Finally you admit that sharks eat things, including people. I've never liked the idea of swimming where sharks may intrude.
 

Judith, I've never downplayed the idea of sharks eating things. It's just a part of nature, and it doesn't bother me. Sharks kill a couple people a year; we kill 100 million sharks a year. Imagine how many people sharks would kill if they were as savage and primitive as humans.

At the same time, a little common sense—like not swimming amidst shark prey—never hurt anyone.
 

100 million sharks killed each year? Is that statistic verified?
 

To the extent it can be, yes. You can read, for example, Peter Benchley's piece on cage-diving with sharks, which also goes into how the Chinese believe that ground-up shark cartilage cures cancer.

http://magazine.audubon.org/seafood/shark/

Other estimates, to be fair, put the number lower, more like 75 million.

Neither, of course, is anywhere near sustainable. So it's just a question of how many more years to go. Answer: not many.
 

I'm sure you would agree that, to the extent sharks kill humans, they are just acting out their nature. Well, so are we. We are not more savage and primitive than the sharks. If sharks had the technology, they'd destroy the earth. Nature gave humans the ability to magnify our power with technology and we are using that power to, among other things, kill sharks. Doesn't that compel the conclusion that Nature intends 100 million sharks to be killed a year? Aren't we just acting out our own natures? No, you say - Nature also gave us a conscience. Well, looking back over the history of humanity, which would you say wins out: our morality or our tendency toward violence? Maybe global warming and shark's fin soup are just Nature's way of getting rid of a pointless experiment called Life.
 

Good luck with that one. Nice world you must live in....
 

"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne..." (Mack the Knife).
 

To Anon 12:29 - You really need to seek psychiatric help. Sophmoric philosophy + loser life = nihilism. Admit it, you're jealous of us normal people who actually care about the environment, try not to destroy but to create, and think loving your fellow man is better than hating or envying him. Take your medicine and crawl back into your hole and don't come out until you're ready to be a citizen of a place called Reality. We might just not eat you.
 

12:29, I think your argument doesn't work in the context of animals. It might, however, apply to the p.c. revisionists of Native American history, the crowd that prefers to believe the nations of pre-colonial North America were generally peaceful and lived in relative harmony with each other and with the environment. In reality, similar to your argument, Native Americans would have loved the capability to wage bigger war, fish and hunt on a massive scale, and invade foreign lands for their own benefit. We just beat them to it.