Sharks have had a bad press ever since Jaws, if not before.

The great white shark which cleared the beaches of Amity Island, Massachusetts, one long hot summer thirty-eight years ago, has taken on any almost Freudian significance, like Moby Dick, the great white whale.

The sight of a fin in the water, any fin, has people stampeding for the safety of the shore.

From a conservationist point of view, it's hard to underestimate the damage done by just one no-doubt well intentioned film director (Steven Spielberg) based on the work of just one no-doubt well-intentioned novelist (Peter Benchley).

You can talk about the need to save pandas, polar bears, elephants, turtles, even great crested newts, without losing your audience. Try to tell people that the threat to the world's sharks is one of the most important wildlife issues confronting us today and the odds are they will, at the very least, look at you as though you need your head examined.

And yet, in reality, sharks are under attack as never before. They are being targeted by fisheries all over the world.

Continue reading original article at the Telegraph