Getting Tough With Sharks

If you've watched the news for the last few years, you'd think that sharks have been walking out of the ocean and stealing babies from their mothers, but shark attacks have actually been declining over the last five years.

This is mainly due to declining populations of sharks from overfishing, but according to this Reuters article, it's also because people are fighting back, literally. Ah, Man show shark who boss. From MSNBC:

Humans are also taking greater care to avoid areas where sharks gather and fighting back when they get bitten, Burgess said. A surfer bitten by a great white shark off the Oregon coast on Dec. 24 drove it away with a punch to the nose, he said.

“If you’re being approached by a shark, you certainly want to act aggressively toward the animal. They’re a predator, they respect size and power,” Burgess said.

“If you can smack them on the nose, certainly do so ... sharks seem to respect pops on the nose.”

Those already in the jaws of a shark should “claw at the eyes and the gills to impress the animal that you’re not going to go down easily,” he advised.

This is just silly. I don't see how MSNBC draws the conclusion that shark attacks are down because of aggressive human behavior. Perhaps fatalities are down, but in the instances that are cited, a shark attack has already occurred.

With sharks getting so much media attention, can shark boxing be far behind on the next episode of Fox's Man vs Beast?