Shark-human Interaction And Body Language Of Sharks

Most nursery grounds for sharks are in the shallows for one main reason, to protect the pups from larger sharks. But what happens when sea levels keep going up making those nursery grounds more accessible to larger sharks?

When it comes to hurting animals, sportfishermen are second to none, especially when dealing with sharks. More often than not, sharks are seen with broken or injured jaws to the extent that their likelihood to survive is very much limited. These wounds are caused by sportfishermen who try to rip the hook out of a shark's mouth once they realize that they do not have a fish on their hooks. Proper procedure would be to bring the shark along the boat, remove the hook, or at least cut the line as close to the hook as possible. However, as long as the line strength is not reduced, or smaller hooks used, sharks with injured lower jaws will remain a common sight.

An unbelievable encounter with a huge white shark just happened in Hawaii. The large animal popped up next to a group of snorkelers and interacted with them for hours. How incredible is that? A wonderful and mind-boggling moment. Unfortunately, some news stations could not accept the beauty and harmony but had to look for anything negative. Sometimes, one wonders… 

Shore fishing for sharks is another destructive fishing activity and should be banned, once and for all. Since it will not likely happen, it should at least be restricted and controlled to the extent that even the smallest disregard to the newly set regulations would end in hefty fines and jail time.

The oceans belong to no one. So any country that feels it can do whatever they want within their waters, be it polluting it or overfishing their shark or bony fish populations, should be allowed to be invaded and their practices be stopped without legal repercussions from other governments. Any criminal act against nature within a country's territorial waters must be punished by, e.g. implementing embargoes, jail time of the responsible parties (e.g., premier ministers, presidents…) and paying fines where the amounts of money then are used to reverse the damage done to nature and/or their inhabitants.

Nursery grounds are the most critical habitats for sharks. While growing up around and in them, they find food and shelter, and the time to learn and hone skills. Without these grounds, survival for young sharks are not just questioned but pretty much impossible. More emphasis must be given to find and protect these habitats. One way to pursue would be tagging pregnant females.

Australians feel that they have yet another "shark problem" which they cannot get a handle on, and so there is much talk about netting beaches, putting up electronic repellents or culling more sharks. What is needed is to find out if this "outbreak" is out of the norm, and how these latest bites compare to the past. As long as there is no statistical modeling done that includes the local population, one is likely not getting a good reading on the current situation. 

Whenever out there facing sharks, it is crucial to try to understand what these animals think and "where they come from" when checking us out. "MC OAP"–Mental Capacity Oriented Animal Perspective–focuses on precisely that. To get a better grasp at the situation one finds oneself in, a person should try to see the very situation from the shark's viewpoint, combined with its likely brain power.

Encounters with sharks are rare, and so most encounters will take place in a diver's mind. However, visualizing a scenario with a shark over and over will make it less stressful when then an actual encounter happens. So even divers that can't participate in workshops on shark-human interaction can improve their skills by reading about shark encounters and while doing so should simultaneously visualize the very scenario. Visualizing shark encounters is a potent tool in preparation for the real event.

Another incident happened at the Brother Islands, Egypt, in the Red Sea, and the blame goes from the shark to the diver, to the guides. At the end, all that matters is that the incident could have been prevented, but neither guides know how to face a shark, nor their clients. Granted, the people most could make a difference are the guides of the liveaboards that go out to the Brothers. It should be an easy task to teach them, but it isn't. So, as long as guides do not teach proper procedure of how to face an approaching shark, these incidents will keep happening.

Some shark species carry different common names, depending on where one looks for them, others only have a single name but are confused with other species that carry similar names. Then there are the shark species which carry the word "great" in the name, and so on. Is there a way to plow through all this confusion, or does one have to accept it?

Sharks that tend to bite a person approach more direct, overstep the inner threshold right away, and get close during their first passing. It seems that these sharks, independent of species, have a much lower threshold to approach new things. Another feature is their eyes. When looking at them during this first encounter, these eyes do not seem to show the typical eye roll but more of a stare for as long as possible until the animal passed the diver for good.

When it comes to activities and their exposure to sharks regarding incidents, abalone divers are up there. What is it that attracts sharks, in this case predominantly white sharks, to the divers. The answer likely lays in the sounds produced when prying off these snails from the rocks. However, other reasons come to mind as well. So, are there ways to reduce the attractiveness of this activity?

Very often, an animal comes across a certain way that will then be described with human characteristics. Such a description is called anthropomorphism: giving human characteristics or behaviors to an animal, or an object. However, one should be very careful when doing so since the mental state of an animal, or whatever is described, with such a label is likely unknown. Quite often a more neutral term to describe the animal is more appropriate.

For years, scientists labeled the wounds sharks create during mating 'mating scars,' and it was just assumed they are part of regular copulation between males and females. However, these scars were always rare, and nobody wondered why that was. We asked that question and found the reason behind it: rape. Here, an overview is given, how rape was determined, and what that means for the image of sharks.

Whenever a beach is closed after an incident with a shark, the duration is not based on scientific evaluation of the possible criteria that could have brought in the shark, but simple guesswork. There is no protocol to follow; thus, every governing authority where the respective shore area falls can pretty much freely decide on how to handle the closed area, and when to reopen.  

In the middle of the Pacific, with a radius of 250 km, lays the white shark café, a place where male and female white sharks gather. Why do they undertake this journey to reach this place and then stay there for months? Although food is a likelihood, it cannot be the main lure. Could it be a mating site? Do white sharks stemming from different populations mingle with each other? This area triggers many questions with not enough answers. However, one question that has not been asked so far is if other such cafés exist in the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

Seal Island, Dyer Island, Dangerous reef are places where white shark sightings could be guaranteed. But that is currently not the case anymore. What happened? Where did they all go? What could have created this situation? Lots of questions to the disappearing of white sharks from some of the main hot spots around the world, but (so far) no answers that could explain it.

Another vendetta against sharks took place in Queensland. Two people were severely bitten within a few days, and the only approach the governmental agency in charge was to set drum lines and indiscriminately killing sharks. Putting "drum crimes" out there is not just poor judgment; it is also a crime against nature. What is the possible thinking behind such a vendetta…?

When it comes to sharks, everybody seems to know that white sharks, bulls and tiger sharks are the species most often involved in incidents. But it that true? If we look at the raw data files of incidents, there is a less clear picture. How come?