Zoo’s sharks led marine biologist to his life’s work
Each time David Shiffman looks at a shark, he still gets that excited feeling he experienced when he visitedthe Pittsburgh zoo as a child.
Mr. Shiffman, now a marine conservation biologist at Arizona State University, is a South Hills native who remembers going to the zoo regularly while growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s, and he worked there duringhis freshman year of college.
He returned to the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium on Saturday to promote his new book about the mighty fish and the misconceptions thatsurround it.
For Mr. Shiffman, 37, such discussions hit a somewhat different note than those of his colleagues whostudy more obscure interests.
“I don’t have to start my talks with, ‘This is what a shark is,’ because you know what a shark is, but what you know about a shark is wrong,” says the 2003 graduate of Mt.Lebanon High School.
The myths cover everything from claims about “Jaws”-style “rogue sharks” to well-meaning conservation advocates who unknowingly post misinformation about illegal fishing practices.
And he is always on alert to refute such misinformation — a Miami news outlet once called him Discovery network’s “biggest pain in the [rear end]” during the television conglomerate’s annual Shark Weekprogramming.
“People thought this stuff was real,” Mr. Shiffman said of past Shark Weeks in a Miami New Times article in 2015, when he was a graduate student at the University of Miami. “But there were some pretty egregious basic factual errors that evenan 8-year-old would know.”
Even though shark attacks on humans are rare — Mr. Shiffman is quick to point out that more people are bitten by human beings on the New York City subway each year than are bitten by sharks—it’ s understandable why people have developed widespread fear of them.
Overfishing remains the greatest threat to sharks, David Shiffman said, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 million of them each year. Although some people believe this is a foreign problem, he saw shark meat being sold at a local grocery’s seafood counter in his youth.
“Humans in general are hardwired to be afraid of predators,” Mr. Shiffman told the Post-Gazette on Friday. “It’s how our ancestors survivedon the savanna.”
His new book, “Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive With the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator,” fleshes out these fears.
Some of the hysteria does indeed date to the 1975 release of “Jaws,” with its frightening and suspenseful visuals that portray a great white shark with a hankering for human flesh. But there are other reasonsthat people continue to be afraidof sharks.
“Part of it is inflammatory media coverage,” he said. “Whenever somebody is bit by a shark somewhere in the world,it’s front-page news everyyear.”
Early this year, the Associated Press reported a rise in shark bites in 2021, marking the end of a three-year decline. Researchers with the International Shark Attack File recorded 73 unprovoked incidents last year, compared to 52 bites in 2020, the AP reportedin January.
But the International Shark Attack file also reports that people are more likely, on average, to die by a lightning strike than they are froma shark bite.
It’s not bad to want to be safe around predators, Mr. Shiffman said, but problems occur when those fears begin to influence broader policies.
Calls from local leaders in coastal municipalities to cull sharks, or kill all the sharks in an area, after a bite occurs arean example.
Part of the problem with that tactic is the threat it presents to all species of sharks in that area, not to mention that some of the predatory fish are migratory, Mr.Shiffman said.
“Even if we were to kill all the white sharks off the coast of New Jersey, there would just be new white sharks therenext week,” he said.
Over-fishing remains the greatest threat to sharks, he said, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 million of them each year. Although some people believe this is a foreign problem, he notes that he saw shark meat being sold at a local grocery’s seafoodcounter in his youth.
But coming back to Pittsburgh to see live sharks at the zoo where his love of sea creaturesfirst started is a “full circle moment” for Mr. Shiffman, who holds a Ph.D. in ecosystem science and policy from the University of Miami.
“I’ve now seen thousands of sharks all over the world, but every time I get that same feeling,” he said. “This animal is so cool and so powerful.”