The Truth About Sharks

Brett Homme again. This week, I'm going to tell the people that believe that all sharks should be killed that they have a serious misconception about sharks. Because of major motion pictures like Jaws (who's writer, Peter Benchley, was an avid shark and ocean conservationist until his death in 2006), many people got the impression that sharks are terrifying, man-eating creatures that only exist to wreak havoc for fishermen, swimmers, and divers. On the contrary, sharks generally only take one bite to "taste" something, and then let go. There are unfortunate circumstances that happen on occasion where someone does die or lose a limb because of a shark (like Bethany Hamilton), but those occasions are rare.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/sharks-killed-per-hour-infographic_n_2965775.html

The link above contains an infographic made by Joe Chernov and Robin Richards earlier this year. An average of 12 people are killed PER YEAR by sharks. On the other hand, 11,417 sharks are killed PER HOUR by humans. Stop and think about that for a moment. For every one person killed (1 person per month), 8,220,240 sharks are killed [11,417 multiplied by 24 (to get the number per day), then multiplied by 30 (to get the number per month)]. In order to truly grasp how big of a gap there is, you need to click on that link and see that infographic. Anyone that has a sense of morality should be saying "that's not right," or something similar to that phrase.  The chilling part of that infographic is that it is only measured BY HOUR. PER YEAR, that number changes to roughly 100 million sharks killed because of humans (8,220,240 multiplied by 12). Imagine how long that infographic would have to be in order to show the comparison between the number of humans killed per year and the number of sharks killed per year. Do you want to know the really disturbing thing? The study where that 100 million sharks killed by humans came from (and subsequently the 11,417) said that 100 million was a CONSERVATIVE estimate, and that the actual number of sharks killed could be as high as 273 MILLION. Think about that the next time you are thinking about how much sharks need to be hunted to extinction. The link to the study is posted below.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X13000055


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