Swift-Boating the Sharks

So when you say the sharks are getting "Swift-Boated" you mean that factual accusations are being made that are never really proven to be incorrect?

Ha! Thanks for this amusing article. Sharks are awesome, and it always makes me happy to hear the statistics prove how horribly the media skews our views of sharks. Like in those videos posted the other day about activists trying to stop the Japanese from killing a few dolphins, I hope soon we will have activists trying to prevent the merciless slaughter of sharks that is driving many species to endangerment.

Absolutely wonderful article. As an avid scuba diver and lifelong advocate of preserving and protecting oceanic sealife, I am absolutely heartbroken to see and hear all of the terrible news that follows every shark attack. We should be more afraid of falling off a ladder than taking a swim in the sea; sharks like the taste of humans about as much as I enjoy the taste of barbed wire. We have to find a way, either through education or legislation, to put a stop to the practices of sport fishing for sharks, long-line fishing that nets a huge amount of bycatch, and – most horrendous of all – shark finning just for the sake of making soup. Please continue to bring this issue to public attention, and possibly – even hopefully – people will learn how valuable sharks are to the ocean ecosystem and leave them alone!

Interesting article; except for the title. Why use "swift-boated" as an adjective to describe the sharks as not having the truth told about them. The Swift Boat veterans are honorable military men.

Thank you. The "frenzy" over sharks occurs every year, and every year there is less and less to base it on. As a shark enthusiast, and having worked with several shark biologists including George Burgess, I hope for positive news stories about sharks.
I appreciate your article and calling into question the role and weight the press puts on these misunderstood creatures. Again THANK YOU!

Let's not forget that human beings kill 100 million sharks per year.

The only thing that would make this more complete is a description of the size of the US and international shark fishery. Then we could do a good comparisonm of the proportionality.

Lighten up, Francis.

The numbers from the International Shark Attack File, and other similar lists, are absurd. They don't take into account the numerous shark deaths from disasters at sea, such as ship and boat sinkings, attacks on boats, kayaks or rafts, and they don't include deaths by drowning, of which there are many. Even if a victim is found in the water showing obvious signs of shark feeding, they VERY often list the death officially as simply "a drowning."

Then we must consider that there are many places in the world where a shark attack, or a person missing at sea, will rarely even be reported, much less so on an international level.

Though I know I may sound paranoid, but there truly is a large-scale effort to downplay the dangers of shark attacks. For more on this topic, please visit: http://www.sharkconspiracies.net.

Sincerely,
Kevin Harris
Host, Shark Conspiracies podcast
sharkconspiracies.net

What's the point? 40.000 Americans die every year in motor vehicle accidents, roughly 10 times the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war since 2003. Does that mean people should stop protesting armed conflicts because they aren't the "Real Killers"? If we stopped driving motor vehicles, not only would those 40,000 annual deaths be removed, but also every one of the deer related fatalities. The deer aren't taking a single human life. The car that we are driving 55 mph is what we bang into really hard when the deer runs in front of it. These kind of arguments can keep going, continuing to get more and more pointless.

Outstanding article. Thanks. As a child of the 70s, I grew up watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Disney on Sunday nights with my family. We also grew up with ads that included Woodsy Owl (Give a hoot. Don't pollute!) Smokey Bear (Only you can prevent wildfires) and the crying Indian (Sorry, that's no longer PC... the Native American with the tear in his eye) We were taught to respect nature. Now, as I watch those in the East bringing sharks aboard and cutting off their fins only to dump them helplessly back into the water to rest on the ocean floor and bleed to death – I can only imagine what the fate of these great animals will be. After surviving for millions of years on this earth, they very well could be wiped out by fear, greed, sport and for the vain who believe their libido is increased by shark fins, tiger testicles, monkey brains or whatever else they may dream up in order to kill more helpless animals for their own selfish whims.

There's another example of media distortion in the headline of this article. And while the Shark Attack! stories are exaggerate the danger, the term "swiftboating" implies that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's criticisms of John Kerry were refuted – an inversion of the truth.

