an early attempt to find the capsule on Wednesday, but just sort of whiffled about, making no headway with the staff who denied all knowledge of sharks, hidden capsules and gave me the special blank looks usually reserved for those times when I try and order water to drink ('Can I have a water', 'What?', 'Waaaa-durrr?', 'What?!', 'Gin and tonic please').

By Friday, the SF capsule was the only one left to collect, determined that it would be mine I took back up: Yvonne for her wheels (and good eye it turns out) and Kei in case we needed biological weaponry (she's recovering from something she denies is swine flu). Yvonne spotted the capsule, an opaque glass jar, within moments of arriving, on a very high shelf (I was squatting in another corner looking in completely the wrong place) and I negotiated with the unceasingly playful, beardy-weirdy staff (different one today), for access to it.

Here's the triumphant (if diminutive) team with the capsule (and spiky plant from the shop next door, which also happens to sell fox penis bones. I kid you not):


Here's the aformentioned beardy-weirdy (this is an affectionate term from one poorly groomed individual to another, besides, he attacked me with mop heads using a nefarious contraption suspended from the ceiling):


And here's what it contained:

One seal on the lid.

One chunk of rubber life jacket.

One water (hopefully) stained hat.

One postcard from Sidney showing the Botanical Gardens and dated 20th April 1942.

One small, water-proof capsule containing waxed matches, and a photograph of a woman, with "With you wherever you are" written on the back.

One photo of a woman who is attempting to look saucy despite enormous floral (woollen?) bathing costume.

Finally, (and a personal favourite) one large shark's tooth attached to a copper tag and stamped with a not active (yet) url.


Can any marine biologists out there identify what type of shark that tooth is actually from? It's about 6 cm long by 4.5 wide. Looking forward to trying to find next week's capsule, and to what's at the end of that url! Follow @frenziedwaters on twitter or search twitter for #frenziedwaters to keep up to date.

[EDIT]

I'm pretty sure it's the tooth of an Oceanic Whitetip. They're the same genus as Great Whites and the teeth are supposed to look similar, but the serrations on a Great White's tooth are less even. Oceanic Whitetips don't flirt with the press as much as Great White's, but are responsible for more human fatalities than all other shark species combined.