Shark Water - The Truth will Surface

[trilinearmipmap]

Sorry I will have to disagree with the save the earth crowd.

Any animal that wants to eat me, I have no pity for. That goes for sharks, grizzlies, or any other carnivores that view me as their dinner.

[BlueAbyss]

Any person that gets eaten by something bigger (or not) than them just learned a valuable lesson... survival of the fittest.

It generally goes like, man catches shark, man cuts off shark's fins and makes soup. I mean, what about the rest of the shark?

When a shark eats a man, he eats the man whole. No waste. I think the shark is smarter

[parkinsn]

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

Sorry I will have to disagree with the save the earth crowd.

Any animal that wants to eat me, I have no pity for. That goes for sharks, grizzlies, or any other carnivores that view me as their dinner.

WOW!! I cant believe you said that. You should be watching this movie before you make a statement like that. When they throw up stats like "in the last 10 years humans have reduced the shark population by 90%" or "we kill 2,000,000 sharks a year for soup" or "sharks only kill 5 people a year, elephants kill 100....." of thoes 5 people that they kill they dont eat them they die of blood loss after the shark figures out that they dont really want to eat us. The impact on killing sharks is way bigger than "oh well we killed them all because they want to eat me". Need I say more?

[trilinearmipmap]

Originally Posted by parkinsn

WOW!! I cant believe you said that. You should be watching this movie before you make a statement like that. When they throw up stats like "in the last 10 years humans have reduced the shark population by 90%" or "we kill 2,000,000 sharks a year for soup" or "sharks only kill 5 people a year, elephants kill 100....." of thoes 5 people that they kill they dont eat them they die of blood loss after the shark figures out that they dont really want to eat us. The impact on killing sharks is way bigger than "oh well we killed them all because they want to eat me". Need I say more?

Clearly besides the cruelty issue there are effects on many other species when you remove a predator/scavenger like sharks from the ecosystem. So finning or otherwise killing sharks which do not endanger humans cannot be justified.

I do feel that for those few species known to attack humans with any frequency (Tiger Sharks, Great Whites and Bull Sharks) we should mount an aggressive cull program. Of course this is not the popularly accepted view, I have never cared much for going along with the crowd. For me, if something kills people, we shouldn't tolerate it. There is only room for one apex predator on this planet and that is us.

[Ron99]

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

Clearly besides the cruelty issue there are effects on many other species when you remove a predator/scavenger like sharks from the ecosystem. So finning or otherwise killing sharks which do not endanger humans cannot be justified.

I do feel that for those few species known to attack humans with any frequency (Tiger Sharks, Great Whites and Bull Sharks) we should mount an aggressive cull program. Of course this is not the popularly accepted view, I have never cared much for going along with the crowd. For me, if something kills people, we shouldn't tolerate it. There is only room for one apex predator on this planet and that is us.

Oh boy. Sorry but do some research my friend as your position is just not a viable one given the actual statistics. In 2007 there were 71 unprovoked shark attacks in the entire world with only 1 fatality. The mean number of annual fatalities due to shark attacks is 5. Yes, 5; five; cinq; cinco; cinque. What's the population in the world right now? More than 6.7 billion. So sharks kill about 0.000000074% of the world's population each year. How many people die of car crashes? Somewhere around 1.2 million. Are we going to take all cars off the roads? How many people die of diseases due to cigarette smoke? Something like 6 million every year. Why do we still allow cigarettes to be sold?

Really, why don't you find some cause that is an actual problem instead of going around spouting this nonsense. Sorry if that sounds insulting but the idea of culling sharks because a very small number of people are hurt by them each year is ridiculous.

[trilinearmipmap]

Originally Posted by Ron99

Oh boy. Sorry but do some research my friend as your position is just not a viable one given the actual statistics. In 2007 there were 71 unprovoked shark attacks in the entire world with only 1 fatality. The mean number of annual fatalities due to shark attacks is 5. Yes, 5; five; cinq; cinco; cinque. What's the population in the world right now? More than 6.7 billion. So sharks kill about 0.000000074% of the world's population each year. How many people die of car crashes? Somewhere around 1.2 million. Are we going to take all cars off the roads? How many people die of diseases due to cigarette smoke? Something like 6 million every year. Why do we still allow cigarettes to be sold?

