Of all the things to worry about in life, shark attacks belong near the bottom of the list. In this short piece I’ll explain why sharks have gotten a raw deal, and why they deserve protection.
Nobody can deny that sharks suffer from a huge image problem, which undoubtedly stems from the fact that they’re cold-blooded predators with gigantic teeth. Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster film “Jaws,” convinced a generation of moviegoers that sharks love to feast on people. And certainly, nothing is more terrifying to ocean swimmers than seeing a triangular dorsal fin protruding from the water.
But a look at the bigger picture, which we’ll review in a minute, reveals that the dangers of shark attacks are massively overblown. Plus, sharks are vital to the ocean’s ecosystems. As apex predators, sharks sit atop the ocean’s food chain and have no natural enemies, save for the occasional pod of orcas. This makes sharks a “keystone species” in ocean ecosystems. This term refers to the keystone atop an archway—remove the keystone and the entire arch collapses. And what’s true for archways is true for marine life: whenever shark populations nosedive, profound losses to biodiversity can ensue. One shark researcher says:
In working with tiger sharks, we’ve seen that if we don’t have enough of these predators around, it causes cascading changes in the ecosystem, that trickle all the way down to marine plants.
So sharks play a vital role in ocean ecology, but what about the danger they pose to people?
Shark Attacks vs. Shark Bites
Despite their carnivorous nature, sharks don’t particularly enjoy the taste of humans. During the year 2020, only 57 unprovoked shark attacks occurred worldwide, causing just ten fatalities. By contrast, humans are responsible for wiping out upwards of 100 million sharks per year.
Put another way, the number of humans injured or killed by sharks is a pittance compared to the more than 80,000 deaths caused by snakebite a year. Even hippos kill about 500 people a year.
The fact that the dangers of sharks is so overblown has led Australian oceanographers to advocate replacing the term “shark attacks” with the less alarmist “shark bites,” on the grounds that most such bites are likely accidental. Investigations commonly reveal that these bites occurred in cloudy water, where in all likelihood the shark confused the victim with a seal.
Perhaps the biggest danger sharks pose isn’t them eating you—it’s the risks associated with eating them. Given that sharks subsist on other predatory species, they accumulate heavy metals and carcinogenic pollutants to a far greater degree than do other marine animals. Shark flesh contains enormous amounts of mercury, a potent neurotoxin.
Shark Population Declines
As a result of rampant commercial overfishing, populations of many shark species have fallen dramatically. An extensive survey published in Nature revealed that shark and ray populations collapsed by 71 percent between 1970 and 2020. The Nature study blames most of this decline on commercial fishing.
Still more sharks are killed to produce shark fin soup, a popular dish in Chinese coastal cities. Live sharks caught by fishing boats have their dorsal fins slashed off, and are then dumped back into the ocean to die.
Sharks can’t seem to catch a break. Even favorable media attention often backfires. Discovery Channel’s inexplicably popular and consistently dishonest “Shark Week” series results in huge increases in the amount of shark being ordered in restaurants.
Conservation Efforts
Sharks deserve the attention of anyone who cares about animal protection. They’re crucial to the world’s oceans, and the danger sharks pose to humans is relatively tiny. Since the fishing industry is the primary killer of sharks—and this killing is often inadvertent bycatch—you can help protect these animals simply by refusing to eat fish.
It’s an encouraging sign that twelve US states have banned the sale of shark fins, but there’s obviously much more work to do. The Shark Trust is a charity set up specifically to build, “a future where sharks thrive within a globally healthy marine ecosystem.”
