Why you shouldn’t be afraid of sharks. (My Speech)

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.

Sharks

If you read my about me page, you would probably know that I love sharks. I have been interested in them all my life. Here are some cool things about them that you probably didn’t know:

  • There are around 440 known species of sharks.
  • Sharks range in size from a four inch long dog fish to a 45 foot long whale shark
  • The dagger nose shark is the most endangered shark on the planet. That is probably why you have never heard of it, there are less than 200 in the world. It looks like this:
  • Some sharks like the dagger nose shark are some of the most endangered animals on the planet while some sharks like the Ocean White Tip shark over populate the ocean.

I hope you found some of these facts interesting!

About Me

Hi! My name is Henry. I am 12 years old and live in the California Bay Area. I enjoy skateboarding, eating, playing guitar, drums and reading books in my free time. I have two younger brothers a dog, and am on a swim team and training in Tae-Kwon-Do. Ever since I was 4, I have been very interested in sharks. I love researching them and have always hoped to encounter one in real life. One of my life goals is to convince the world that they shouldn’t be afraid of sharks and that hunting them into endangerment is wrong. I will mostly be using my blog to share my experiences in my humanities classes, recommending books, sharing interesting facts, etc. I hope you enjoy blog and please make sure to comment respectfully.

Awesome Book Recommendation!!!!!

       If you are looking for a great book and love animals, you should read Scat by: Carl Hiaasen. Scat is about a boy named Nick and a girl named Marta. They go to a private school together in south Carolina. One day, they go on a perfectly normal field trip to the black vine swamp. During the field trip, a fire starts and they have to evacuate the area. When their science teacher turns back to get a student’s inhaler, she goes missing, Nick and Marta go searching for her. After they find her, they realize that her disappearance is much more than it seems. I think that anybody in the world would like this amazing book, but I especially recommend it to animal lovers.