Sharks: puppy dogs of the sea?

Many people think sharks are dangerous. They are never friendly in films like Jaws.

Florida's got lots of sharks. Sharks bite 16 people a year in Florida. This is about a quarter of all shark bites. But around the world, sharks only bite 69 people a year. And millions of people go to swim in Florida's seas every year. Last year, 135 million visitors swam there.

The Florida Program for Shark Research is educating people. There are lots of people and lots of sharks. Sharks can easily eat people. But they don't, says programme director Gavin Naylor.

Gavin Naylor: "So, the sharks are trying to avoid people. We know that they must be doing because there are so many of them and so many people. And people are very easy to, to target. They are a little bit like floating sausages if you're a shark."

Naylor thinks that shark bites are an accident.

Gavin Naylor: "So there are a lot of people in the water and a lot of sharks in the water. The sharks are targeting the fishes that they normally feed on. But once in a while, people get in the way, and the sharks make a mistake, and they bite the people."

The number of sharks is going down. It's 70 percent lower than in 1970. There's too much fishing.

Shark movies make people afraid. People try to save dolphins and whales, but not sharks. Sharks are actually friendly. Jonathan Campbell takes people to swim with sharks. This changes people's ideas.

Jonathan Campbell: "When they come up after that first dive, uh, they're excited. And you can see that they're in shock. They're changed by what they saw because they see sharks on TV, they see sharks on movies, and they're these scary monsters. And in the water, they are actually shy puppy dogs."

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