This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca!
Transcript:
Fifty years ago, a seminal film hit the theaters to rave reviews and massive crowds. It would go on to become a classic, but in doing so it would stoke a fear so great that even today people continue to be terrified by the film’s star animal predator, avoiding its habitat and calling for the destruction of its species.
I’m talking, of course, about this.
Okay no, I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself, 1975 was truly a banger year for the movies. I’m actually talking about Jaws, the horror film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Roy Sheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, and Bruce, the actually kind of ridiculous-looking pneumatically-powered prop shark who was built after the producers realized they could not, in fact, train a great white shark. I LOVE Jaws, having seen it at far too young an age on VHS, because I swear to god parents really just did not give a shit in the ‘80s, especially when it came to their third child. It scared the hell out of me, and was one major reason I preferred the pool over the shore (the other reason, of course, being sand). And I wasn’t the only one: in an article published in a 2015 issue of the Australian Journal of Political Science, Dr. Chris Pepin-Neff (who uses they/them pronouns) coined the term the “Jaws Effect” to describe how the film has influenced policy decisions related to sharks over the decades, particularly “that sharks are intentionally hunting people, that shark bites are fatal events and that killing individual sharks will solve the problem.”
Pepin-Neff explores several case studies, including incidents during the spring and summer of the year 2000 in which three people were killed after being bitten by sharks. This led to people to demand the beaches be closed until the responsible shark had been hunted down and killed, with the public, the media, and authorities often referring to Jaws, with the politicians in question desperately wanting to do anything to not look like the do-nothing mayor of Jaws.
By that point, Peter Benchley, the original author of the book Jaws, had seen the “Jaws Effect” in action so often that he was disgusted with the “legacy” of his book leading to the slaughter of sharks all over the planet. So, he actually wrote to the Australian people, saying “While I cannot pretend to comprehend the grief felt by Ken Crew’s friends and family, and would not conceive of diminishing the horror of the attack, I plead with the people of Australia– who live with, understand and, in general, respect sharks more than any other nation on earth– to refrain from slaughtering this mag-
ni cent ocean predator in the hope of achieving some catharsis, some fleeting satisfaction, from wreaking vengeance on one of nature’s most exquisite creations.”
“This was not a rogue shark, tantalised by the taste of human flesh and bound now to kill and kill again. Such creatures do not exist, despite what you might have derived from Jaws.”
His words fell on deaf ears and a policy was put in place to kill any shark that harmed any human, but he continued to advocate for sharks and for oceanic diversity until his death six years later.
Thanks to efforts like his and other advocates and organizations, in the past few decades, sharks have seen at least a bit of an improvement in their reputation. Yes, they’re still scary, but I, for instance, have a better understanding of the relative risk of going into the ocean. I learned that most interactions between sharks and humans are accidental, that most sharks do not view humans as a light snack, and I’m now to the point where I spend hours at a time surfing, swimming, snorkeling, and SCUBA diving in the “shark-infested waters” of Northern California, which I must prefer to the human-infested beaches and pools.
An interesting part of that improving reputation has been the influence of, well, influencers. Shark influencers. Those of you who, unlike me, don’t spend a significant amount of time in the ocean, planning to get into the ocean, or thinking about the ocean, might not be aware of this trend but there are some people who have built a significant following by posting photos and videos of themselves diving alongside sharks, which in theory sounds perfectly fine, right? Again, most species of shark do not see humans as viable prey and so a powerful and exciting demonstration of that principle is showing them, well, not attacking a very vulnerable human in their midst.
In practice, things are more complicated. Ocean Ramsey is probably the most famous of this type of influencer, having more than two million Instagram followers and her own shark diving operation in Hawaii. Ramsey has been criticized by shark researchers and other experts for not *just* swimming and posing near sharks, but for, well, harassing them. She touches them, pushes them, and even grabs their fins to “ride” them. As shark researcher David Shiffman told the Washington Post in 2019, “I can’t believe that ‘please don’t grab the 18 foot long wild predator’ is something that needs to be explicitly said out loud, but here we are.” Because yeah, sharks aren’t maniacal human-hunting machines, but they ARE apex predators. And while the vast majority of sharks pose no threat to humans, some of them definitely do, like the great white sharks that Ramsey has been seen molesting. The white shark in question was in Hawaii to feed on a decomposing whale, meaning that on the one hand it was probably stuffed with food and unlikely to want to munch down on the toothpick pestering it. But on the other hand, anyone who knows anything about feeding frenzies around whale carcasses knows that it’s very easy for an apex predator to get a little carried away and not really pay attention to what it’s chomping down on. And unlike many other sharks, when a white shark chomps, it means it.
