About Those North Carolina Shark Attacks

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Awesome Ocean received this letter from a reader regarding the tragic shark attacks in North Carolina last weekend.

Dear North Carolina officials & residents,

I’m deeply saddened & feel terrible for the two teens who lost limbs as a result of the shark bites they sustained while swimming in the ocean.

I beg you, PLEASE do not take these two isolated incidents as an excuse to make the uneducated & reactionary decision to start killing sharks.

That will solve nothing.

The state of the art research currently being done on sharks shows that they are always moving. They’re always following food & traveling hundreds of miles in search of it. So chances are very high that the two sharks involved in these encounters are long gone. Jaws wasn’t real. The rogue shark theory is false! Killing the next sharks you see would be like slamming the barn door after the horse has run out. Completely unnecessary!  

The educated & proactive approach would be to use all the scientific data available to properly inform the public of shark behavior and what environmental conditions to avoid when swimming in the ocean such as migrating schools of prey fish and avoiding areas near inlets where prey fish move in & out of.

Humans aren’t on the sharks menu. We’re an invasive species. But we’re an intelligent species that can avoid these negative experiences with sharks by actually being intelligent.

Yours Truly,

– Sea Dog