We do not just fear our predators, we are transfixed by them. We are prone to weave stories and fables and chat endlessly about them.

If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct.

A human being is still more likely to die of a bee sting, snake bite or, Lord knows, automobile accident than by shark attack. We do not execute the perpretrators of death by car. We should not butcher an animal for an inadvertent homicide.

Almost any shark, three or four feet long, could kill a human being if it chose to do it. It could make you bleed to death. But they don't.

We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.

We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member.

If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.

Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.