Shark Water - The Truth will Surface

[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.

[jsmth321]

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.

Even the most dangerous of sharks pose little threat to humans, they are an essential part of the ocean eco-system, without them the oceans will be far more screwed up then they already are, you cannot expect to remove top predators from an eco-system and expect the eco-system to flourish.


[quote=trilinearmipmap;430202]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. QUOTE]

Yes they do, all living animals on this planet have every much right to be here as we do. Predators may see us as prey and by all intents we are possible prey, we have become too comfortable living in citys and modern society and many people seem to have forgotten that if we go into the woods or oceans, there might be something bigger that could kills us.

Might interest you that a non-predator is responsible for more human deaths in Africa, the hippo, should be cull all of them as well?

[BlueAbyss]

End the hippos.

[JDigital]

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

There is only room for one apex predator on this planet and that is us.

I find it absolutely hilarious that you place yourself above an animal that has been around for 400 Million years, and then say we are the apex predator.

[trilinearmipmap]

Even if you were right, people are going to go on killing sharks.

If I were a subsistence fisherman in Indonesia and someone paid me a few dollars to fin some sharks, I would do it and feed my family that day.

It is quite a luxury to be able to sit back in comfort and judge others who don't have it so good as us.

I see a lot of hypocrisy on this thread. People claiming to be holier than thou, caring about the environment. Meanwhile what brings us together is this hobby of taking fish and invertebrates out of their natural environment for our viewing enjoyment.

On the one hand you claim we are killing 10 to the 18th power sharks, then you claim we are not an apex predator. OK.