Things more deadly than sharks
Middle school students color great white shark sheet
What things kill more people per year than shark attacks? During our “Shark Science Week: A Global Perspective” class this week at Portland Saturday Academy, a group of smart middle school students were challenged with creating a shark-themed mural on a bed sheet – with information they thought was important to share with other people. They decided to create a tableau of “Things more deadly than sharks.”
Middle school students color "Things more deadly than sharks"
Based on their research, here are some of the items they featured:
hot dogs
Bathtub and strange toilet with fangs
bathtubs
coconuts
vending machines
tornadoes
Angry lightning
lightning
bicycles
icicles
texting (while driving)
stairs (or falling down them)
kites
On average, less than 10 people (and usually only around 5) are killed by sharks. You can look at statistics at the International Shark Attack file. In our movie The Shark Riddle, we didn’t delve into death statistics, since our movie is for elementary school students and younger. We focused on helping them understand that sharks are diverse and important for the ocean. We showed The Shark Riddle to middle school students, who really loved it (especially the parts where my brother accidentally sat on shark teeth sticking out of rocks) – and we used it as a springboard for more global issues and statistics. We also mapped shark migrations based on scientific satellite tracking, and they marveled at how a great white shark could travel all the way from South Africa to Australia in a matter of three months. Or how a basking shark could travel all the way from the coast of Ireland to the coast of Newfoundland. Or how a mako shark could travel from the California coast to Hawaii and back. These sharks need a global conservation approach, since we all share one big ocean – and protecting sharks on one continent will only do so much if a shark swims to an entirely other continent.
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