I’m pretty new to my neighborhood, and I’m happy to be getting to know my new neighbors, I just didn’t think I’d be known for shark penis. Or claspers, if you will. I now know way more about shark genitalia than I need to.

See, we all thought it was a baby ray. We are always finding interesting things at the beach and one night during our evening stroll I spotted what I thought was a dead stingray. So of course I handed my son a stick and told him he could poke at it. We flipped it over to check it out, flipped it back, took pictures of the whole thing and then posted it to Facebook. This is where the penis comes in.

A friend responds to my post, pointing out it is not a dead ray, but in fact, “shark genitalia.” I was like, whaaaaaaat?? And also wondering why he knew that. I immediately Googled for more info and he was correct. It was shark genitalia I had been taking pics of and the rest of the shark was nowhere to be found.

In all my years at the beach, I have never run across any part of a shark besides teeth. So I went and posted the photo in our neighborhood Facebook group and that’s when things really started to blow up.

Some people were outraged about an alleged shark castrator on the loose, and others complained about those people being too sensitive. There were Tons of comments. Some people found various parts of the shark at other nearby beach accesses. The head was found about a block away.

Apparently, the real story is there were some fishing boats off shore that weekend and sometimes they chop up the usable parts and then throw the rest back in. I don’t think they’re supposed to do that, and I’m not really sure what transpired here, but I’m sure it wasn’t some weird anti-shark antics. I’m happy to say I haven’t ever seen anything like this since then. But there was one guy in the comments who might not feel the same way-

His comment- “Do you still have it? I’m very interested.”

Um. NO. WTF? He actually thinks I took this home??

I have no idea what he wanted shark claspers for, but I don’t plan on asking! The only shark parts I’m taking home from the beach are teeth. Unfortunately I’m not so good at finding teeth. But apparently, stick a random shark penis on the beach and I’ll spot that thing no problem.