James Sulikowski and Susan McHugh interviewed by WCSH about recent shark attacks
On June 16, 2015, WCSH aired an interview with James Sulikowski, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Marine Sciences, and Susan McHugh, Ph.D., professor and chair in the Department of English, as part of its evening news coverage of the recent shark attacks in Florida and North Carolina.
Sulikowski, who has studied sharks for over 20 years, and McHugh, who specializes in human-animal relationships in literature, shared their views on the ramifications of the recent attacks, which, while from different academic perspectives, conveyed similar messages.
Both professors expressed concerns that the public’s response to the attacks, comparing them to scenes from the novel-turned-blockbuster film series Jaws, may lead to panic and misconceptions about sharks. "You have a better chance of being hit and killed by an icicle than you do of being attacked by a shark," explained Sulikowski.
McHugh stated, "We see it in these very immediate media responses that ‘we have to go get that one, we have to kill it, we have to enact our sense of justice’ on an animal…"
Sulikowski and McHugh both expressed that rather than assigning blame to sharks, people should take safety precautions when entering sharks’ habitat.