Shark

International Review of Environmental History , 2017

This paper examines the world’s two oldest and largest national shark control programmes, those of South Africa and Australia. Officials from these two countries have spent more than a century trying to dictate the movement and behaviour of sharks to improve bather safety. To this end, people have deployed technologies ranging from barriers, to nets, to drum lines, and even to electrical fields and depth charges. This essay treats these programmes as prime examples of the enduring, perhaps inescapable, tensions between mobile nature and the real and imagined boundaries with which we seek to control and administer it. This topic reveals important new dimensions to trans-boundary environmental history. First, this story highlights the need for environmental histories that consider vast (even transoceanic) scales, while simultaneously maintaining attention to local contexts. Second, bather safety programs provide a useful case study for exploring how efforts to control nature have historically intersected with attempts to discipline and regulate humans. Third, this history demonstrates how changing perceptions of nature and predators have forced policymakers to alter the placement and enforcement of barriers that structure interactions between the human and nonhuman worlds.

2002

Conservation Biology, 2013

Forty years after the release of Steven Spielberg's Jaws the image of the shark in popular culture and public memory still bears the influence of that film. This article explores: recent high-profile human/ shark interactions, the impact of the Stewart Island shark cage diving industry, the body of traditional beliefs and lore about sharks exists along the southern coast of New Zealand, and the way that Jaws has influenced modern perceptions of sharks. The theoretical perspective of multispecies ethnography is suggested as a possible vehicle for further unpacking our understanding of human/ shark interactions.

2005

Environmental Management, 2013

Much of the history of the human–shark relationship has been based on fear. For centuries, the goal has been to kill sharks that come near boats or beaches. Yet, there is a growing trend of more positive feelings toward local shark populations. In this article, we demonstrate that feelings of pride toward sharks can serve as an opposing force to fear, and can moderate the way fear affects support for policies to kill sharks. This study reports on two surveys of pride toward sharks from Eastern and Western Australia. These highlight a new and emerging story for people and sharks. We argue that the combination of shifts in the understanding of sharks’ motives during human–shark interactions and higher levels of pride support a new political dynamic in which the public prefers nonlethal responses to shark bites in support of a burgeoning “save the sharks” movement.

Ethnobiology and Conservation

Biological Conservation

Abstract Shark is a word that translates into fear for many people around the world. Why are sharks so threatening? Sharks are highly misunderstood creatures of the deep. They are often seen as man-eating monsters, thanks in part to movies such as “JAWS” 1975. There has been a steady increase in shark mortality since the movie, but also due to other factors including shark finning, over fishing, by-catch, and pollution. It is a fact that less people are attacked and or killed by sharks each year than by lightning strikes. If a person gets attacked by a shark then there is usually an all-out shark hunt. This is one reason that has caused numbers to dwindle and not rebound. Sharks are apex predators and the top of their food chain in marine ecosystems. A disturbance to the food chain could result in detrimental effects to the oceanic ecosystem, other species in those systems, economic downfalls globally, and climate change. A number of studies have shown that the loss of sharks can cause a collapse in many fisheries and therefore it is necessary to create conservation efforts to protect these predators. Case studies have been done around the world on shark loss in specific hotspots and the side effects it has on the environment and world economics. This paper focuses on the reason sharks are endangered throughout the world today, and how the economy has been and will be affected in the future. It will also examine the effects that would be felt by the oceanic ecosystem if sharks were gone forever. Keywords: extinction, sharks, ecosystems, food chains, bycatch, finning, overfishing