When people think about sharks, they think of Jaws. Sharks are, in the minds of most people, inherently nasty creatures; vicious eating machines, prowling the oceans looking for a hapless swimmer to savage. The truth is far different. Sharks may be a menace, but more people are killed every year by bee stings than they are by shark bites, and nobody clears the beaches because a bee happens to wander past.
Believe it or not, your average shark would prefer a nice juicy seal to a human. In fact, marine scientists will often tell you that most shark attacks are simply a case of mistaken identity, or the shark having a nibble to see what their target is. On a species level, however, we are far more of a danger to them than they are to us, and even though they can seem brutal, cold and ugly killers, they are just animals surviving in their natural environment. Lions of the sea, if you will; and to lose them as a species would be a tragedy.
