Do Sharks really bite?

Wonderful article from 1931 issue of Popular Science.

“Is It Possible to Learn the Truth About the Habits of Alleged Man-Eaters in the Semitropic Water? Here Is the Report of a Study Made for Popular Science Monthly by One Who Now Fears the Swift Monsters…”

SOME years ago, I heard a celebrated naturalist state unequivocally that sharks would not attack men. As proof of his statement, he cited his own experience in shark-infested waters. Clad only in a bathing suit and a diving helmet, he had descended to the sea bottom, staying there for considerable periods while sharks and other fish swam negligently about, merely evincing a mild curiosity in his presence.

Further, this naturalist said that, though he had tried in various parts of the world to run down instances in which men had been attacked by sharks, he had failed to discover a single authenticated case. He gave it as his opinion that attacks hitherto attributed to sharks had in reality been perpetrated by that other killer of the sea, the barracuda.

Not being a naturalist, I do not propose to set up my own opinions in controversion of an expert. Nevertheless, I have gleaned a few items of information that do not gee with the theory that the shark is as harmless as a dove.

From Modernmechanix: Read more

Cheers for the tip Limbic

Arctic ‘Monster’, the Greenland Shark

Canadian fish scientists are opening a window into the mysterious world of the Greenland shark — the top predator in the Canadian Arctic about which almost nothing is known. Except this, says Steve Campana of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography: “These are very, very strange sharks.”

Its meat is poison. Its mouth is far under its body. It has almost no spine. It’s so lethargic that it doesn’t even snap at the scientists who hook it and attach a radio to it.

And it may live 200 years.

“The sharks are incredibly abundant”, says Mr. Campana, “and yet we don’t have a clue how fast they grow, how old they get, where they give birth, how many they give birth to…” The researchers are hoping that samples of bone may hint at the age, using the 1960’s testing of nuclear weapons and searching for radioactive elements.

Growing to a length of eight metres, it cruises along the bottom of the ocean floor taking it’s meals of fish and seals. It’s not known if the seals are already dead when they consume them or if curious young ones have ventured too close to the slow moving shark, no one really knows. The Canadian researchers have tagged the sharks and will record data and then will ‘pop off’ the sharks in a few months and be radio their findings via satellite.

Only one other big shark in the world is almost unknown — the extremely rare deep-ocean “megamouth.”

From DiveNews: Read more

Shark attacks in perspective

Last friday morning a 66-year-old swimmer was attacked and killed by a shark off Solana Beach in San Diego county. It was the first fatal shark attack in San Diego since 1994.

While the attack has received widespread media attention, fatal shark attacks are increasingly rare relative to the number of people participating in ocean activities. In 2007 human deaths from shark attacks hit a 20-year low, according to statistics released by the University of Florida.

The single death of a swimmer in the South Pacific in 2007 represented the fewest casualties from shark attacks since 1987, when no one was killed by sharks.

“It’s quite spectacular that for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide spending hundreds of millions of hours in the water in activities that are often very provocative to sharks, such as surfing, there is only one incident resulting in a fatality,” said George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File housed at UF’s Florida Museum of Natural History. “The danger of a shark attack stays in the forefront of our psyches because of it being drilled into our brain for the last 30 years by the popular media, movies, books and television, but in reality the chances of dying from one are infinitesimal.”

From Mongabay.com: Read more