Lets kill Great white sharks!
oh hey, can I come on into your cage there?
Humans kill 100 million sharks per year, they kill 17 of us and only 220 people are attacked
each year.Just in the US alone 4 million people are attacked by dogs with 17 fatalities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_attack
Maybe we need to kill more dogs randomly.
not arguing in favor of the shark killing, but I've always had a problem with those statistics. There are just under 80 million dogs in the US, with a much higher contact rate or chance of interaction compared to 3500 great whites with waaaaaaaay fewer human shark interactions, so I don't feel it is a fair comparison.
Killing some great whites may only take out the weaker and easier to catch sharks, resulting in the stronger sharks being left behind to breed. I'm worried this will inadvertently create a new race of super sharks like in that movie with LL Cool J.
I have the same feelings about this as the yuppies that go out and build their big shacks in the mountains and then complain that a cougar killed their dog or a bear got into their garbage.
Think again.
Far more dog attacks and yet we can see them coming, we train them and 99.999% of all dogs are happy go lucky animals. Most people don't come in contact with a dog very often unless they own one or chase them down at the park (where they increase their chance of getting bit).
There are hundreds of millions of people that swim in the ocean every year. We can't see them coming, a sharks sense of smell makes a dogs seem useless. They pick up vibrations better than any dog can hear, they can pick up our electrical output.
Why all this matters, is that if sharks (not just GW's, but Bulls, Tigers and every other shark that has ever attacked a person wanted to make us part of their diet, we would be completely helpless and you wouldn't be able to swim anywhere between 50N or 50S without being eaten.
As far as way fewer shark interactions that varies by person. I know I've had far more shark encounters in my life than dog encounters that didn't belong to me or my friends. Having dove Hawaii, I can also say I have had more shark encounters while surfing (and didn't know about it) than dog encounters (which I'm pretty sure I knew about almost all of them).
I don't fear either, I respect both and just like dogs, sharks show emotion through body language and it's not too hard to figure out. Killing "a few" GW's isn't making the rest of the population stronger, just making fewer of them. They have very few young in their lifetime and they grow extremely slow.
I am glad you feel that killing them because of an attack is dumb.
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"i surf because, i"m always a better person when i come in"-Andy Irons
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Think again.
Far more dog attacks and yet we can see them coming, we train them and 99.999% of all dogs are happy go lucky animals. Most people don't come in contact with a dog very often unless they own one or chase them down at the park (where they increase their chance of getting bit).
While hundreds of millions of people may go into the ocean each year, billions of people see a dog every day, sometimes multiple dogs. That's my point, it's an apples to oranges comparison that makes for some fun sounding but not comparable statistics. The point isn't that sharks are more dangerous, it's just an exposure issue. People die from all kinds of animals/inanimate objects just from probabilities. It's just not fair to extend the probability of getting attacked by a shark to the entire population, when not the entire population is assuming the same risk because they will never encounter the animal (I can talk to ten people in the next hour that have never even been to the ocean).
it's not a comment on how dangerous different animals are, just a pet peeve I have with random statistics that aren't very informative.
I think you're missing the point that you "see" the dogs, most people never
see a shark even after decades of surfing, or swimming in the ocean. Of course
Canadians have a different attitude since not many "bad" sharks come close to
shore except in some very select areas on the east coast and even then only
at certain times of year. If you want to add up how many people are bitten by
dogs vs, sharks it gets even weirder. There's about 100,000 dog attacks per
year in the USA "alone"…probably over to a million dog bites per year
world wide vs 200 shark attacks. You can down play dog bites but the reality
is shark bites are rare, even on a per hour exposure (more so if you take out
the owner's exposure time).
How about I use the fact that more people die from coconuts falling on their head than sharks? Lightning? Drowning surfing. Hell Drowning surfing small surf. How about dying from your leash getting wrapped around a rock/coral head (almost happened to me). My point is that dogs are domesticated animals, not wild hunters and yet exposure or not, more people die from dogs. The reality is if you're swimming or surfing between 50* north and south on this planet you ARE swimming with sharks, every time you go in the water. You may not see them, but they know you are there and every shark within a couple miles knows where you are too. If they were truly "man eaters", again, we would not be able to swim, surf or dive…ever.
