Ever since I was young, I always associated sharks with death. As a child watching Shark Tale and Finding Nemo, the stigma that sharks are a natural enemy was planted into my brain. This was further cemented by movies like the Jaws franchise and Open Water. Hollywood painted sharks as vicious bloodthirsty, flesh-eating monsters whose favorite dish is “human à la mode.” However, that is not the case. Sharks don’t swim the ocean on the hunt for human flesh.
If that were true, most sharks would be extinct by now. Not only that, out of the 480 shark species, only three of them cause the most damage. Those species are the great white, tiger and bull sharks. While there is an influx of shark attacks, it has more to do with the number of humans in the waters than anything else. The International Shark Attack File ,or ISAF, points out that as beach attendance rises, so does the number of shark attacks. Shark attacks are tragic, but they are also rare and fatalities are even more rare. While people have died from shark bites, the bite is more of a ‘dog bite’ so to speak.
According to an article written in July on an Australian news website news.com.au, expert shark keeper Aaron Hay even went so far to say that on average 24 people died a year from being hit in the head by a flying cork which is compared to the six or seven being killed by sharks around the world.
The truth is that humans are killing sharks more than sharks are killing humans. According to the article “Shark Attacks.” statistics show that humans are responsible for the deaths of 100 million sharks per year,
Hay continues to describe the first bite of the shark which was dubbed as the ‘test bite.’ To sharks, people look like these black blobs in the ocean and mistake us for an injured seal or turtle.
“That test bite can do some damage,” said Hay. “They don’t have hands like we do to feel first — all they’ve got is their sense of smell and a mouth and unfortunately that mouth has very sharp teeth.”
While it is unlucky, it is the unfortunate fact. Sharks don’t deliberately attack humans because they are blood thirsty. They actually find us bland and lacking the meat that they know and love from seals. Sharks are not murderers. They are an essential part of keeping ocean ecosystems balanced and healthy by maintaining the fish population.
