SILLY SUMMER GREAT WHITE STORIES SURFACE... AGAIN

There's been a bit of a heatwave in the UK, schools have broken up and Parliament is on a summer break, so it's time for news media to dust off their annual 'could a great white shark be headed to our shores?' story.

Genuinely, I was saying to Ross the other day that it was only a matter of time before it became silly season on sharks again, and here we are. You could practically set your clock by their arrival.

Chumming the waters with click bait already are the Irish Examiner, with the headline 'Could rising sea temperatures bring great white sharks to Ireland?' (20th July).

Our very own Matt Hooper, Kristian Parton from Shark Bytes, helps put the question of whether we can expect great white sharks in UK waters in context here: Are Great White Sharks In British Waters?

And then we have the Star, touting 'Killer great white sharks heading to UK after being drawn from Med by climate change' (13th July), which was also a story doing the rounds earlier this year. And similar articles also surfaced in the likes of the Express and The Sun earlier this month.

That's on top of peddling eye-rolling stories about monstrous sharks when it is harmless Basking Sharks, so nothing like a scene from Jaws at all then. Still, that didn't stop them running with: 'Gigantic shark swims just feet away from stunned beachgoers 'like scene from Jaws'. (20th July)

It's all part of the continued onslaught from news media, still painting sharks as the villain when it comes to shark and human encounters. It shouldn't be sharks grabbing at people we should be worried about, its these attention grabbing headlines: Media's Feeding Frenzy on Shark Attacks

Although the tide is beginning to turn and the fight back has begun, in Australia some authorities have made a move to no longer report moments when sharks and humans come into contact with one another as shark attacks, but now refer to them as negative encounters: NEGATIVE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SHARK KIND

That change won't happen overnight, but it is a starting place for educating others. Discover more about great white sharks here: Great White Shark Facts

Words by Dean Newman

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