With the Summer comes shark attacks, but you shouldn’t blame the sharks

The Summer months are a wondrous time for the Southern tourist industry. People flock from all over the country to visit our beautiful beaches and indulge in our warm, subtropical climate. Be it along the Eastern Seaboard like North Carolina’s Outer Banks, or be it along the Gulf of Mexico like some of Florida’s beaches, the possibilities are endless.

The climate of the Southern states also affects the natural world. The seas surrounding them are rich and abundant with life, hence why the fishing industry thrives here as well. However, as the fish follow the currents to the warm summer seawater, the sharks follow too.

According to the trackingshark.com’s shark attack map for 2016, there’s been approximately 50 attacks in the Southern United States with the brunt of the attacks occurring off Florida’s Eastern coastline. This comes on the heels of last year’s rash of six North Carolina shark attacks in a three week span.

As you might know, shark attacks are not as common as the media makes them out to be. Sharks are portrayed as viscous man hunters because it’s a good story – and people read it – so it gets written.

We do run a distinct risk of coming into conflict with marine life by swimming in the ocean. It’s not the shark’s fault that we decided to spend our day in its habitat, nor is it the shark’s fault if the something confuses its senses.

But when a shark attack happens, why does it happen? And how do you prevent it from happening?

In order to help me explain sharks and their attacks, I interviewed Kyle Markham, a Marine Biology Major at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

“Well the biggest thing you can do is not send any mixed signals, “ Kyle told me, “The [attacks] you hear about in the news are like surfers being attacked or someone getting their leg bitten.”

With surfers they cast shadows that look like a seal or a sea turtle to a shark.

But the mixed signals that Kyle mentioned cover a lot more than just confusing shadows. In my research for this article, I came across studies that claimed the rough surf on Florida’s Eastern coast are a factor in the attacks there.

“Rough surf kicks up a lot of sediment, so you can’t see as far ahead.

“For Florida’s Eastern coast, the gulf stream could also potentially increase the turbidity.”

Turbidity, as Kyle put it, is the measure of visual clarity underwater, or in other words, how murky the water is. Murky water doesn’t bode well when it comes to a shark’s particular set of senses.

“Sharks, while visually based hunters, don’t have great eye sight. They can’t quite see what’s immediately going into their mouth. When you splash around in murky water, the shark can detect the electrical currents and will want to bite it as they cannot see you in the murk.”

In addition to avoiding mixed signals, Kyle also mentioned another thing to avoid when in the water to prevent a shark attack: dead fish. Having dead fish near you while spearfishing or swimming in a dock area where people are fishing is risky as the dead fish attracts hungry sharks looking for a meal.

“Also, avoid swimming at dawn or dusk, it’s the prime feeding time for many shark species.”

After establishing the sharks’ innocence in the matter of shark attacks, I had another question for Kyle. What do sharks do for the oceans?

“The sharks play a very important role. They are the apex predator in a lot of the ocean’s ecosystems. They play the role of weeding out the sicker or weaker fish. Sharks have also been known to scavenge whale carcasses too. They don’t let one population of fish get over abundant and disrupt the balance.”

I asked Kyle for a land mammal to compare the shark’s role to. He posed the wolf or mountain lion for large sharks, and the coyote for small sharks.  The mountain lion comparison made sense to me as I always thought large sharks to be solitary, but how are larger sharks like wolves?

“Blue sharks are pack oriented,” Kyle said, “They’re called the wolves of the sea.”

It turns out that there are many species of large shark that engage in cooperative feeding, Blue Sharks are just one example.

As fascinating as they are, sharks still face an image problem when it comes to humanity. When an attack, or an anomalous rash of attacks occurs, the hysteria that can form within the coastal community can sometimes become a hunt for retribution—killing the shark that committed the attack.

The problem is, however, that you don’t know whether or not a shark is guilty until you cut it open. Combine that with the fact that there are countless television shows documenting shark attack “horror stories” and movies that portray the sharks as a bloodthirsty killers and you get unjustifiable slaughter.

“They’re always the bad guy,” Kyle said, “When the author of Jaws saw his book made into a movie, there was a major cull against sharks to the point that the author said he  regretted writing the book.”

But how do we cultivate a culture of shark conservation rather than demonization? Kyle gave me his thoughts.

“The best we can do is have positive interactions with sharks. My local aquarium has a touch pool with docile bamboo sharks. Public education too. Educating the public on things they may not think they wanted to know, but will happy they know later.”

Indeed, education is important. Now a days, we are confronted with the fact that shark populations worldwide are on the decline as they are hunted for fins, for sport, and for hatred. Sharks are crucial to the survival of Earth’s oceans. If they don’t survive, the oceans as we know them won’t survive either.

“We’ve got to show that sharks aren’t these menacing man-eaters.”

So when you drive down to the beach this summer, be it Fort Fisher or South Padre Island, don’t let fear keep you on the shore. There isn’t some monster lurking beneath the waters ready to pounce. You’re far more likely to drown in the ocean than you are to get bitten in it.

Sharks aren’t out to get you, but they are essential, and are far more afraid of us than we are of them.