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What would you do if a hungry shark attacked you? Hopefully you will never have to answer that question for real. Aaron Perez wasn’t so lucky. Last summer, the 11-year-old was wading in the Gulf of Mexico. A bull shark suddenly attacked him.

Fortunately, Aaron knew what to do. Just the day before, he had learned that one should punch an attacking shark in the gills or eyes. As the bull shark bit down on the boy’s arm, Perez punched it in the gills. The shark let go. Aaron managed to get to shore safely.

Aaron survived the attack. A few days later, he talked about it. “The shark was big and ugly,” he said, “bigger than my dad.”

Shark attacks are nasty. Luckily, they are also rare. Worldwide, sharks attack fewer than a hundred people a year. Only about six die.

Most attacks happen in waters where sharks are known to live. In such places, the toothy hunters can scare many people away from the beach. Overall, though, sharks have far more reason to fear us than we have to fear them.

Each year, humans kill 60 million sharks. A key reason is to get shark cartilage. That soft, flexible material makes up a shark’s skeleton.

Many people use shark cartilage to treat cancer. You can find it in some U.S. health food stores. But no one has proven that shark cartilage actually cures cancer.

People also want shark fins. Chefs in many Asian countries use the fins to make soup. The tasty soup is very expensive. In China, a single bowl can cost a hundred dollars!

Because some shark parts are so valuable, a few species, or kinds, are overhunted. That could cause them to die out forever. That would be too bad. Why? Well, sharks have a long history on Earth. Our world wouldn’t be the same without them.

The first sharks lived 400 million years ago. That was long before the dinosaurs. Little is known about prehistoric sharks. Scientists have found few fossils. That’s because cartilage doesn’t last long. But scientists do find one thing—teeth.

Roughly 400 shark species swim in the world’s oceans today. They come in all sizes. By and large, sharks are predators. They eat other animals. Now let’s meet a few sharks.

The whale shark is the largest fish in the sea. Fully grown, it can be as long as a school bus. Yet it does not hunt large animals. Instead this shark swims with its mouth wide open. It gathers anchovies, sardines, and tiny animals and plants called plankton.

An angel shark hides in sand and mud on the seafloor. When a school of fish swims by, the shark snatches dinner with its jaws.

The hammerhead shark uses its head to pin down prey, or food, while eating. The saw shark has a snout that looks like a saw blade. It sweeps the sand with its strange snout until it finds a meal.

Nearly 5,000 razor-sharp teeth line the mouth of a great white shark. When one falls out, another replaces it. Those teeth help the shark hunt. Yet it doesn’t chew food. It gulps.

Great whites get blamed for most shark attacks. But tiger and bull sharks can also be dangerous. So can a few other species.

No one knows why sharks attack people. Scientists say that it may be a case of mistaken identity. To a shark, a swimmer can look like a seal. And many sharks eat seals.

Tourism may be a bigger problem. Many people want to see sharks up close. So they dump chum, or fish parts, into the sea. Hungry sharks then swim toward the tourists’ boats. Sharks may learn to go to the same places again and again to find food.

Sharks may not even like how people taste. Scientists point out that sharks often leave after just one bite. Of course, even a single shark bite can be deadly.

As deadly as some sharks look, the fearsome fish are not unstoppable. Nearly 80 shark species are threatened or endangered. That means they may die out.

“Time is running out for these species,” says Sonja Fordham, a scientist at the Ocean Conservancy. “Programs to protect sharks and their habitat are urgently needed to ensure that these magnificent species survive.”

Article by Rene Ebersole. Hammerhead photo (top) © Peter Kragh, SeaPics.com. "Shark Tales" appears on pages 2-9 of our May 2005 issue.

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