People get killed by sharks in Australia regularly (two last week I think).

But I don’t think the public sees sharks as monsters to be destroyed.

Sharks are wild animals and we are in their habitat.

Sharks deserve protection even if they eat people.

  According to the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File (ISAF), there were just 47 unprovoked attacks last year (worldwide, 2024), 22 fewer compared to 2023 and below the 10-year annual average of 70.

My friend David was attacked by a shark and lost his leg, the story is quite incredible: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/13-david-byrd-was-brut...

A woman got bitten by a shark pretty bad down the street from me about a mile away when I lived there: https://abc7.com/post/newport-beach-shark-bite-victim-recove...

I understand they are out there, I understand there is an ecosystem and they are important to that ecosystem... all that goes out the window when you see a great white cruising through the water. We're cool as long as they are out at sea and not where I'm at.

Jaws is the only movie (within reason I guess) that I don't let my 13 year old watch.

We live by the sea with one of the world's best marine reserves right off shore. There are plenty of fish including sharks living right off the beach and you need nothing more than a mask and snorkel to get right in amongst them.

When I watched Jaws as a kid when it first came out, it scared me shitless and I still carry some of that trauma whenever I am snorkeling over a deep canyon where the blue just goes on forever and you can't see the bottom.

I just don't want my child to miss out on that because of the ability of Hollywood to scare us.

> In an online survey of 371 people, mostly from Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom

I'm pretty sure that's not a significant enough sample size to matter.

Anecdotally, people's fear of sharks still feels very overblown. I've gone surfing in SoCal a couple times a month for the last 5 years or so, I've never known anyone that's had a shark attack, and have only been told "there's a shark nearby" once. On the other hand, many friends have hit rocks, got caught in rip currents, and or had stingray stings. Even though the severity of these things is less than a shark attack, their prevalence means that there are many more deaths every year due to these relatively mundane things. But when I offer to teach somebody to surf, sharks are still one of the most common objections (it's probably second to "I can't swim").

None of this contradicts what the study is saying -- it's totally possible that the overall fear is decreasing. It's just _still irrationally high_, imo.

Diver and conservationist Cristina Zenato showed another side to sharks: they come to her to have hooks removed from their mouths...

https://youtu.be/G8LmxwOgBhA

If that's real, and not anthropomorphized, it shows that sharks are complex creatures, not mindless predators.

And it also tragically shows how much damage we humans do to the natural world. Sport fishing? Not so much for the fish...

I listened to a yogi talking about mindfulness. He mentioned a session he had with a woman where they where working on the concept of flow. The woman had an experience of flow when she was bitten by a shark. She said that if she could make a drink that would create that feeling she would addicted the world. I think about that sometimes.

"Most people in a recent survey saw sharks as neutral..."

That truly made me laugh ...

As a Southern California kid in the 70s we were regular beach goers, my pal down the street as much as anyone. We went and saw Jaws in a drive in at about age 13. It didn't make a big impression on me, but he never went back in the ocean for the rest of his life, about 40 more years. He wasn't otherwise neurotic or phobic, but he got one-shot by Spielberg.

Sharks are apex predators and an integral part of the ecosystem. These two ideas are not contradictory.