Yeah, I see a lot of shark positivity posts on my dash these days and I really appreciate that. But I think something is being left out of the message so I’m just gonna say that:
YES, Sharks are not bloodthirsty monsters. They only do what they do because they are instinctively driven to do so.
NO, sharks are not your friends. They are not sea-puppies, gentle babies, or whatever BS anthropomorphic “cute” term you want to use to describe them.
YES, you are more likely to be killed by falling coconuts and any number of improbable circumstances than you are to be killed by a shark attack,
NO, sharks are not “harmless”. They are apex predators of their habitats and deserve to be treated with the same respect that you would give to a wild lion, bear, or wolf. JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT LIKELY TO ATTACK YOU DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY WON’T. ACCIDENTS CAN ALWAYS HAPPEN, AND A SHARK’S PATIENCE IS NOT LIMITLESS.
YES, you should take every precaution to prevent a shark from “test-biting” you.
NO, a test-bite is not just a harmless consequence of shark curiosity. A TEST-BITE CAN KILL YOU. Just because sharks generally release people after the first nip and don’t make any effort to eat them does not mean that the bite is somehow any less deadly. You will bleed out in the water if the wound is bad enough.
YES, sharks are endangered and unfairly demonised and worthy of our support.
NO, that does not mean that anthropomorphising them and spreading false information is okay.
Please support sharks, but please, for the love of god, give them the respect they deserve when you do so. YOU ARE NOT HELPING THEM BY ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO SWIM RIGHT INTO THEIR JAWS.
Your annual Shark Week PSA. Sharks are incredible, thrilling creatures but spreading the idea that they are all harmless or interested in eusocial behavior with humans does them no favors.
Of course it is, it’s a Chimaera! Also known as a Ghost Shark or Rat Fish.
This particular one also has a pointy nose and it’s called trolli. What’s more Halloween than a troll demanding money before you can cross a bridge, or insulting you on the internet, or those famous trolli problems.
The answer might be an artist called Ray Troll who painted loads and loads of Chimaeras and got a pointy-nosed Chimaera named after him!
The Frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) is one of two extant species of shark in the family Chlamydoselachidae, with a wide but patchy distribution in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Behind its grin is a mouth like nothing researches have ever seen: Row after row of razor sharp, hooked teeth; twenty-five rows; over three-hundred teeth. It’s possible that some of the myths and legends of sea serpents came from the Frilled shark.
Since its summertime and people are gonna be hitting the beach to swim and/or surf, i decided to make this informative shark post.
In the media sharks are portrayed as mean bloodthirsty and vicious creatures. Such as in movies like “The Shallows” and “Jaws”. But are sharks really that vicious? The answer is no. No they are not. Sharks are really nice and sweet creatures. I am a surfer and have been bitten a couple of times by sharks but i still know the truth… sharks aren’t evil creatures.
You may be thinking “but you’ve been bitten by one! How can they not be evil!?” Well the answer to that my bro
is simple, its all a misunderstanding. You see, sharks dont have great eyesight. They are blind as fuck. So they rely on other senses to find food. They see the silhouette of us surfers on our boards and they see it from a below angle and they think we kind look like seals, their favourite meal (as seen in the pics above). So they take just a nibble to see what the fuck we are. Once they realize we aint a seal, they go away. Why? Sharks HATE the taste of human meat. We disgusting af to them. Thats why the majority of shark attacks are just sharks bitting once and then leaving. They just wanted to know what the fuck we are bro. Its a case of mistaken identity. A misunderstanding. Have there been shark attacks where the shark bites more than once? Yeah. But thats rare and it only happens if the shark is either
(1) feeling threatened or provoked.
Or
(2) very hungry. Like, i mean STARVING.
Sharks just wanna eat but they dont wanna eat us. Its just a simple misunderstanding. As you can see in the photos above, people can swim with sharks and nothing happens. Its totally fine my dudes. So there you have it, sharks are homies, not hostile.
