According to BBC News, a captive hammerhead shark, below, gave birth to the long-awaited shark messiah, stunning scientists. The mother was born without sin in the Florida keys and had never known a male of her species.
The messiah delivered several sermons and performed at least one miracle before being impaled by a stingray at the age of 3 days.
“For my first miracle,” the precocious pup stated only 24 hours after his birth, “I shall turn my beloved handler, Dave [marine biology graduate student David Schumer] into chum.”
Word spread quickly, and attendance at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska, the shark’s home, skyrocketed.
“Blessed are the children,” the pup intoned during one of his sermons to the onlookers. “Especially the elementary school kids on field trips, the ones that knock on the glass even though there’s a sign that says, Do not knock on the glass? They shall be the first to know my righteousness.”
The appearance of the saw-toothed savior took many ich-theologists by surprise. “Frankly, the ancient scriptures and the spike in recent coastal attacks led us to expect the messiah to be born unto a family of great whites, or at least tiger sharks,” said Gunter Haas, a doctor of marine divinity at the University of Southern Florida. “I guess it’s like they say, the Shark God bites where you least expect it.”
The sudden death of the pup left many of his followers shocked and saddened. Some took solace in one of the messiah’s final sermons, in which he promised that after his death he would return to extend his watery kingdom over the face of the earth. “Yea, there shall be a reckoning, oh warm-blooded air-breathers, and the water shall churn with your frantic kicking. And on that day shall be a great frenzy.”
The stingray remains in custody.
Daryl Gregory 
Ah, what is it with these large sea creatures? Now we learn that they live a very long time indeed – that bowhead found with a harpoon head at least 130 years old is now the oldest mammal known (or would be, had it not been harpooned somewhat more efficiently this time. Ahab, your next batch of irony’s arrived). Given that the way they’re dated currently, by cutting up their eyeballs, it’s really not a good introduction to human science for the things…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=461703&in_page_id=1811 refers.
And that’s a cue for a good muse on the nature of consciousness. Mix that extreme longevity with the way pods of whales interact through long, morphing shared song, audible half way around the planet… what sort of racial memory must they have? And how has the last couple of hundred years seemed to them, compared to the endless stretches of time before? Suddenly, the chaos…
It may take them a couple decades, but I think eventually one of the whales is going to say, “Alrighty then. Time to take back some eyeballs.”
But you’re right, Rupert, there’s gotta be an SF story in there somewhere.
I thenkthat you are verysimmart
as a presbyterian (usa) I love the humor. It also means we were truely taken to church very often, weekly as a matter of fact.