Really, why don't you find some cause that is an actual problem instead of going around spouting this nonsense. Sorry if that sounds insulting but the idea of culling sharks because a very small number of people are hurt by them each year is ridiculous.

No it doesn't sound insulting, just not well-reasoned.

You are saying that there is an acceptable number of people that can be killed by sharks.

The same sort of reasoning is used by the pit bull people. Eg. the occasional four year old gets his face ripped off by a pit bull, we should accept that because most pit bulls are peaceful and poodles bite people too.

Just wondering how you set your cutoff number.

Five people a year is OK.

How many people a year would need to be killed by sharks before you would object?

Just wondering.

[Ron99]

I would have to say that it is actually your position that is not well reasoned. Bee and wasp stings kill far more people than sharks (something like 50 plus deaths in the US each year) so do you think we should go cull bees? For shark attacks to really be a problem that required human intervention and culling I think you would have to see many hundreds if not thousands of unprovoked shark attacks each year and hundreds of deaths. 5 deaths worldwide is not a problem that requires culling. I just don't see how you can rationalize that argument?

So what you are saying is there is no acceptable number of people that can be injured or killed by other animals without us intervening? According to the CDC there are over 4.7 million dog bites in the US each year. That is far more than sharks so by your reasoning we should cull dogs. Far more people die each year from hitting a deer with their car? Should we start culling deer to reduce the risk?

Your pit bull analogy is not a good one as pit bulls were bred to fight and have an aggressive nature. They must be well trained and well controlled and even then they occasionally go off. Nobody has bred sharks to attack humans. They usually do so accidentally when they mistake humans for their natural prey.

I just don't understand your position and you have provided no reasoning for it. Why do you suggest culling sharks? What facts or figures can you present to support such a a position?

I think it makes much more sense to ban tobacco products than waste time and money culling sharks. Tobacco kills millions. Sharks kill 5. Why don't the U.N form a multinational peace enforcement force to go into countries plagued by civil war and ethnic cleansing etc. to put an end to that? Far more people die due to war and famine then are killed by sharks.

Your position is not just unpopular it is illogical and unsupportable with any real facts or numbers.

[parkinsn]

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

No it doesn't sound insulting, just not well-reasoned.

You are saying that there is an acceptable number of people that can be killed by sharks.

The same sort of reasoning is used by the pit bull people. Eg. the occasional four year old gets his face ripped off by a pit bull, we should accept that because most pit bulls are peaceful and poodles bite people too.

Just wondering how you set your cutoff number.

Five people a year is OK.

How many people a year would need to be killed by sharks before you would object?

Just wondering.

So i guess what your getting at is that if we can kill 2,000,000 sharks a year then sharks killing 2,000,000 of us would be acceptable in your eyes. So they have a lot for work ahead of them to catch up to us i guess poor sharks are only at 5/year.

[syeve]

Please keep the personal attacks out of the discussion/argument.
Thanks

[trilinearmipmap]

First of all there is no room on these boards for personal attacks. If you wish to make a personal attack against me, PM me, I will meet up with you face to face, we can discuss it in person.

The statistics on shark attacks are skewed by a huge reporting bias towards first world (mostly U.S.) shark attacks. Most of the reported shark attacks each year occur in the U.S. despite the fact that the U.S. only has about 5% of the world's population. There are billions of people living in African and Asian countries which have long coastlines and large local shark populations, yet despite this reported shark attacks in these countries are rare. This points to an error in the collection and reporting of shark attack data. If a five year old blond kid gets bitten by a shark in Florida it makes the news. If a brown person in India gets attacked by a shark no one notices.

The other factor in under-reporting of shark attacks is pressure from local government and tourist authorities. If a shark kills someone in a tourist area it can mean tens of millions of dollars in losses due to bad publicity. You can bet that if a swimmer is killed by a shark in a country with a tourist-dependent economy, the death will be reported as a drowning or heart attack.

Multiply the number of (U.S.) reported shark attacks by 20 (the inverse of the U.S. proportion of world population) and you will get hundreds to thousands of shark attacks, and perhaps scores to a hundred shark deaths, worldwide every year.

The question is, do animals have a right to live despite the certainty that each year some number of people will be killed by them. This is a judgment call that needs to be informed by reason, ignoring false statistics, environmentalist propaganda, and ad hominem arguments.