The aptly named "Jagged-Toothed One" will have strong scientific support at a meeting of the Shark Working Group on Tuesday, despite some knee-jerk reactions to Saturday's tragic death of a young spearfisherman at Miller's Point.
The group is meeting to discuss the attack by a White Shark - more commonly but inaccurately called the Great White Shark - on 22-year-old Matie student Henri Murray, whose body had still not been recovered on Monday afternoon.
At least one person has called for a bounty on sharks.
The group, chaired by a representative of the City of Cape Town, will include officials from the Marine and Coastal Management branch of the department of environmental affairs, which declared the White Shark a protected species in 1991, making South Africa the first country to do so.
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Others in the group are from the National Sea Rescue Institute, the Surf Lifesaving Association, conservation groups, scientists, the fishing industry and the shark cage-diving industry.
One of those scheduled to attend was Len Compagno, a scientist who works at the Iziko Museums and who is acknowledged as one of the world's foremost shark experts.
The scientific name of the White Shark is Carcharodon carcharias, which translates as the "Jagged-Toothed One".
Compagno points out that humans are not the natural prey of the White Shark.
"If we were their normal prey, why aren't there more incidents of people being taken and eaten? They would start racking up a lot of victims," Compagno says.
So while White Sharks are certainly capable of taking humans and eating them for food, it's clear from the small number of attacks that they are not doing that, he says. "They are not roaming the beaches and taking people."
And there is therefore no justification in allowing this species to be hunted or to put in shark nets, he argues.
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