WHAT ARE YOUR ODDS IN A SHARK FIGHT

WHAT ARE YOUR ODDS IN A SHARK FIGHT?

By Homer Montgomery

1409 Zulu (GMT) - R/V Melville, East of Guam

Let's talk about sharks. There is just too much nonsense circulating about sharks. First, sharks are NOT primitive animals. The first sharks appeared approximately 400 million years ago. Some sharks as a group persisted for 200 million years. However, the sharks we have swimming around today arose only 30 million years ago. Sharks are highly evolved animals. They are some of the most sophisticated animals on this planet.

How sophisticated you ask? Let me tell you. They are predators of an unusually adept sort. A shark's most important sense is hearing. A stressed fish 2 km away can be detected. Some sharks have a sense of smell that allows them to detect the presence of blood in concentrations as low as one part per million. Sharks have very good eyesight, especially within a range of 15 m or so. And finally, sharks sense electrical impulses that are produced by other animals. They essentially detect your, well, for lack of a better word, "aura."

Sharks have much more to fear from humans than we have to fear from them. Sharks seem to not at all like the taste of humans. Humans are not fatty enough to be worth the trouble. Not so for a nice plump seal. There are fewer than 100 reported shark attacks each year. Twenty five to thirty are fatal. These numbers are trifling. Dogs kill thousands each year. Two hundred mahouts are done in each year by their elephants. Heck, soda machines killed more people last year than sharks did. Person gets upset when machine eats his money. Person attacks machine. Machine retaliates by falling on person. Presto, dead person. I think I'll take my chances with the sharks.

Sharks are killed in amazing numbers each year, some 30 to 100 million. Of the at least 350 shark species, approximately 80 are threatened with extinction. Many are slaughtered for such absolutely stupid reasons as to make shark fin soup. Fishermen simply whack off fins and throw the sharks back in the water. Finned sharks die as they swim about in a confused manner without the ability to control their attitude. Killing lots of sharks is definitely monkeying around with the structure of the marine food web. This is not a good thing as the outcome is unpredictable.

In case you missed this news story, I would like to leave you with an astonishing example of stupid. In April of 1998, Kevin M. (his last name was used in the news account), a 16-year-old boy was the featured player in a shark attack story. The attack was reported around the world. Typical was the headline in Australia blaring "JAWS UPDATE!" Yes, poor Kevin was indeed bitten by a shark. Unfortunately, the report failed to mention a couple of important points. First, the shark was not JAWS, but was rather a two foot long nurse shark. Second, the shark only bit the boy after he began pulling it about by its tail. The nurse shark latched onto his chest eventually having to be surgically removed. The shark is dead. The boy is alive. Hopefully young

Kevin learned a lesson.

Communications | Humankind | Ecology | Geology