Lets not forget that sharks are an apex preditor and make a huge contribution to the health of the overall ecosystem. Those that think that removing or limiting an apex preditor actually helps the animals lower on the food chain are mistaken. The return of the wolves as apex preditors to Yellowstone is an example.

Meanwhile people kill over 100,000,000 sharks per year just for their fins. Who are the real killers here?

This entire article misses the cause of human shark paranoia. Somewhere deep in the lizard part of the brain, human beings have a extra-special, vestigial aversion to being eaten. That aversion goes beyond, say, the aversion to digging a sand hole so deep it will bury us (whatever the point of that would be).

As long as sharks are able and willing, even rarely, to EAT humans, humans will be terrified of sharks no matter what statistics you print on a page.

The point, Ed, is that animals are hardly the killers we make them out to be. From snakes to sharks to gators, these are animals we've made villains. When it simply isn't in their nature to kill without reason, they're simply not as sophisticated as us human beings. That and irrational fear dictates the majority of our actions, or at least the majority of us. I don't know about you, but being eaten alive sounds a lot more scary than hitting a deer. Hitting a deer just sounds like a stupid way to die.

If humans were slaughtered at the rate sharks are slaughtered, most of which for the stupidity of a soup that supposedly proves how wealthy and virile you are, the human race would vanish in about 60 years...that's 6 billion humans/100,000 sharks.

Sharks are animals doing what they do in their environment, which largely means living as they have for millions of years, as is their right. The value of their lives is equal to, not greater or less than, the value of a human life, since both have a right to live. As a simple statement of fact, sharks do not predate upon humans as a preferred food source, nor do they travel upon land to find people to eat.

Humans, however, tend to kill sharks for amusement, sometimes as a needed food source, and more often than not, unnecessarily for delicacy items such as the evil of shark fin soup. The fins for this soup, mind you, are harvested by taking the living shark out of the water, hacking off it's fins, and then throwing the living shark back into the water, in pain and suffering, to it's death. The entire shark is killed for its fins.

Humans travel into the water and above the water to kill sharks in order to appear tough and manly. What shark bites a man to prove his mettle?

Sharks are much maligned, and this article hits the nail on the head. And as for the poor people unfortunate enough to have been bit or killed, the best way to avoid getting bit by a shark is to not enter their realm and world. After all, you can't blame the tiger that bites the tamer when the tamer's head is in its mouth.

For more information, visit http://www.sharks.org.

No, steve, we mean blatantly false accusations that have no basis in truth, in an effort to malign an idividual and to mislead the unknowing.

A lot of animals get a bum wrap because they have the potential of being dangerous. The truth is very few animals are ever aggressive toward humans. People get in trouble when they go into the animals' habitat and don't respect it.

DO NOT
TOUCH SHARKS THEY BITE......WHAT IS WRONG WITH WHITE PEOPLE?

Thank you for this article. I understood exactly what you meant by the title. The media is such a powerful tool, used so often for the wrong purpose or silent when it should be speaking the truth or asking the hard questions. Even if no other issue concerning sharks is brought forth, the hideous cruel practice of shark-finning cannot be allowed to continue. Scientists and all persons concerned with the humane treatment of animals should demand the end of this carnage.

Let's assume our responsibility and take care of the planet earth that has been loaned to to us...

The most fearsome and dangerous specie on earth is human. When we hunt sharks for their fins...millions have been thrown back to the water too crippled to live and too weak to die.

Nature is responsive to us in the exact proportion of our deeds.

Peter, when you swift-boat someone you are not supposed to use good sense and tell inconvenient truths! Therefore, you must be one of those awful liberals who dodged the draft, hates freedom, and is making plans to sell my country to al-Qaeda. Everyone Knows that sharks kill hundreds of people each year, and they do it on tv so everyone can see. I've seen a dozen people killed by sharks on tv this year alone, so stop your sickening lying and pandering to shark terrorists. You are soft on sharks, and when a shark kicks your door down in the middle of the night and starts taking away your handguns, don't come crying to me! Shark lover. Someone ought to do something about your kind.

