I have the greatest respect for the Rye lifeguard who had the courage to jump into action and take full responsibility for the jellyfish threat at Wallis Sands State Beach last Wednesday. He risked his own life to protect the people at the beach that day, and for that he has received nothing but media derision and contempt. Your above the fold article and lead headline of July 23, "Lifeguard error led to ... blah, blah, blah" blasts this individual's conscientious attempt to deal with a unique emergency.
It has become quite apparent from reading various accounts from the "experts" that there are numerous ideas about what the most appropriate solution should have been that day. All of these, suggested by people who were not there, who did not have to take on the responsibility of making a decision in the public interest, and who are bedecked with Ph.Ds in marine biology. I'm absolutely sure that none of their learned procedures for handling a huge jellyfish are contained in the "Lifeguard Training Manual," so why the ridicule?
The one thing that we can all be clear about is that the job of a lifeguard is a very complex and serious position. Those people who take on the weighty responsibility of this work allow the rest of us to enjoy our seashore, and they don't deserve the disrespect of being bludgeoned on the front page of their local paper. Perhaps the article would have been rendered more sensitively if the Portsmouth Herald had done its own research and had written its own story instead of lifting the article in total from The Union Leader.