5 Everyday Things More Dangerous Than Sharks
Sarah Bedolfe
Sharks are attacked by humans much more often than humans are attacked by sharks – and we have plenty of other bigger dangers to fear!
In our new video created as part of our partnership with Discovery’s Shark Week, we highlight five everyday things more deadly than sharks. The reality is that our fear of these animals is a socially created one, and in fact, we should be more scared FOR sharks than scared of them.
It’s safe to say that approximately 100 million sharks per year are victims of finning – a cruel and wasteful practice by which a shark is hauled aboard and its fins are cut off for use in adding texture to shark fin soup while the rest of the body is thrown back to die.
In other words, 100 million sharks per year are the victims of unprovoked fatal attacks by humans. So when it comes to things more dangerous than sharks, humans may be at the top of the list.
In fact, within the last year, the estimate for how many sharks are killed for their fins increased from 26 – 73 million (as if that wasn’t enough) to 63 – 273 million annually.
Compare that to the number of people each year who are killed by sharks. If you go back several centuries and collect data on every known unprovoked shark attack on a human, as the International Shark Attack File has done, you will find out that there have been a mere 2,569 confirmed cases of shark attacks in more than 400 years. Of those, less than 20 percent have been fatal.
Sure, sharks can be dangerous predators – but our fear of them is disproportionate to the threat they actually pose.
Sharks are amazing animals that are not only worthy of our respect, but they are also critical to maintaining the health of the global ocean ecosystem. From their position at the top of the food web, sharks maintain a balance in the populations of their prey – and their prey’s prey, and so on. What we really need to worry about is their depletion, and potential looming extinction.
So this Shark Week, join One World One Ocean in supporting measures that protect sharks by banning finning and reducing the impacts of fishing, effectively helping restore the ocean’s balance. (Click here to learn more and take action!) And the next time you go for a swim and begin to fear what lies beneath, remind yourself of the very real danger you face when buying a soda from a vending machine.
