Under the Sea

As both a tourist attraction and a surf destination for locals, Venice Beach is exquisitely sensitive to rumors of shark sightings. On August 9th, just in time for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, a pair of fishermen three miles off Venice’s coast saw and took video footage of a 20-foot great white shark. The local news infested the beach immediately, weaving a tale reminiscent of Spielberg’s Jaws and creating a climate of fear around the incident.

Experts point to the news and pop culture treatment of sharks, particularly great whites, as unnecessarily stoking fear of sharks out of proportion to the threat they pose. In truth, humans kill over 175,000,000% more sharks than sharks kill people; a 1764706 to 1 ratio is the most conservative estimate. Maybe the great whites hum the Jaws theme when they see us.

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