Kills More People Than Sharks?

With “Shark Week” looming I thought it was time to send out a post to give you some information you have to dig really deep to find. For example, did you know a common domesticated animal kills more people than sharks?

I commend Discovery for their amazing shark coverage but you can only do so much on television in a week. The following information ranges from the esoteric to the criminally underreported.

Horse Vs. Shark

Sounds like a Syfy Original doesn’t it?

In reality, I am talking statistics and according to the Centers for Disease Control sharks kill about one person in the United States annually. Horses kill around 20.

That won’t grab too many headlines because too many media figures and wealthy, influential people have horses but it is a fact.

Sharks are easy to sensationalize but in reality, Mr. Ed’s kind has killed far more people than “Jaws” and its family in the United States.

Sashimi Specialist

Raw salmon with a splash of soy sauce and a bit of wasabi is one of my favorite food items. Raw salmon is also a favorite of a virtually unknown close cousin of the great white shark-the aptly named salmon shark.

Salmon shark fitted with a tag. Photo courtesy National Marine Fisheries Service.

This shark dwells the waters of the northern Pacific and is a fairly common catch on Alaskan fishing vessels.

From the article Hot Blooded Predator in Alaska Fish & Wildlife News.

Ferocious fighters and fast swimmers, the salmon shark is a close cousin to the great white shark. The salmon shark, Lamna ditropis,belongs family Lamnidaewith four other species: the great white shark, the shortfin and longfin mako sharks, and the salmon shark’s Atlantic counterpart, the porbeagle (or mackerel) shark.

According to The Conservation Institute, these sharks are not only warm-blooded but super fast.

Salmon sharks (Lamna ditropis) are large, powerful, warm-bodied (endothermic), and streamlined predators adapted for high-speed swimming. Reports from the U.S. Navy have clocked salmon sharks exceeding 50 knots.

This would make the salmon shark one of the fastest fish in the ocean. They are reported to reach 11.9 feet (3.6 m) in total length (Eschmeyer et al. 1983, Compagno 1984). Most of the salmon sharks encountered in Alaskan waters (the northeastern Pacific) are surprisingly uniform: over 93% are females ranging from 6 1/2 to 8 feet (2 – 2.5 m) in length and roughly 300 pounds (136 kg). Salmon sharks in the 700 pound range have been reported by sport fishermen in Alaska.

These sharks are fascinating creatures that rarely come across swimmers or divers and strike fear only into the hearts of sockeye and chinook.

Underrated Biter

The common blacktip shark is never listed in Internet and television lists of the most dangerous sharks.

Yet as we reported in recent weeks iff you look at the raw numbers from the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), you will see they should be.

While blacktips were only positively identified in one unprovoked fatality they were responsible for 29 total attacks.

The author with a huge blacktip shark caught and released off the coast of Venice, La.

That puts only the great white, tiger and bull-the three species everyone recognizes as potentially dangerous above them. We wrote about this last year here but have some new insight.

ISAF has a category for requiem and lamniforems-attacks linked to those branches but not to exact species and those are both higher than the blacktip. But when it comes to identified sharks biting people blacktips rank fourth.

Period.

This is not to implicate the blacktip as a creature to be feared. It is however to question some of the shark attacks identified as the bull and to  lesser extent spinner sharks (which have 16 attacks attribute to them.)

Spinner sharks are nearly identical to blacktips and bull sharks and big blacktips can appear similar especially in murky water.

It’s an interesting thing to consider as millions of beachcombers, wade fishermen and divers hit coastal waters.

That’s it for now. Expect much more to come on sharks over the coming two weeks.

Chester Moore, Jr.