Articles

The Hollywood image given to sharks doesn't accurately portray their natural behavior as predatory creatures of the sea. Humans aren't appetizing to them. Human blood doesn't excite them in the way that the blood of their normal prey does. When they attack people, it is normally just a single bite to get a taste.

Fish and seals and other various sea creatures make up that fearsome hunter's diet. And they've evolved wonderfully to suit their trade; strong, fast, nimble, and lots and lots of teeth, which is a big part of why we find them so scary.

It is often when people mimic prey animals' behavior, though, that they're in any danger from a shark. Swimming far out from shore, flailing about while riding a surf board trying to catch the next big wave, they've put themselves in position to be mistaken for an injured seal. The people may not know what they've done, but it's no different from the guy who jumped in for a swim just as the tide was going out and was dragged out to sea. They're just doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Despite this, on a very low number of people out of the millions who spend time at the beach each year get killed by sharks. Also, there are fewer shark attacks each year than you might expect and of the 90 or so that do occur, most only result in minor bumps and grazes. Whilst it is tragic that anyone should get killed by a shark, incidents involving sharks can be considered accidents rather than malicious attacks.

It is interesting that falling coconuts are more of a danger to people than sharks are. It is a rare event when even the aggressive sharks such as the great white shark or the tiger shark attack a human. Driving your car is vastly more dangerous as in the USA more than 40,000 people die from vehicle accidents each year.

When a person is bitten by a shark, of course the victim deserves sympathy. But so the hundreds of sharks that will be hunted and killed in revenge. The sharks have no idea what they have done or why we are trying to kill them; unlike humans, they can't be told why they are being subjected to a punishment. We have only two choices: to kill sharks, or to live with them peacefully. Killing them hasn't made us safer, so perhaps we should try the second option.