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Should we be scared of sharks?

16 May 2025|

As a young boy growing up in Cape Town, I would spend hours bodyboarding with my friends, day after day, at Muizenberg beach. I always knew there were great white sharks around; after all, Seal Island — their favourite hunting ground — was only 10km away. Surfers have a code of not talking about sharks (spoiler: it is not clear whether I really am a surfer) but I was told that the sharks didn’t come close to the shore at Muizenberg and that the chance of being attacked by a shark was lower than being hit by a plane. So I carried on bodyboarding without a care in the world, occasionally keeping an eye out for planes. But now that I am older, more risk-averse and more questioning of statistics, I wonder whether I was right to be so blasé. Would I get in the water in Cape Town now? No. But is that rational? The plane

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