their diet pretty regularly. in the united states in the winter months they are more on a fish diet. then in the summer months when the seal population is out, here on the east coast, that s when they re more feeding on marine mammals and obviously for us swimming at the beach around marine mammals, it is kind of best to move on to a different beach. you say we look and act more like seals in the water than we do fish. generally speaking sharks can tell what their normal prey items are. we believe most of the attacks that do happen they re very rare, less than 100 attacks in the world, last year more than 60 attacks. we believe these attacks are usual lay case of mistaken identity where a shark confuses us with their normal prey. you have shark week going on right now on the discovery channel. what is it about this animal that most of us will actually ever rarely see in person that has us all so rifted? our fascination with sharks began long before jaws.
go past. if you re on the west coast of our country, avoid areas where there are lots of marine mammals like sea lions. you see if you encounter a shark, do not flail. do the backstroke and you said slowly but also maintain eye contact. why? biggest thing make sure you know where that shark is. if you can see it, keep your eyes on it because that way you re going to know where it is coming from and you can present yourself as a larger target or fenn yourself off. obviously if you have a bite scenario where the shark has bitten you, whack him don t jab a shark because more times than not people have actually punched the shark in the mouth complicating the attack quite a bit. you re going for the snout and you re saying go for the snout with your elbow. with the butt of your fist, right on the snout. all their sensitive arrays are right there on their snout. that s where they pick up electric current, that s where they smell. if you hit that really hard they really don t like i
no question that s an unbelievely inhumane practice. discovery channel shark week episode last night. you talked with survivors of shark attacks. there was another attack yesterday off of jacksonville, florida. one woman was in about three to four feet of water, saw a small shark about three or four feet long coming right at her, she put her arm out and the shark pretty much shredded her arm. you ve got pointers for folks this morning on what to do if they find themselves in a situation there is to try to avoid being attacked. certainly. first and foremost, with all my experience with shark attack victims, i would say overall they re very great people. they understand that they were in the shark s world, the shark s not really at fall here, it is just wrong place, wrong time, wrong conditions. but there are some things we can avoid. avoid swimming at dusk and dawn. these are peak shark feeding times. if there is a lot of bait fish in the area, understand the sharks will come in and
polynesian cultures revered shark gods. jaws built a fear what have might be below us and that plays a large part into our fear. it is not the sharks per se but the fact there is an animal there that s been known to attack people in the past and it lives in a world that we can t often see or aren t very coordinated in. let me come back to this idea whether humans are actually a source of food for a shark like a great white. obviously we re not their normal prey because we only play in the ocean, we don t live in it. but if we go back to the striking video from the discovery channel of the shark going after this is a seal decoy that s being towed behind a boat. if you re a swimmer that s out there in the ocean or if you re a surfer, let s say, or a boogie border, does the shark really care whether you re its normal food on? if you re putting off a signature that s similar to the prey that it usually goes after, are you fair game, in its mind? absolutely.
the sharks do care. sharks want a very fatty, very high-calorie animal like a seal. they don t want a boney animal like us. oftentimes when great whites do attack people there is not a secondary attack. they don t come back to finish off the deed because we re not what they re after. gotcha. you say it is interesting that we fear sharks top of, technically they have move to be scared of when it comes to human beings. you said 200,000 sharks a day are killed by humans. that s correct. we have very little fear from sharks. enjoy your time at the beach. but the flip side of the equation we are killing 73 million sharks a year. that s mainly for their fins. they re extremely valuable. a practice called finning where fishermen bring the sharks on board, cut the fins off, the shark is dumped into the ocean to literally suffocate. we re trying to close that practice through an act called the shark conservation act that s up for review in the senate right now in the united states.