Seconds, Only Milliseconds

A few miles off a South African coast, which is heavily vacationed, is a phenomenon that takes place a few weeks out of the year.

An island that is home to thousands of seals become the site of a brutal exercise of nature's perfect killing machine...the great white shark.

Photo journalists, documentarians, and tourists flock to this area at this given time to witness the awesome power of predator/prey in the raw.

What makes the spectacle all the more astounding is the fashion in which the great whites rocket out of the water as if shot from a canon from the deep. This death plunge is the initial hit that typically stuns the seal. And rightly so. Seeing a 16 foot torpedo with razor sharp, serrated teeth flying through the air almost makes me piss myself.

The difficulty with filming the event is that the attacks last only seconds, and that's a long attack. Most will last milliseconds. So, a super slow speed camera is used. The super slow camera takes only one shot at a time and takes 15 minutes to download. So, if you blow the shot, you have 15 minutes to wait, and probably miss many other shots.

I heard on e cameraman say, "You know, it's seconds, really milliseconds that we have to catch this. And that's only if we are staring in the right direction."

My God! Is that not the most perfect explanation of life...ever!?

So much depends on those seconds, those milliseconds, and only if you're life is headed in the right direction.

Think about how many times you've nearly been involved in a fatal wreck, or ran into the love of your life, or maybe even just missed that movie at the store that someone snatched up right before you.

Yeah, it's tough looking at life in those terms, but I guess it's true. One could get hung up on that sort of thing if they had a tendency to obsess.

For now I'll just thank God that I am not a seal off the coast of South Africa, or any coast for that matter. And, I won't let time's precise manner bother me.