Myths about Sharks

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Myths about Sharks
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Myth Sharks eat Humans

• Fact Most sharks do like meat but fish, squid,
  seal, porpoise, or whale make a sharks perfect
  meal. Some sharks, like the giant whale and
  basking sharks, only eat tiny plankton. Some
  sharks can go days or weeks without eating at
  all. Contrary to public perception, sharks attack
  less than a hundred people a year on average.
  Often the attacks are accidental and are rarely
  fatal. In fact, more people are killed each year
  by dogs, lightning, and even falling soda
  machines and coconuts than by shark attacks!

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Myth Shark Attacks are Common

• Fact In the Us there is only 1 fatal shark
  attack per year, whereas humans kill over 100
  million sharks per year.
• Fact a person's chance of getting attacked by a
  shark is 1 in 11.5 million, and a person's chance
  of getting killed by a shark is 1 in 264.1
  million.

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Myth All sharks species attack humans

• Fact Of the more then 350 shark species, about
  80 percent are unable to hurt people or rarely
  encounter people.
• the great white, tiger, bull and the oceanic
  whitetip, are the only Species that usually
  attack.

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Shark Safety

• Avoid the water at dawn, dusk, or night, when
  sharks tend to feed.
• Avoid areas where sharks generally locate
  themselves, such as murky waters and steep
  drop-offs.
• Don't swim alone, always be near a group of
  people, and if possible, avoid being at the edge
  of the group.
• Obey instructions from lifeguards and other
  authority.
• It is known that when dolphins are seen, sharks
  are usually nearby.

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Shark Finning

• Sharks are being driven to the brink of
  extinction due to a huge increase in demand for
  their fins over the last 20 years.
• The practice of Shark Finning is an extremely
  cruel one, where the animals are caught, their
  fins are cut off and they are thrown back to sea
  for a slow, painful death.

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Ways to Help Sharks

• don't eat shark fin soup! Talk to your friends
  about shark fin soup and remember Friends don't
  let friends eat shark fin soup!
• Don't patronize restaurants that serve the dish.
  Very often people are unaware of the effect that
  their eating habits have on the environment.
• If you see any of the typical "man bitten by
  shark" news items on TV, contact the TV station
  and ask them to produce a news item about shark
  finning. Remember - only about 10 people a year
  are killed by sharks, but 3 sharks are killed
  every second by humans.

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Myth Sharks are Plentiful

• Fact Many shark species are endangered because
  of pollution, loss of habitat, and excessive
  fishing in their environments. Furthermore, the
  loss of sharks imperils many ocean ecosystems
  since sharks play a key role in culling sick
  animals and keeping other populations in check.

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Myth Sharks Need to Keep moving to breathe

• Fact All sharks do need water moving over their
  gills to breathe, but some species can pump water
  over their gills by opening and closing their
  mouths while resting.

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Myth All sharks can smell Blood from Miles away

• Fact Some sharks do have a highly developed
  sense of smell, which helps them hunt in the dark
  and detect their prey. Other sharks dont depend
  on their sense of smell for foraging. All Sharks
  use the Ampullae of Lorenzini nodes on their
  noses to detect the electromagnetic fields that
  all living things produce.

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Myth Sharks Have poor vision

• Fact Sharks' eyes, which are equipped to
  distinguish colors, employ a lens up to seven
  times as powerful as a human's, and some shark
  species can detect a light that is as much as ten
  times dimmer than the dimmest light the average
  person can see.

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A diver with a huge, Docile Whale Shark
ampullae of lorenzini on a sharks snout
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Cut out images on two previous pages, and display
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Created and Designed by Bonnie
Sizer Bonnie.sizer_at_gmail.com Resident Assistant
Colorado State University
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How I set up my bulletin Board
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