Summer is upon us! And with summer comes sunshine, ice cream cones, lazy days free of homework, and lots and lots of beach trips. Of course, you might want to scratch that last one off the list if you decide to go see The Shallows.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the movie fits into the category of summer blockbuster. The previews I’ve seen were exciting, and it seems to follow in the footsteps of Jaws. I'm a big Jaws fan, and SNL’s “landshark” skit is one of my all-time favorites. But I am so over demonizing sharks.

The truth is, humans do a lot more to harm the shark population than sharks have ever done to ours, and we go after them with conscious reasoning. Although the shark in Jaws is depicted as a vengeful maneater, George Burgess, who is director of the Florida Program for Shark Research in Gainesville, says that the movie most definitely gave sharks far too much ability to enact revenge and emote. When sharks do attack humans, it is most likely a case of mistaken identity as they search for a sea lion or seal, and occasionally an attack is provoked by a human disturbing the shark in some way. The shark is not aware of what the human is, or acts in self-defense.

Meanwhile, humans hunt sharks for sport and for eating. Shark finning constitutes the death of hundreds of millions of sharks annually. The process of shark finning involves capturing sharks and slicing off their fins to add to soups and other meals. The living body of the shark is then dropped back into the ocean, unable to swim and bleeding profusely. The sharks are unable to move effectively, and either sink to the sand and die of suffocation, or are eaten by other predators. That kind of treatment is absolutely horrifying, and absolutely inhumane. We often justify it as a sort of revenge for the killing sharks have done. But according to National Geographic, sharks kill fewer than 20 people a year, whereas between 20 and 100 million sharks die each year due to fishing activity alone. The population of some shark species have plummeted 30 to 50 percent, although out of more than 480 species of shark there are only three are responsible the majority of fatal unprovoked attacks on humans. In fact, according to Burgess, at the turn of the twentieth century most people assumed that sharks had never attacked a human. There were rewards offered to someone who could prove they had been bitten, and the money was never collected. Perceptions began to change following the New Jersey shark attack of 1916 that helped to inspire Jaws, and as World War II sent people out to see, leaving some castaways stranded and attacked by deep ocean sharks. There are about 50 to 70 confirmed shark attacks yearly, and these numbers have risen over several decades. However, they aren’t rising because sharks have gotten a taste for human flesh. They’re rising because humans have taken to the waters in higher numbers, causing more occasion for accidental attacks.

And even if the numbers worry you, a shark attack is much less common than being struck by lightning. We average just 16 shark attacks each year, and less than one fatality due to a shark attack every two years, here in the US. And in the coastal United States alone, lightning kills more than 41 people per year! Shark attacks are uncommon, and when they do occur, they often aren't fatal. Researchers have learned about contributing factors to shark attacks, making human beings smarter and more informed. It’s easy to avoid certain situations, and thus the number of attacks has been minimized. Besides this, our medical capabilities are far superior today, and thus out of those bitten by sharks, the fatality rate, which began at 40 to 50 percent a century ago, is down to only 10 percent.

It is not fair to blame an animal for its instincts, or to destroy something simply because we fear it. Humans are at the top of Earth’s food chain. Sharks aren’t going to change that. We humans are powerful, and that power can be heady. It’s not wrong to want to hold onto it. But there are things out of our control, and things that should simply be left alone. Sharks are not ours to control, or to destroy. We can take preventive measures against attacks, such as using Shark Shield technology when heading into the ocean, and not bothering sharks in their natural habitat. We can stop destroying their natural food sources, and stop contributing to the temperature changes in their waters.

We humans have a lot of power, and a lot of responsibility to do the right thing with it. We have this Earth on loan from the next generation. The ocean is beautiful. Sharks are beautiful. We were not the first species on this planet, and we certainly did not arrive before sharks. Don’t we want to let their legacy live on? “After 400 million years of shark evolution, we could potentially wipe out the world’s sharks in a century’s time.” We have to be aware of our actions.

So, if you want to watch a movie about sharks but don’t want to encourage their demonization, I recommend Sharkwater, a documentary that dives into shark conservation and displays these animals as what they are, “pillars in the evolution of the seas”.

Or you could always watch Shark Tale. That one’s a classic.