I grew up on the East Coast of the United States. MD and FL to be specific. Going to the beach was a regular thing in our household, whether it was the Chesapeake Bay or the Atlantic Ocean somewhere in West Palm Beach. My grandad has a house on the actual bay. Grew up spending every family gathering there. The adults would visit/catch up, and us kids would be in the water. I was NEVER scared of the water.

Then, as a young adult, Im sitting at an inprocessing for a base in Okinawa, Japan, and the briefer is going over local hazards in the region.

I had never heard of the Blue Ringed Octopus before.

And from that moment on, I became terrified of things in the ocean.

My husband always laughs about that story because its rare that they even make it into the waters around Oki, but that genuinely really was the moment that my brain was like "Omg, you have to worry about more than sharks in the ocean."