...Which evokes another sea-story. MCAS Kaneohe Bay is on the north shore of Oahu. The oceanside is part of the famous north shore, with the big waves (My civilian buddies came and visited once, I was christened with the moniker "Big-Wave Dave" for the subsequent few years I was there)
On the "bay-side", the water is calm. (This gets into the perverse sickness/humor of jarheads, reference Pack93z's humor as regards his toy leg) Think of a body of water about the size of Lake Mendota in Madison, except directly connected to the ocean.
The Special services has boats on the bayside you can rent for cheap, just like a typical ski boat you might find on any lake in Wisconsin, complete with water skis. Now, there are about 6000 Marines on this base, and as luck would have it, on my very first weekend there, NO ONE was using the ski boats when myself and several of my fellow FNG's went to investigate the base and it's amenities.
So the jarhead running the boat shack rents us a boat (probably around 5 bucks an hour or less, I forget) we go out and ski merrily away, fartin' around, having a grand old time...
Get back to the shack and either myself or one of my buddies inquires as to why no one else was renting the boats. He says, "Look over there" and points to the shoreline about 75-100 yards distant off to our right, where it "squared" into an "L" shape.. about a minute goes by, along comes a little mongoose to get a nice little crab or something, and ...KABLAM! Out of the water comes this huge friggin' hammer-head shark that snatched the poor little guy right from the shoreline. (It's deep, right to the edge, and the base is chock-full of mongoose, and this is the bored attendant's entertainment at this time of year).
So he says, "You see, Kaneohe Bay is world-famous for a very unique phenomonon...a large percentage of the world's hammer-head sharks come here annually to breed, right here in this little bay." "That's why nobody is renting the boats, they don't want to get ate." I said, "Well, you might have mentioned it before we went out water skiing." He said, "Well, every weekend some of you fu##king new guys go out, and nobody's got ate yet during breeding season, so I guess the Commanding General has decided to wait until somebody does before he closes us down, plus I can always hope, these friggin' mongoose getting ate gets kind of boring after awhile"... and then the bastard laughs his ass off...