If you’ve seen the movie Jaws then you probably think that the shark, nicknamed Bruce, is the main villain, but you’d be horribly mistaken. Bruce is a victim, an animal just living his best life. Sure, he ate some people, but we all get cravings for a light snack every now and then. The real villain is Quint, the evil shark hunter who is hellbent on killing the creatures.
All jokes aside, sharks are not the enemy and humans are much more dangerous than they are. Movies like Jaws have perpetuated myths of shark attacks as being prevalent and deadly when in reality the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File only confirmed 57 unprovoked shark bites, of which only 10 were fatal. The International Shark Attack File defines an unprovoked shark attack as an incident “in which an attack on a live human occurs in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation of the shark.”
Sharks aren’t bad. They aren’t viscous man-eaters. Not even all sharks are predatory. Basking sharks and whale sharks are filter feeders. Not all sharks are the same. Not all sharks are Bruce. Humans have killed more sharks than sharks have killed humans. Even if a shark attacks a human, there is a good chance that the human will survive, but not the other way around.
