Shark Attacks

The book I read to research this post was Killers In The Water by Sue Blackhall which is an excellent book that I bought at a local bookstore. This book is about the conditions that are causing shark attacks to become more frequent. Sharks are creatures that mostly stay in the deep sea and even the so called maneaters tend to prefer eating seals and dolphins to eating humans. When a shark attack does most sharks will bite a person once out of curiosity which will often be fatal and merely swim off. Things like people swimming quite far out at sea, divers swimming among sharks and carcases from ships being dumped near shore are mostly what are attracting sharks to attacking people. In the one place in Egypt they had an incredible 5 shark attacks in one week. There was evidence more than one shark was involved but they assumed there was a similar scenario to the film Jaws. They slaughtered 10 Oceanic Whitetips and those sharks could very well have only recently arrived in the area and not be responsible. Trying to capture sharks with bait is likely to attract even more sharks into the area. The idea that a shark has become a maneater and is going after people on a regular basis is unlikely. Oceanic Whitetips are responsible for more shark attacks than the other species of shark combined. One breed the Tiger Shark swims up rivers like the Zambezi and will keep on biting if it attacks you. If you are attacked by a shark the best thing is to poke it in the eye or punch it on the nose. They are sensitive in these areas and many sharks ram you and try to knock you out prior to eating you so if you can use this momentum to hit his nose you might stand a chance. Sharks in general ignore people but if a shark is going to attack you will notice it circling first. I really enjoyed this book which keeps your interest throughout and is a reasonable length at around 300 pages.