I couldn’t give a rat’s arse, Vinny.

The shark would fare less well without the shark fin.

PS Humans are dangerous animals that kill people.

It is of *enormous* concern to the individuals involved and their friends and family.

I hear nothing but sentimentalist crap about sharks all the time.
If mosquitos are giving people malaria, we think nothing of bombing their swamp with chemicals to kill them all.
Sharks aren’t much different – I have no idea why people think they are so vital to eco-systems – as a top-level predator they aren’t doing anything much that we aren’t doing ourselves.
As dangerous animals that kill people, we would be well rid of them, just like mosquitos.

I felt the same way about swimming off a boat in the middle of the Atlantic. Something about being able to touch bottom, or see bottom, or at least hit the bottom with an anchor on chain of reasonable length is quite comforting. Alone, at night, with the bottom so far below it is essentially a theoretical construct taking that first step into the dark water was like stepping off into space. Irrational as it was, attacks by sea creatures in deep water are vanishingly rare, there was some very deep and vocal part of my turtle brain that was screaming bloody murder. And when the rope trailing from the boat brushed against me I levitated myself vertically out of the water and jumped onto the deck using a Jedi trick I had heretofore been unaware I knew. I emerged both lighter and cleaner than I went in. Trembling and tingling in the cold I felt very alive.

I suspect most of the ‘attacks’ are simply sharks exploring their environment with the tools they have, nose, skin and teeth. A friend, surfer dude, has scars from the road-rash that was a consequence of a shark rubbing against him. He claimed the shark was quite affectionate and rubbed against him like a cat. He was somewhat less amuse when he noticed the blood and felt the sting of the salt.

If you have ever seen the videos of shark mating they are quite brutal with each other. So a quick nibble and spit might be the shark equivalent of a handshake. It isn’t their fault that your skin is so tender that their friendly gesture leaves you gutted like a fish.

But then again sharks got to eat. Our rapid and ongoing conversion of the once verdant and bountiful oceans into watery wastelands kind of leaves us as the ‘last food swimming’. With better than seven billion of us crowding the earth, and our love of humanity less than uniformly distributed, we cry over a surfer eaten but cheer a supposed enemy blown up, I’m not sure a few being eaten is any great concern.

As an avid hiker I used to get a kick out of being perceived as a bit special/crazy hiking through snake and alligator infested swamps. Take away the wild animals and it would be less fun. Slightly less dangerous but a whole lot less fun. As it is surfers can brag about meeting nature eye-to-eye even as the danger is pretty much statistically insignificant. Take away the sharks and surfing is just a little bit less special.

From a wildlife population and ecosystem perspective I say we monitor the situation and when and if the population of surfers declines precipitously we can think about intervening. As it is surfer populations seems to be holding steady or increasing. Which suggests there is no problem.