Since the release of the bestselling novel “Jaws” in 1974 and the movie itself in 1975, sharks ended up with a bad reputation as man-eaters. While everybody knows that both the novel and its Hollywood version’s main goal is to entertain people, nonetheless, it changed people’s idea of sharks forever. That is when an uncontrollable fear started to grow in people’s mind.

Facts could not be further from the truth. You see, while some types of sharks are considered to be fierce predators which also are known to be responsible for most attacks on people, 80% of all sharks are considered virtually harmless to people either because of their small size of the fact that their diet simply does not include humans.

As a matter of fact, did you know that the two largest sharks are virtually harmless to people and can literally be approached by divers without any safety concerns? Yes, you probably have guessed it already. I am talking about the Whale shark and the Basking shark. While both could compete in size with some whales, they are still considered to be part of the fish family.

Amongst some of the other types of sharks that are virtually harmless, there are: the Leopard shark, the Horn shark, the Brown Smoothhound shark and the zebra shark.

The sad part of this idea that people have about sharks is that the victims here are not humans, they are sharks. You see, 100 million sharks are killed every year as opposed to 58 shark attacks made on human of which 4 were fatal during the year 2005.

You see, numerous harmless types of sharks are killed in fishing nets or during fishing expeditions as they instinctively follow schools of fish for feeding purposes and end up dying over it. And I am not talking about finning or voluntarily fishing sharks for culinary purposes. Now who is the victim and who is the predator?