My interest in sharks was
like everyone’s – morbid. A shark attack with photos was front page news and
each sparked debate in the dive clubs over the best way to avoid becoming the
next victim. I sometimes carried a ‘bang stick’ so I could fight these villains
if it came to the worst.
When I started work on the
Great Barrier Reef , I got a surprise. The sharks seemed bigger, more numerous,
and very brave compared to their Caribbean brothers. Australian shark attacks
were front page stories and dominated the news for days.
And yet there I was working
for hours every day, year after year within metres of these predators and all I
had to do to avoid trouble with the tropical species was respect their
territories and not swim around with speared fish on my belt.
So how real is the case against sharks?
Every year about 100
shark attacks are reported worldwide. In 2011,
just 17 fatalities were recorded as having being caused by sharks, out
of 118 attacks. Although shark attacks
are infrequent, there is a heightened awareness due to occasional serial
attacks; “it’s out there and it’s after me”. Horror fiction like Jaws appears on TV just often enough to
keep this fear alive and even “nature” shows only show sharks in frenzied
feeding.
Shark attack experts are adamant that the danger has been greatly
exaggerated.
According to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), between the years 1580 and 2011 there were 2,463
confirmed unprovoked shark attacks around the world, of which 471 were fatal. Surprisingly,
that’s only 1.09 fatalities per year for the last 431 years.
Australia is ranked
second in terms of global shark attacks with 877 attacks since colonial
settlement in the 18th century; it’s ranked the highest in terms of
shark fatalities, with only 217 during this long period.
The results of
Gore’s Michigan State University study reviewing worldwide media coverage of
sharks found that more than 52 percent of global coverage focused on attacks on
people and sharks were portrayed as aggressive and dangerous in nearly 60
percent of the reports. Positive PR was tougher to find with only 10 percent of
stories dealing with shark conservation and just 7 percent looking at biology
and ecology.
According to Time/ CNN
: Zoologists today estimate elephants around the world kill 500 people a year
while the great white sharks (Jaws) kill only 4 people.
Incredibly,
there are about 24,000 lightning deaths (one every 20 minutes) and 240,000
injuries worldwide annually (Royal
Aeronautical Society, 2003). When was the last time we read stories of
the lurking danger above or watched a movie where people were struck down like
dominoes by searing thunder bolts?
Why is shark conservation so important and why is it being
neglected?
The first part of this question is
easy. Sharks are in big trouble. "Overfishing of sharks is now recognized
as a major global conservation concern, with increasing numbers of shark
species added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's list
of threatened species," say Mizue Hisano, Professor Sean Connolly and Dr
William Robbins from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and
James Cook University.
Why we are
neglecting shark conservation is harder to answer. First, there have been
powerful economic reasons to turn a blind eye to shark fishing and shark finning.
These may not have been good reasons but greed is a characteristic of human
behaviour and we make lots of poor decisions because of it.
A second
explanation comes from deep in the primitive part of our brains. Our
prehistoric ancestors had the very same fears that we do according to Psychology Today. We were ‘designed’ to
be afraid; fear was our operating manual for things we didn’t understand or
that could do us harm. Fears protected our ancestors.
“Our distant ancestors who were afraid of heights didn’t fall off cliffs, those
that feared wild animals didn’t get eaten, those that ran the fastest left the
rest behind---and they survived.”
Elephants are
not on our list of feared animals and we donate millions of dollars each year
to protect them even though they kill thirty times more people than sharks. Why
can’t we see that the health of our ocean hangs in the balance and that we are
making decisions with our ancestor’s fears and not with our future in mind?
Special thanks to my friends Ellen Cuylaerts and Shawn Heinrichs whose photos 'tell' the story.
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