How can we help the sharks cause?

 Although the figures may seem staggering, there are signs of hope for the future of the sharks.

A possible shift may be occurring in the media with the coverage in the Bay Area of California shifting from the phrase 'shark attack' to 'shark encounter' to be more accurate when reporting on shark-human interactions.

I wanted to investigate if this shift is actually impacting the public so I used the same ten volunteers from my previous study (to make the comparisons fair) and asked them how many humans they thought were killed by sharks annually. Based on the first set of results, I thought that participants would use higher figures as their guesses.  

The real answer is around 10 humans annually. The answers were surprisingly varied ranging from 1 to over 100 with 60% of answers being less than 15. I am glad that my hypothesis has been proved incorrect because it shows that people are possibly now more educated about the true nature of sharks and that they are not as dangerous as they seem. 

For me educating people is the most efficient answer to helping shark conservation. If more people know about how fascinating and magnificent this species is, they'll be more inclined to help save them. With ocean exploration becoming more and more popular with the public, more people are able to interact with sharks and find out that there is nothing to be afraid of. Sharks are amazing and we don't want to lose them. 

That was the main point of this project: to show that we have hurt sharks more than they will ever be able to hurt us. The way that they have been shown to us in the media has made them seem so dangerous that we have felt the need to find ways to 'keep them at bay'. Now their numbers are rapidly falling, leading to several environmental issues. I wanted more people to see this issue and spread it to others so they can see the importance and necessity of shark conservation. 

Thank you for reading this blog page, feel free to share this with others and educate others.

More information about sharks and their conservation:

https://sharkstewards.org/ 

https://www.sharktrust.org/

https://www.bite-back.com/?v=79cba1185463 

https://www.sharkconservationfund.org/