Once dismissed, shark attacks may hit new
record in 2016
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[May 28, 2016]
By Barbara Goldberg
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As the summer beach
season opens in the United States, at least one expert is predicting an
increase in shark attacks around the world this year that will surpass
last year's record number.
"We should have more bites this year than last," George Burgess,
director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of
Florida, said in an interview shortly before the Memorial Day
holiday weekend that signals the unofficial start of America's
summer vacation = and beach - season.
In 2015, there were 98 shark attacks, including six fatalities,
according to Burgess.
Why the increased bloodshed? Shark populations are slowly recovering
from historic lows in the 1990s, the world's human population has
grown and rising temperatures are leading more people to go
swimming, Burgess said.
Still, the university notes that fatal shark attacks, while
undeniably graphic, are so infrequent that beachgoers face a higher
risk of being killed by sand collapsing as the result of
overachieving sand castle builders.
With their fearsome teeth and dorsal fins the inspiration for hit
movies, TV series and beach-town souvenirs, it is hard to believe
that a century ago American scientists did not believe sharks would
fatally attack humans in U.S. temperate waters without provocation.
That changed in July 1916, when four people were killed in attacks
near the New Jersey shore, a series of deaths blamed on a sea turtle
until a great white shark with human remains in its stomach was
captured nearby.
Since those attacks, public opinion of sharks has changed
dramatically, with swimmers' fears fanned by fiction, from the 1975
Academy Award-winning film "Jaws," based on Peter Benchley's book
about a giant man-eater, to the Discovery Channel's modern "Shark
Week" summer television series.
Years before the attacks near the northern Jersey Shore town of
Keyport, millionaire businessman Hermann Oelrichs offered a $500
prize in 1891 (more than $13,000 in today's dollars) to anyone who
could prove that a shark ever bit a human in nontropical waters. The
reward was never claimed.
Well-regarded scientists at the American Museum of Natural History
in New York pointed to Oelrichs' wager as proof that no shark would
bite a human, according to Michael Capuzzo's 2001 book "Close to
Shore."
Even the New York Times in a 1915 editorial titled "Let Us Do
Justice to the Sharks" cited Oelrichs' offer and said, "That sharks
can properly be called dangerous in this part of the world is
apparently untrue." HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED
While those attacks gave oceangoers pause for decades, "Jaws" turned the
hunter into the hunted, Burgess said.
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A surfer carries his board into the water next to a sign declaring a
shark sighting on Sydney's Manly Beach, Australia, November 24,
2015. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo
"Every red-blooded American man felt obliged to go out and catch
sharks, which were readily capturable," said the University of
Florida's Burgess, noting that they can be caught offshore and from
small boats. "It became the blue-collar marlin."
Sharks were being killed by sportfishing fleets as well as
commercial fishermen seeking steaks for U.S. grocery stores and
Asian markets for shark fin soup, regarded as an aphrodisiac in some
cultures.
By the late 1980s, shark populations were crashing, and scientists
sounded the alarm. The first law protecting sharks was passed in the
1990s in Florida - the home to the largest shark population of any
U.S. state - and limited the daily catch to one shark per person,
according to Burgess.
Federal safeguards followed, as well as more state efforts like the
shark fin ban that has gone into effect in 10 states and is under
consideration in Rhode Island.
Conservation efforts have introduced the public to another side of
sharks: their vital link to the ocean ecosystem, their typically
curious and shy nature, even the human-like birth of their offspring
rather than laying eggs like other fish.
The public is clearly hooked. Aquariums from San Francisco to
Brooklyn say sharks are among the most popular attractions, and some
people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to swim close to them.
Mario Caruso, 42, a Brooklyn father of two, said it was well worth
the $250 he paid to spend an hour submerged in the Atlantic Ocean
inside a metal cage with sharks prowling around him off Montauk, New
York.
"The first time, you get that rush of adrenaline and then, 'Oh, boy
- he's got teeth!'," he said.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan
Oatis)
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