Scientists Look For Patterns In North Carolina Shark Attacks

HughPickens.com writes: The Washington Post reports that there have been seven recent shark attacks in North Carolina. Scientists are looking for what might be luring the usually shy sharks so close to shore and among the swimmers they usually avoid. It's an unusual number of attacks for a state that recorded 25 attacks between 2005 and 2014. Even with the recent incidents, researchers emphasize that sharks are a very low-level threat to humans, compared with other forms of wildlife. Bees, for example, are much more dangerous. And swimming itself is hazardous even without sharks around.

George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History, speculates that several environmental factors could be pushing sharks to congregate in the Outer Banks. It is a warm year, and the water has a higher level of salinity because of a low-level drought in the area. Also, a common species of forage fish — menhaden — has been abundant this year and might have attracted more sharks to the area. Burgess also says some fishermen put bait in the water near piers, which could lure the predators closer to shore; two of the encounters took place within 100 yards of a pier. "That's a formula for shark attacks," Burgess says of these conditions, taken together. "Now, does that explain seven attacks in three weeks? No, it doesn't."

Comments

Overfishing

[StripedCow]

Overfishing. Combined with the fact that sharks have to eat something.

Factory ships

[MrKaos]

All you have to do is look at the Factory ships and ask yourself just how much fish is left for the sharks to eat. Do we really need a scientific study to tell us that if there is no food for the sharks to eat they will try to survive on whatever they can find in the water.

Meanwhile the factory ship goes on destroying more in its by-catch leaving a corridor of nothing behind. Of course the solution will be to kill the remaining sharks and let the fucktory ships go about their business.

We are clearly a race navel gazing it's way to extinction.