In 1975, Steven Spielberg directed the classic entitled “Jaws.” The film was originated from a Peter Benchley novel about a small, fictional summer resort town that is terrorized by a rogue Great White Shark. It grossed over $260,000,000 in the box office to become the highest grossing movie of all time (that is until 1977 when Star Wars was made). The reason this movie worked was because it tapped into a true primal fear about the unseen lurking just out of site at our beaches (www.wikipedia.com). After the movie came out, people were literally scared to go back in the water. I refuse to go in the ocean past waist deep myself, but that’s just me. This movie created a man-eating reputation for sharks. Fishermen became shark hunters and killed every shark they came into contact with because they thought they were keeping humans safe by doing so. But how threatening are sharks in reality? Are they really man-eating beasts who should be feared, or has our perspective of these fascinating creatures been blurred by the fear evoked from “Jaws?”
The video above was filmed to prove that unless a shark feels threatened, it will not attack. Yes, that was a silly, silly experiment. A typical shark attack usually happens as follows. First, the shark sees something that could be its next meal, because they are hunters, it’s what they are supposed to do. Second, it comes in and nudges its possible victim to find out whether it is edible. Thirdly, the shark will take an exploratory bite, which might feel something like a puppy biting on you, no big deal. Lastly, after it realizes, ‘hmm, this taste kind of yummy,’ it chomps down and guess what? The victim has officially become a statistic. There are actually fewer than 100 shark attacks each year on humans and only 5 of those are fatal. A person is more likely to be struck by lightening that get attacked by a shark (www.wikipedia.com).
The three kinds of sharks that are associated to most, if not all, attacks on humans are the great white, tiger, and the bull shark. The shark that attacked Eric Ritter was a bull shark, known as on one of the most aggressive and feared species. It has an unusual adaptation for fresh water, as it swims up rivers to mate as opposed to the open sea. They also hunt in extremely shallow waters, as the footage reveals. But what caused this bull shark to attack Dr. Ritter? The water was not murky, it was not dawn or dusk, and the shark was not provoked in any way. The answer to this question can be explained in one word: instinct. We may be on the top of the food chain on land, but in the ocean, we are in shark’s territory. They are the dominating creatures in the water. We kill animals everyday because they are our food source. In the same respect, sharks do the same thing in the water. Sharks do not seek out humans to eat as their meal, but when we enter the water, we are no longer the hunter, but rather the hunted.
From underneath, a surfer, boogie boarder, or a swimmer looks like a fish that is part of a shark’s regular diet. Most attacks are merely mistaken identity, and once the shark realizes the person is NOT on their usual diet plan, they let go. Think of it this way: if you are in the woods hunting deer, and some idiot decides to dress up like a deer and walk through the woods (clearly a hypothetical situation here), you are going to shoot it aren’t you because it LOOKS like what you came into the woods to kill! As you move closer to your prize ‘deer’ you realize it was not a deer after all: mistaken identity. Hopefully that situation will never happen, but, it proves my point that sharks are not out to eat humans, they just want to eat.
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