The danger to humans isn’t the only problem, of course. You’re unlikely to do much damage to a great white shark by petting it, but again, most sharks are smaller and, yes, more prone to be stressed out or hurt by human interaction. For instance, take this piece of shit named Grand Murdock who thought it would be a good idea to bear hug a lemon shark, a vulnerable species in Bora Bora, and ride it around. Lemon sharks have never killed a human, but if this one got scared and bit this fucking moron, guess what would happen? That’s right, another scary “shark attack” in the news, leading to more people thinking they’re evil man eaters who need to be culled.
For instance, back in February a Russian influencer Nastya Vitonova, was bitten by a shark while diving and taking photos in the Maldives, where she said a guide urged her to get closer to the sharks to take “more impressive” pictures. Though her hand only needed stitches and was now healing, the headline said she was “traumatized” while “covered in blood” from the “attack.”
I was interested to see if there was any data on how influencers like Ramsey have impacted sharks in the past few years, and I was surprised to find a story from April that I originally missed: Selfie-seekers ‘fuelling rise in shark attacks’: “A growing number of shark bites are down to social media influencers encouraging tourists to ‘stroke’ the predators, according to researchers.”
Wow! I looked around and saw a LOT of headlines like this: Influencers ‘are to blame for rise in shark attacks’, scientists say. Selfie-Seeking Tourists Could be Contributing to Rise in Shark Attacks. How influencers are the reason for rise in shark attacks — experts shocked that they have to issue warning.
Weirdly, not a single article–on the New York Post, MSN, the Daily Mail–linked to the study in question or even gave the title of it. They did all link back to that Times article, which ALSO did not link to the study or give its title or any other reference. If you’ve watched any of my videos at this point, you know that this is a huge red flag.
Luckily, the Times did name the lead author: “Professor Eric Clua of PSL University in France, who led the research, said that social media appeared to be playing a role. “I don’t encourage, as many influencers do on social networks, [people] to cling to a shark’s dorsal fin or stroke it, under the pretext of proving that they are harmless and [those people are] supposedly working for their conservation,” he said.
“He suspects that humans take liberties with sharks, especially smaller ones, in a way they would not with an unfamiliar dog. “People know the difference between a [Yorkshire terrier] and a pit bull, whereas they don’t know the difference between a blacktip reef shark and a bull shark, which are their marine equivalents,” he said.
““There’s an incredibly negative perception bias towards sharks … they are responsible for fewer than ten human deaths a year worldwide, whereas dogs are responsible for more than 10,000 deaths and are perceived positively by the public.””
Those are great points and I have no doubt that Clua said those things to the Times reporter! But I wanted to know exactly how quickly “shark attacks” have been rising and how the researchers were able to link this rise to “selfie-seeking” tourist influencers. So I looked at all of Clua’s recent papers (which are many, dude is prolific as fuck), and found the one that best matched what the Times reported: The Talion law “tooth for a tooth”: self-defense as a motivation for shark bites on human aggressors. Weird that they don’t mention influencers in the title, huh? Or in the description. But surely in the paper, right? Surely? Right?
Yeah, no. I read the entire paper (it was good!) and then had to go back to The Times article to double check that I had the right one: Published the same month as the Times article? Check. “Published in the journal Frontiers in Conservation,” check. “records of shark encounters in the waters off French Polynesia between 2009 and 2023,” check. “Of the 74 bites recorded in this period, about 5 per cent were found likely to have been defensive, happening immediately after a human action perceived by the shark as threatening.” Check! I think we can safely say that yes, this is the study in question. And yet the words “influencer,” “social media,” or “selfie” appear nowhere in it, because that’s not at all what the research is about. The actual research explores how common it is that shark bites happen when the shark is performing self-defense as opposed to predation, which they found happens often enough to push back on the narrative that all shark/human interactions are “attacks.” It’s fundamentally unfair and incorrect to categorize a shark as “attacking” a human when the shark is simply trying to protect its own life.
Aha, you may be thinking, even absent those keywords, surely this research showed numerous examples of sharks defensively biting influencers who harassed them, right? Well, no, in fact, they did not detail a single instance of that occurring. What they did find was that the vast majority of shark bites occurred because of (drumroll please)…fishing.
Many people do not know this, but fishing is one of the absolute greatest dangers to shark populations worldwide, and I’m not even talking about people who are specifically fishing for sharks. Influencers like Ocean Ramsey ask people to support legislation like HB553, which criminalizes the purposeful capturing and killing of sharks. Killing sharks for meat CAN BE a threat to sharks’ population decline, but as David Shiffman describes in this 2020 lecture at Arizona State University, the biggest threat is sustainable fishing practices, of sharks AND other fish. Sustainable shark fisheries exist, and Shiffman argues that most shark researchers agree that banning sustainable shark fisheries in the US, which has the most sustainable shark fisheries in the world, does nothing to improve populations and in fact does a lot to make the problem worse.