My main point is that we kill the dog when it attacks (in NA), but we can't do that with sharks, so we just go out and kill every shark that will bite the hook. Most Ichthyologists feel once a shark bites it will not bite a human again. They believe that the vast majority of shark attacks come from new adult sharks that are changing from fish to mammals/larger prey. And, when they see us they bite to see if were edible, evidence shows they do not like the taste of us and spit us out or stop the encounter and leave. That shark now knows our shape and can put that in their mental catalog of "things that taste bad" and will not bite again. So, if you by some very small chance happen to catch the shark in question, you are now taking a shark out that "won't" bit us again.
I had compiled a bunch of statistics when I was doing snorkel tours in Hawaii, it does illustrate our paranoia about sharks, and how we disregard the much in our lives that we really should worry about but don't because of familiarity.
I'll see if I can find it.
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"i surf because, i"m always a better person when i come in"-Andy Irons
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I think you're missing my point. It has nothing to do with sharks or dogs.
How about this, Canadians are much more likely to sustain an injury playing hockey than they are playing polo. 570,000 people registered with hockey Canada vs. only 3 polo clubs in Canada.
I guess I am missing your point since it still doesn't relate in my head. I'm talking about people killing sharks in areas where there are sharks for no real reason and the fear mongering is by those people. The only people that should care live near and use the ocean where these sharks exist.
I'm not saying that Canadians or Russians or even people from Utah should relate to this. I'm saying that the very people that kill and base their fears are doing so based on very thin evidence. Let me relate it to something a Canadian can relate to. You are more apt to be killed by a cougar in NA than you are in NA.
The reason dogs come up and how it relates (in my head) is that you can see a dog (in an urban environment) 99% of the time, whereas you don't see the shark 99.9999+% of the time. The point being that a dog IS more dangerous than a shark. You as a person don't have to try too hard to be bit by a dog, it's easy. On the other hand, you just have to be one very unlucky person to be bit by a shark.
To put it another way, if a shark wanted to bite you while you were surfing it could. There would be nothing you could do about it, you wouldn't see it, smell it or hear it coming. If we were truly food or sharks were truly "killing machines", "man-eaters" or even "liked" to predate on humans we would all be dead. There would be 100,000 shark deaths per year, and the "attack"-to-kill ratio would be closer to 100% instead of ~5%.
The main purpose of sharks is to keep our oceans clean. They limit disease in fish/marine mammals, they consume the dead and dying, they strengthen the ecosystem. To kill a shark…any shark in todays environment is wasteful and ignorant. To kill the top predator is dangerous.
Which brings me to one of my first points….humans make sharks look like butterflies. 600Million sharks killed vs 12-15 humans is the most telling statistic.
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"i surf because, i"m always a better person when i come in"-Andy Irons
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Lots of cool information here on Great Whites … how they retain bouyancy without an air bladder, why there are so few fatal attacks by great whites etc. BTW this is probably the best nature series ever.
Sharks don't kill many humans because we don't have any fins for soup.
It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.
- Josiah Stamp
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.
- H.G. Wells
I think that funding Asian penile enhancements would put an end to most of our shark, tiger, rhinoceros and bear problems.
I think that funding Asian penile enhancements would put an end to most of our shark, tiger, rhinoceros and bear problems.
I don't understand why people don't just make fake shark fin, fake tiger penis, fake bear gall bladder, rhino horn (eg using pig or cow parts) instead of going through all that trouble to find and kill a rhino or tiger or shark? Its not like anyone has never pulled a fake products scam before in China. In fact, from what I understand, people don't respect you over there if you've not constantly trying to scam them. Flood the market with cheap fake shit and cause the suppliers of the genuine product to go out of business. Its the way they do business over there. Anyone interested in starting a "mock Tiger Penis" business, PM me.
Some friends brought over some stingray, it was super yummy.
As far as I know they are not endangered but still didn't feel great about eating it.Was
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