Remove The Nets

This shark is misunderstood.

You are more likely to be killed in a hunting accident, lightening strike or sand pit than a shark. In 2007, one person worldwide was killed by a shark bite. During that same period, 793 people died due to bicycle accidents and 49 died due to dog bites.

In the U.S., the country with the highest number of attacks, your odds of drowning at a beach are 1 in 3.5 million. Your odds of dying from a shark attack are less than 1 in 264 million. Bees, wasps and snakes are responsible for far more fatalities each year.

Many more people are injured and killed on land while driving to and from the beach than by sharks in the water. At the beach, dehydration, jellyfish and stingray stings and sunburn are far more likely to occur than a shark bite.

The extreme rarity of shark bites do not justify out-of-proportion fear of or lack of empathy for sharks.

Clearly sharks like this do not pose risks to people.

Humans are not on the menu of any shark. Sharks are intelligent and generally afraid of people.

Shark bites appear to be a case of curiosity or mistaken identity in low visibility – highlighted by the fact that sharks almost never desire a second bite. We are an unnatural source of food, and the shark swims away to find more suitable food elsewhere.

The man-eating monster is a myth that Hollywood and the media have created in order to increase ratings and sell newspapers. Actual attacks far outpace reports – as do the severity of the incidents. In KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), where the nets are installed, there have only been 27 fatalities from sharks in the last 102 years. That averages to one fatality every 3 – 4 years.

There are many places in the world where sharks and humans use the exact same water and can peacefully coexist without injury to either party, including on the other coast of South Africa, a coast that has no nets but a very healthy white shark population. And, throughout the country, many individuals safely seek out shark encounters on a daily basis, safely, to experience sharks without the unnecessary cages or nets between them, and the sharks.