MORE INFO:
The likelihood of being attacked by a shark is thought to be 1 in 11.5 million, and only 4 or 5 people in the entire world die each year from shark attacks.[1]. If you’re still nervous about meeting one of these ocean predators, check out these guidelines to help you further minimize the chances of an encounter- http://m.wikihow.com/Avoid-Sharks-While-Surfing
PLEASE REBLOG THANKS MATE
If you’re scared of sharks don’t go in the water, but don’t actively hate sharks. Even Peter Benchley (the creator of jaws) hated what his story did, and actively tried to fix what damage had been done due to the paranoia caused by his book/the movie. He defended sharks until he died, and hated the shark hunting craze and fear he caused.
Sharks are good animals, don’t hate them just because you don’t understand them
A group of fishermen in Cornwall, England has just successfully released a massive thresher shark, forgoing an official size record to see the fish return to the sea.
Based on dimensions, the shark was estimated at some 368 pounds (167kg). If accurate, that number tops the UK shark-fishing record of 323 pounds (147 kg), which was set by another thresher shark in 1982.
“I knew what it was because it jumped 20 feet out of the water,” Watkins told us. “I couldn’t believe it. I was like a kid a Christmas. When the shark was brought aboard I made sure there was water passing over it.”
The team measured and photographed the shark, a process that Watkins limits to about three minutes. This is the same time goal used by many shark scientists during their workups, and it helps to reduce additional stress to the animal after a battle on the line.
Whale sharks and winghead sharks have moved one step closer to extinction, after the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) redefined them both as endangered species on the group’s ‘Red List’.
The two predatory species have fallen foul of increased pressure from human activity, especially the fishing industry, with populations of whale sharks – the world’s largest living fish – halving in the last 75 years.
Jane Smart, the director of the IUCN’s Global Species Programme said: “It is alarming to see such emblematic species slide towards extinction. The world’s oceans and forests will only continue to provide us with food and other benefits if we preserve their capacity to do so.”
Fins up if you love sharks! There’s still a lot to learn about these fascinating, misunderstood creatures, but one thing we do know is that there’s a huge diversity of spectacular shark species gliding through our ocean.
There’s a new “horror” movie coming out, and the premise is that a female diver gets stuck sitting on a rock 200 yards from shore in what looks like maaaaaybe 30 foot deep water, with a great white “circling” nearby.
It is very stupid looking.
I could make all kinds of arguments about how there are only a few documented cases ever of sharks intentionally going after humans, about how we’re already trying to hunt them to extinction because people are terrified of them for no logical reason, about how the creator of Jaws regretted the shark phobia his work inspired for the rest of his life and became an extremely staunch defender of sharks as important ocean wildlife. I could say how pissed I am that yet again someone is making a “horror” movie whose premise is animals are evil and malicious and go after humans for no reason, nature and man are inherently at odds.
But instead I’m going to leave these pictures here and make the case that this is going to be a very inconsistent, confused film about a big angry fish who apparently changes size off camera.
Here we see the shark doing a Sea World style backflip in order to eat a guy right off his surfboard. (It then chases down guy number two, gets his legs in its mouth, and then… swims backwards? to dramatically pull him away from the rock?)
Aaand here we have a perfectly circular bite in the main character’s leg where the shark apparently shrunk way down, bit in deeply enough to leave a perfect circle of ouch in her flesh, and then let go. Either that, or she’s a giantess and her thigh is as big as a man’s entire torso.
Sharks, even great white sharks, really don’t give a fuck about humans. We are not food for them. They attack divers because they have relatively poor eyesight, and from below, a human paddling out into the water on a surfboard looks like a very fat, slow, awkward seal floundering on the surface. Sharks who do attack humans generally attack only once before realizing that this is not what they expected. That’s why there are shark attack survivors; the shark doesn’t try to eat the rest of the person they just bit. Great white sharks and tiger sharks can be dangerous, but so can any large animal. More Americans alone are killed by chairs, cows, deer, dogs, and vending machines (each, not added together) than are killed worldwide by sharks even on a very unlucky year.
PiraticOctopus 