I grew up in the ‘golden
days’ of Miami and the Florida Keys. My teenage friends and I would often
return to the wharf with 100 lobsters and we would catch sharks just for fun.
The lobsters were good and the sharks were bad in my black and white world of
wildlife. We believed there was no end to the supply of either animal.
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’ (a rifle bullet fired from a
short hand-held club) thinking 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.
Sharks are slow to approach a swimmer under the water.
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.
The November issue of
Conservation Biology published a review of media coverage of sharks. According
to Meredith Gore, MSU assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife, Australian and U.S. news
articles focused on negative reports featuring sharks and shark attacks instead
of conservation efforts. "The most important aspect of this research is
that risks from - rather than to -- sharks continue to dominate news coverage
in large international media markets," said Gore.
So how real is the case against sharks?
Every year about 100
shark attacks are reported worldwide. In 2011, just 17 fatalities out of 118
attacks were recorded as having being caused by sharks. Although shark attacks are infrequent, there
is a heightened awareness due to occasional serial attacks; “it’s out there and
I’m next”. Horror fiction like Jaws (1975)
appears on TV just often enough to keep this fear alive and even so-called “nature”
shows only show sharks in frenzied feeding.
One of these is the most dangerous killer on Earth; the other is a shark.
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 recorded
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 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 lightning
injuries 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?
Amazingly,
Gore went on to point out that conservation groups were often quoted
emphasising negative aspects of sharks and seldom the pressing conservation
issues. "This suggests
that conservation groups are either not being sought out by the media in
regards to shark conservation issues or they are not engaging enough to make
headlines," Gore said.
In writing this story I
contacted 10 shark advocacy or shark ‘experience’ groups. After making them
aware of my support for sharks I asked for additional information or photos in
exchange for credit and support for their position. I received some brilliant
photos (featured here) through Asian Shark Conservation and by Ellen Cuylaerts
who was in the water with Epic Diving. The others have not replied.
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.
On March 1, 2013, "Global Catches,
Exploitation Rates and Rebuilding Options for Sharks," was published by
Dr. Worm and other researchers from Dalhousie University, the University of
Windsor in Canada, as well as Stony Brook University in New York, Florida
International University (FIU) in Miami and the University of Miami. A very powerful
team of scientists.
Their shocking findings put the carnage at
97 million in 2010. The possible range of mortality falls between 63 and 273
million annually. This equates to somewhere between 7,200 and 31,000 sharks per
hour.
As many as 31,000 sharks are killed every hour.
"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." Such changes harm other species, and destroy
commercial fisheries, Mike Heithaus, executive director of FIU's School of
Environment, Arts and Society explains.
"This
is a big concern because the loss of sharks can affect the wider
ecosystem," said Heithaus in March, 2013.
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. The shark industry is worth about US$630
million annually according to a study published May 30, 2013 in Oryx – The
International Journal of Conservation.
This equates to an average of $6.49 per shark. This
may not be such a good reason 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 protect us. “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.”
Surveys of people show different fears for different cultural
groups but amazingly many fears are shared globally even for animals never
encountered by the people who fear them. Top of the list is spiders and number
10 are alligators and crocodiles. Sharks come in at number six according to Animal Planet.
Sharks need to treated with caution but they aren't the killers they are made out to be.
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
do. 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 children’s futures
in mind?
The first
big step in the right direction was taken in July, 2011 when the Bahamas banned
all shark fishing in its 630,000 square kilometres of ocean. "The Bahamian government had the foresight to protect
- - sharks within their waters, starting with the longline fishing ban in early
90s, and culminating with the more recent shark sanctuary initiative,"
said Edd Brooks, program manager of the Shark Research and Conservation Program
at the Cape Eleuthera Institute. "This level of protection is vital for
the continued existence of these important apex predators, and I hope that the
example set by The Bahamas will encourage other nations to follow suit."
Sharks do injure and
kill people as do most other large animals and many other things we all take
for granted in everyday life. I’ve spent thousands of hours in the water with
sharks and do not see them as my enemy. Until we can deal with sharks honestly
in both the media and our own minds we will not be able to protect them and the
oceans they swim in.
As shark numbers
plummet the ecological stability of the sea is lost and life-sustaining
fisheries collapse. What a tragedy to discover we lost such an important battle
through our own primitive fears and self deception.
