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.
