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The thought of sharks conjures up images from Hollywood movies: predatory creatures, out for blood, deliberately hunting down unwary beachgoers. The thing is, they don't even like to eat people. Human blood doesn't get them going the way the blood of the stuff they actually eat does. And when they attack, it's usually just a single bite.

The hunter satisfies its voracious appetite with seals, fish and other animals found in the sea. To capture these animals it has developed the necessary qualities of speed, strength, agility and a mouth armed with many, many teeth. This is a prime reason we humans perceive them as so very frightening.

Frequently, what happens is that humans cause the sharks to attack by inadvertently copying natural animal activity. They swim way out in the ocean, paddling on their surf boards as they attempt to ride the crest of a great big wave. They don't realize that they seem just like injured seals to the sharks swimming nearby. The result is a very regrettable accident, like a swimmer getting sucked up in a fierce undertow. The people shouldn't be doing what they're doing where they're doing it.

Despite this, on a very low number of people out of the millions who spend time at the beach each year get killed by sharks. Also, there are fewer shark attacks each year than you might expect and of the 90 or so that do occur, most only result in minor bumps and grazes. Whilst it is tragic that anyone should get killed by a shark, incidents involving sharks can be considered accidents rather than malicious attacks.

Strange though it may seem, falling coconuts actually cause 10 times as many injuries to humans as sharks do. The Tiger shark and the great white shark may be the most aggressive of sharks but they very rarely attack humans. You'll find yourself more at risk whilst you drive to the beach, bearing in mind that driving kills more than 40,000 people on the US each year.

When a person is bitten by a shark, of course the victim deserves sympathy. But so the hundreds of sharks that will be hunted and killed in revenge. The sharks have no idea what they have done or why we are trying to kill them; unlike humans, they can't be told why they are being subjected to a punishment. We have only two choices: to kill sharks, or to live with them peacefully. Killing them hasn't made us safer, so perhaps we should try the second option.