At our school, we did a project, where we wrote a speech, and presented it to our classmates, and a panel of teachers, who judged our speeches. We could not use a script, visuals, only our voice. I decided to do my speech in front of the whole school. My speech was about sharks, and why you shouldn’t be afraid of them. Here is a copy of it:
When you go in the ocean, whether you are swimming, surfing, boogie boarding, or anything else, what is the one thing people are most afraid of? Sharks.
Let me just begin with the fact that only about 10 people are killed from sharks each year. In contrast, last year, 37 people were killed by vending machines (almost 4 times the amount). Another thing to compare this to is falling coconuts cause about 150 deaths annually. You know, while you were keeping an eye on the sharks. Last year, in the US alone, 41 people died while shopping on black friday.
Even though people know that they shouldn’t be afraid of sharks, they still are terrified of them, Why? If sharks almost never want to eat humans, and rarely bite them, then why do they have a reputation as vicious, man-eating predators?
It is quite simple. People can control nearly all of their environment, with infrastructure like dams and roads and weapons to subdue land-based predators. But at sea, a shark has a distinct advantage.
Here are a few movie title you might recognize:
- Jaws
- Open Water
- The Reef
- Shark After Dark
- Megalodon, the monster shark lives
- The Shallows
What do these movies all have in common? They all portray sharks in a terrifying way.
Sharks aren’t as dangerous as people think they are.
This doesn’t meant you should go messing around with sharks, but don’t let them keep you out of the ocean entirely.
Oh, and it’s also worth noting that humans kill 11,417 sharks every hour. Just sayin’
By doing this speech in front of a lot of people, I had a lot of fun. I hope a lot of people aren’t as a afraid of sharks.