This is total BS. People are careful and aware of sharks and that's why accidents are low. Statements like "Clearly, you’d be safer in the water, with the sharks, than you are in your own sandhole" are totally false. I can guarantee the author of this that staying in the water with the sharkes would be very stupid and should not be advocated.

I was glad to see a good article about sharks. I think more should have been said about our emptying oceans and just HOW CLOSE to extinction many shark species really are. They have an important place in the eco-system and do what they do without emotion. They are not "evil". The fact that there isn't that much to be afraid of in the natural world is why sharks are sensationalized. Look around you, what do you see that has big teeth these days?

interesting bit on sharks

Swft-boated? Using the term only makes your views and motives suspect in the eyes of most readers. Let me guess, more government control, less personal freedom. My friend Ebenezer said it best ..."Bah Humbug".

Thank you for the article. One of my favourite topics. I would say that we are slowly seeing the dissapearance of these magnificint creatures before our eyes. Imagine one death that occured because of a shark attack, out of the millions of people that swim in the ocean per year. Even if this number was as high as 20 it would still not compare to the amount of fatalities that humans suffer because of other animals including our own pets.

...and keep politics and science separate. Otherwise you might end up believing in Global Warming or some other hoax like that.

Interesting analogy except you have it exactly backwards. The Swift Boat group exposed the truth about John Kerry's actual war time activities so the florida group who are stating that the shark attackes are much less than advertised by the media are actually the ones doing the swift boating here.

Great article!...Really puts things into perspective.

I have a pit bull. About three people die a year from pit bull attacks (keep in mind that there are 29 different breeds that are considered pit bulls), and yet there are people who think that the whole breed should be euthanized. This shark sterotype seems very similar

This is a good article, but it should be news to no one that sharks are not a widespread threat to people. If you've never gone diving with sharks, it is incredible. They are amazing animals and to be surrounded by them is a great experience (assuming you're a diver with common sense). Obviously, we can respect people who take precautions against being attacked, but it shouldn't be big fear in this day and age.

I strongly support those who have commented against the sick practice of finning. Fishing boats haul in sharks, chop off their fins and shove them back into the water, still living until they sink and drown. Fisheries decimate entire populations of sharks and destroy their ecosystems, our ecosystems, throughout the world so they can the sell the fins to restaurants for soup. This would be paramount to chopping off the legs of millions of bulls and cows and leaving the animals to die in the open plains to feed people who believe that cattle hooves were a delicacy.

The best course of action to stop this practice is to boycott companies that sell shark fin soup, boycott companies that own restaurants that serve it, and boycott tourism to countries that serve it. Advocacy against finning won't stop it. Boycotting corporations and industries will put a dent in it.

The only good shark is a dead shark. Those that love sharks would feel differently if suddenly they found themselves in the ocean with a group of fins swimming around them!

Just when you thought there was intelligent life out there, you come across one of these CNN blogs. Reading some of these idiodic ramblings of the common dumb american. Sharks have been villified because they are scary looking, and we intrude in their territory. We are land animals they are water animals. I'm curious to see the comparison of fatalities from dogs or wild cat attacks.

There is a movie about mosquitos!!!! It was a cheesy SciFi movie call ManSquito. Come on.....

Let's toss a few of these people who don't think shark hunting to extinction, finning, and global warming are problems out on the Great Barrier Reef in some well chummed water. Maybe we will get lucky and they will end up in the belly of some Great White (probably give them indigestion). That means YOU, Bob, NoLeftWingIdiots, Tony, Bubba, Kevin, etc......

