ISSUE: Shark attacks

OUR VIEW: Attacks put focus on one of the oldest creatures

The stories are not unfamiliar. The latest comes from Myrtle Beach, where a 7-year-old boy in waist-deep water was bitten on his calf by a shark.

The injury was not life-threatening but the boy had to be hospitalized.

Earlier this month, the waters off Isle of Palms were closed after a man and a 9-year-old boy reported shark bites within hours of each other while swimming about four miles apart. Both were treated at hospitals.

The attacks are sure to prompt more speculation about danger at the beach. Truth is, sharks are in the surf all the time but attacks on humans are rare. South Carolina has no reported fatal shark attack since 1883 -- and only three since 1670, according to statistics from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Testament to have few attacks there really are is South Carolina's rank as fourth among the states in attacks. Florida is first.

Many human encounters with sharks are the result of mistaken identity. When the shark realizes it has bitten something other than a fish, the shark lets go most of the time. It's their environment. People get in the water, the water's murky and the shark thinks it's eating fish.

No matter, the fear of being bitten or killed by a shark is an irrationally terrible one for humans. And it is that fear that often prompts the wrong reaction.

Man is killing sharks at a rate millions of times greater than sharks are injuring man. With shark-fin soup being a delicacy in the Far East, millions of sharks are killed annually for that reason alone.

So great is the danger to the shark population that regulations on shark fishing in South Carolina waters are more stringent than the average fisherman realizes.

In S.C. waters, only the Atlantic Sharpnose can be caught in numbers of more than one a day. The limit is two with no size restriction. Bonnetheads are limited to one with no size limit. Size limits apply to others, with a group including the Bull and Sandbar sharks limited to one a day. A number of species cannot be kept at all.

The news about shark attacks may yield surprise at catch limits on the creatures. But they are needed.

Repeating a quote from The Bellingham (Wash.) Herald: ''Allowing man-made hysteria to overrule regulations set into place to conserve these valuable members of the ecosystem would be a horrible mistake. Too often, our first response is to eradicate anything that causes us fear or trouble. ... Leave regulations in place and help conserve what is left of our wild world."

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