Have you ever thought about the battle between Man and Shark from the Shark’s perspective?
Why do humans hate us so much?
Why are so many films about sharks so incredibly inaccurate!
We wouldn’t spend hours hunting a bunch of people on a ship like your silly movies suggest. People always tend to group us together and think that we all have the temper of a bull shark.From tiny 7-inch pygmy sharks to 50 ft whale sharks, from docile nurse sharks to aggressive bull sharks.
There are over 500 different species of us, we aren’t all the same!
Our mouths are one of our sensory organs so we use them to investigate weird objects in the water or determine whether or something is worth eating. I mean, why would I want to eat a low fat human when I can have a blubbery seal or sea lion.
In most cases, if one of us bites a human, we swim away because we decide that you humans aren’t very tasty.
Moreover, in the unlikely event that we bite a human, it’s because we mistake you for something else. When we see you thrashing around in the water, we instinctively take a snap at you because your movements resemble a fish. Another instance in which we might attack is if you’re too close to our actual meal. We can be pretty territorial.
In the end, the chances of a human dying as the result of shark attack is very low. You’re more likely to die by a dog attack, car crash or even lightning strike. In fact, every year a range of 4 to 38 people die of jellyfish stings while there were 10 fatal shark attacks in the past year.
If anything, we should be more afraid of you! Every year over 100 million of us are killed. In countries where shark fin soup is a delicacy, you humans catch us, cut off our fins while we’re still alive and throw our mutilated bodies back into the ocean. Immobile and vulnerable, these sharks have no chance of survival, they either suffocate, bleed to death or are eaten by other predators.
Those of us who manage to evade these cruel people are often killed after being caught in fishing nets or we suffer from habitat degradation due to climate change and pollution.
As of right now there are 143 species of us that are listed as “endangered” or “critically endangered” “near threatened” or “vulnerable” on the IUCN’s red list.
Some critically endangered species are the great hammerhead shark, angel shark and the oceanic whitetip shark.
The largest and most docile shark species, the whale shark is endangered while the iconic, top of the food chain, great white shark is vulnerable.
So I ask you,
who is the real monster?
A beautiful piece.
..and Thank you!!!!
Creative Writing by
Sandhya Dhanie…