What? I don't understand what the reference is to sharks and swift boats, and then nothing in the article about sharks being run over by fast boats. I take it that the author is trying to make a political statement–and coin a phrase–but it doesn't make any sense and disrupts the story. Not that there is much of a story. I'd be curious to see if Peter was shipwrecked in shark-infested waters if he would be calmed by being told that he is safer than being on a sandy beach. Comparing raw numbers from every day accidents taken from a sampling of hundreds of millions of people and comparing that to numbers from a much, much smaller group of people who actually put themselves in harms way of sharks is not scientific. It also is clear that of the people lost at sea every year, in many cases the causesof deaths are unknown as the bodies are never found. Let's just use reason. It is obvious that there are plenty of situations where sharks may be around and the odds against harm are vastly on your side, but the very real threat...and the consequences of coming up short on the odds...are ignored only at your own peril. It is irresponsible to encourage people to ignore the threat.

Thanks for the article, I could have actually used it a couple of months ago when I was preparing a presentation on the very same subject. Here's some other numbers i came up with that show that even on the list of absurd ways to die, shark attack barely registers:

13 people are killed on golf courses each year by being hit on the head with a golf club or golf ball

103 people are killed each year by fire ants

300 people are killed each year in accidents involving revolving doors, automatic doors, escalators and automatic lifts.

But there's another, far more important number, and that's the number of sharks that humans kill annually. The median estimate for that number is 40,000,000....

It's an insane ratio. Killing sharks at this rate is unsustainable, and we're already seeing big ecological consequences for doing so.

It's amazing what a weird emotional hot button sharks can be for some people. In the 1990s, I worked on an ad campaign that featured sharks as sort of a mascot, and you would not believe some of the - for lack of a better term - hate mail that we got. One man complained that we shouldn't show sharks in a positive light, as they are a "real and ever present danger in every day life". The kicker? He lived in landlocked Arizona. Another, an Army Colonel no less, sent letters to the SPCA and various government agency claiming that he could see a puppy dog in the photo of the shark, so obviously we were trolling puppy dogs behind a boat to get the photos for our ads (incidentally, we used stock photos).

In that sense too, I think the swift boating term is highly appropriate. A group of guys who are probably decent, rational, honorable guys in most of their lives were upset with Kerry (and williing to distort the truth about him), because he touched one of their emotional hot buttons. As a young man, Kerry told the truth... the Vietnam War was full of atrocities against human beings, and some of those atrocities were committed by Americans. That doesn't make Americans evil, or soldiers evil... all wars are filled with atrocities (as my Grandfarther who fought in WWII could attest). But it's a fact that many Americans just can't admit to themselves, because we don't like being the bad guys.

Well done! I would like to see a commercial with these stats running durring shark week

Ah, even in our deepest efforts to un-vilify the tasty morsel that is the shark, we missed one trivial fact. There was a Mosquito movie and it had a sequel too.

SKEETERS!
and
SKEETERS2!

Surely, we all flocked to the theaters to see these horrific creatures attack the classic B-Movie cast with their ominous, oversized, blood-sucking, stingers. Just the thought brings back nightmares of how I could have spent that money better.

Could it be that you missed the TICK?
Or can we count the ever-lovable cartoon that has no clue?
How many people suffer and die from tick-borne diseases each year? Probably more than the one per year attributed to our lovable shark.

Very nice article. I for one am glad it was a slow news day. Interesting that your article should coincide with this morning's TV Swim-along piece on the Whale Shark. They reported it to be the largest fish in the ocean and apparently quite gentle.

:o))

This is my first comment on a news story.

My compliments for putting this in perspective, for the fascinating stats, and the levity with which it was presented.

Tell your boss that he/she owes you a steak (even if it's a thin one).

Respectfully,

George Daggett

Kevin of "Shark Conspiracies" – you ARE paranoid. Who cares if a few accidents go unrecorded? That would not make sharks any more dangerous than you and your friends think. What is your point anyway? What do you want to tell the world? My advice to you and your paranoid friends: Go shark diving and stop fantasizing about shark "conspiracies".