But in this research, it’s specifically the fishing for other species that leads to these defensive shark bites: spearfishing, for instance, involves divers cruising past sharks with a whole bunch of delicious food. When the shark understandably tries to get a bike, they get a spear to the spine, which causes them to, again understandably, bite the thing that’s stabbing them.
In a case study, the researchers describe an incident in which two spear fishermen shot a gray reef shark in the side with an arrow to prevent it from getting their catch. The arrow’s barb got stuck in the shark’s side, and to prevent the loss of the weapon they started pulling the shark back to their boat to try to get the arrow back, at which point the shark bit one of them in the calf. He slapped it until it let go and bit him again on the hand, so he grabbed it and dragged it nearer to the boat. It then let go of his hand and turned and bit the other guy on the knee, at which point the first guy full on cut off the shark’s tail, causing it to sink and die. They flew to Tahiti for medical treatment at which point the news reported all of this as “SHARK ATTACK!”
Look, I’m not saying those guys were evil for spearfishing in a part of the world that relies upon things like that to survive, but I think we can all agree that the shark definitely wasn’t the bad guy, there.
Another common cause of bites in this research were traditional “fish traps,” which are built by Polynesian fishermen using the natural formation of coral and reef atolls that allow fish inside but utilize a labyrinth system to prevent them from leaving. A few days pass before the fish are then collected, by which time sometimes a shark has entered the trap and found a delightful all-you-can-eat buffet, and the fishermen need to enter the trap to incapacitate and usually kill the shark in order to gather the remaining fish, which often results in the shark fighting back. Again, kinda understandable!
The final category of defensive bites described in this research finally comes closest to being something you might see and be inspired by on social media: it’s labeled “shark handling,” which does sound like a category that those shark-riding influencers would fall under, though those aren’t any of the examples. Instead, the researchers point to scientists getting bitten while trying to collect samples from sharks, and later on in discussion section they describe an incident of people who were bitten while attempting to rescue sharks that had beached themselves.
Again, they don’t explicitly mention social media, but I’ll go ahead and make that connection, because I’m constantly getting algorithmically served “inspiring” videos of average people on the beach coming together to “rescue” animals, including sharks. And I can absolutely see those videos inspiring other people to do the same thing, so with that in mind I’ll share what these researchers had to say about the rescues in question:
“These people made two mistakes: first grabbing the animal by the tail, which has the double disadvantage of putting deleterious stress on the animal’s spine with the risk of serious dislocation and of bite exposure as sharks are naturally flexible linked to their cartilaginous skeleton and can turn around to bite at almost 180°; and secondly expecting that the animal, most of the time in great distress, will consider would-be rescuers as supportive assets. As a matter of fact, the most instinctive reflex for sharks will be to defend themselves and bite.”
The absolute best thing you can do if you see a shark in distress–or any wild animal, for that matter–is to use your cell phone to call your local wildlife management office to alert experts and find out what to do next. If you came across a human lying in the street covered in blood you wouldn’t just grab their feet and drag them back into their house, would you? No, you’d call the experts who would send someone while giving you instructions on how to stabilize the situation until they arrive.
So yeah, I agree with the researchers who urge people to stop manhandling wildlife: wherever you are in nature, the best thing you can do is leave no trace and don’t annoy the fauna to live out your Disney princess fantasy. If you’re an “influencer,” you can absolutely encourage people to see wild animals as complex and fascinating and essential members of our ecosystem and you don’t need to touch them to do it. Like, I get that that’s part of what made these people so popular, but I’m sorry, look at Ocean Ramsey. Look at her. She’d be popular on Instagram if she was doing knitting tutorials or selling Cutco knives. There’s no reason that she and other popular influencers can’t influence people to respect wildlife and leave them alone.
But that said, I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that their terrible behavior is leading to a “rise in shark attacks,” and it’s actually pretty hilarious that all these awful mainstream media outlets are literally using “shark attacks” in headlines to talk about a study that concludes, “The existence of self-defense bites…calls into question the practice of labeling all shark bites as attacks.
The media plays a key role in this perception, tending in the event of bites to portray sharks as the aggressor, even when humans are responsible for initiating the interaction. This simplistic approach damages the image of sharks and, indeed, their conservation, which relies on public support.”
If you are inspired and want to help the sharks, the best thing you can do, besides following researchers like David Shiffman (@whysharksmatter on Bluesky) is to check your own diet. Here in NorCal we have the absolutely awesome Monterey Bay Aquarium, which launched Seafood Watch in 1999 to provide both businesses and consumers a simple, science-based recommendation system to guide them towards sustainable options. They provide guides organized by region or species that are updated regularly to tell you what you should avoid when choosing your meal, and they also partner with chefs and businesses to certify that they’re a safe place for seafood.
For those outside the US, the Marine Stewardship Council offers similar guidance and certification around the globe.
And for the love of all things good, please, whatever you do, do not ride apex predators for internet clout.
