Maryland Governor Wes Moore recently signed a bill naming the megalodon the official state shark. While the new law was met with lighthearted delight by many, a considerable number of Maryland residents were angered by it, slamming lawmakers for passing what they saw as a useless measure.
According to Fox, Delegate Todd Morgan was one of the main figures behind the selection of the state shark. He celebrated the designation on his Facebook page, saying, “There are so many people, young and old, who have worked beside us to make this possible. (…) To the hundreds of kids, literally, who have written letters and drawn pictures, this has been one of the enjoyable bills that legislators actually had some fun with.”
As described in the bill, the selection of the prehistoric animal as the state’s shark stems from Maryland’s many fossils of the gigantic species, which continue to be “a source of popular and scientific fascination” because of their large, serrated fossilized teeth. The Maryland State Paleontology Collection and Research Center, for example, houses more than 1,700 fossilized megalodon teeth, as the creature commonly lived off the state’s coast before its extinction.
Maryland Residents Criticize Lawmakers’ Lack of Priorities
Reactions to the bill were highly polarized, as seen on Reddit’s r/Maryland, where one user was celebrating the megalodon’s selection as the state shark. One popular comment read, “I guess this is fun, but it seems like such a waste of legislative time.” Others had even harsher words for lawmakers, saying that bills like this “distract from their inability to pass meaningful legislation.”
One person complained, “We have a state shark, and we still have a mind-boggling district court commissioner system that is completely out of control. They had plenty of time for the shark vote, but ran out of time for the bill to improve the commissioner debacle,” likely alluding to the recently failed effort to reform a system that allows anyone to file criminal charges without input from police or prosecutors in Maryland.
Some seemingly angry Maryland residents responded to the new law with sarcasm, saying, “I guess they can cite sharks for taking bigger bites of our money in taxes and fees?” Others complained, “I’m sure our taxes will pay for a huge replica at the aquarium.”
While laws like this can easily be controversial, at least some people were excited about the idea of having an official state shark. One of them asked, “How quickly can this be on a license plate?”