I'm not sure what the point of this article is. I don't recall anyone or any media outlet ever claiming that that shark attacks are the greatest cause of human deaths or maimings or other permanent injuries. I think shark attacks – along with attacks on humans by other animals like bears, alligators, lions, etc – get the media attention and coverage that they do not because of the numerical toll, but rather because the of graphically violent nature of the attack – severed limbs, portions of the human body injested as food, etc. Any animal eating a human will get a great deal of media coverage because it is a graphic counter-example of the 'humans are the top life-form' viewpoint. Its very upsetting to our world-view. A mosquito bite does not challenge that world-view in a way that is as obvious to most people. For this reason, the level of media coverage of shark (or other animal attacks of that nature) on humans comes as no surprise to me – nor should it.

Nor do I think sharks are getting an unjustified reputation. They can be dangerous to humans, like many other predators, and that is good reason for humans to exercise reasonable awareness and precautions in the sharks' domain.

Greg Huey

You're exploitation of the subject to promote you're policital viewpoint is quite analogous to Peter Benchley's and the subsequent movie's, exploitation of our fear of sharks to sell their product. Sell shark preservation, not your political viewpoint!!!

Wolfgang... you are not the first person to be confused as to my motives for questioning the ISAF statistics. It's sad to me, how pervasive advocacy media has become, to where when someone like me comes along who wants to clarify true facts, I'm looked at as a weirdo. I am not against sharks, in fact, I support shark conservation efforts and I oppose the barbaric act of finning. The thing is, I can not morally justify painting sharks as "not interested in people" in order to try to protect them.

Why can you folks not understand that sharks are magnificent creatures deserving of protection, yet at the same time, they are NOT our "friends?" Some species can, will, and sometimes DO attack us, for food, and they are not loveable pets, and they do not all hate the taste of people.

Does it not bother you that these scientists who compile the lists, such as the ISAF, are also conservationists? Do you not see a conflict of interest there?

Sincerely,
Kevin Harris
Host, Shark Conspiracies
sharkconspiracies.net

Gee Karen, only an idiot would think global warming isn't a real problem, but that doesn't mean you have to go all pro-shark on us. I'm just pointing out that the author of this article is obviously in the pocket of the powerful shark lobby, spreading his shark propaganda to unwitting, innocent ears, and you go all nuclear and want to feed me to a shark. Besides, didn't you read the article? The sharks wouldn't eat us anyway.

I agree with the guy from 'shark conspiracies' above.

I lived in Hawaii for a few years and every year there were several to many people 'missing' in the ocean only to be found later half eaten by sharks.

Virtually every one of these half eaten people were labeled victims of drowning. Sure, the shark attacked them, chewed on them until they were weak or passed out and couldn't swim any more so they drowned.

Obviously that wasn't a shark related death.

Interesting. Thank you.

Stan

Steve:

How about selling the truth? Not conservation, not political views, just tell people what the real facts are. Everyone seems OK with slanting the facts to fit their needs, even mainstream media! It's a serious problem, and it comes from everyday people, such as the posters on this blog, as well as from the "experts." It's kind of frightening.

Kevin Harris
sharkconspiracies.net

And some happy irony...

Roy's son, Christian Scheider, made this video with us when he was a Sophomore in high school.

http://vidsearch.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=2596812

His motivation was in no small part related to what he perceived as the damage done by the film (Jaws) his father starred in.

We worked on it at Roy's house on Christian's Apple eMac using images from a young ocean leaders retreat held in Baja.

Here's to sons and daughters reversing the damage caused to the earth of by our fathers and grandfathers...

J.

Senior Scientist
Ocean Conservancy
http://www.oceanconservancy.org

Blog: http://www.wallacejnichols.org

Let's not forget the millions of human deaths caused by horses, either in accidents or war.

Nowadays the issue is not so much sharks killing humans, but humans killing sharks. Numbers are going down drastically worldwide, and sharks really need our help, not for us to go around screaming thinking they want to kill us.

The author of the original 'Jaws' novel said he really regretted writing the book, because it made people think so badly about sharks – he himself was actually a shark lover.

Richard
http://blogearth.wordpress.com/

[...] Sharks – 1, Deer – 130 Posted on April 27, 2010 by bryozoan http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/13/swift-boating-the-sharks/ [...]

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