14 DAY TRIAL // It is hard to trigger the sympathy of the audience with a set of huge razor sharp teeth, a carnivorous appetite, a malicious grin and a reputation of "man-eater".
The slightest encounter with people is enough to fill the headlines.
Now conservationists are struggling even harder to rehabilitate the image of the evil fish, as sharks' number is dwindling considerably.
About 20 % of the shark species are threatened, thus urgent action is needed.
"They're not all just teeth," said Sonja Fordham, policy director of the Belgium-based Shark Alliance and director of the shark conservation program of the Washington-based Ocean Conservancy.
The sensitive point of the sharks is the reproductive system: unlike the other ocean fish that produce astronomic numbers of eggs from which some offspring will survive anyway, sharks reproduce very slowly and produce a small number of well-developed offspring, usually under 100 at a time.
And with all the fuss, experts warn that shark attacks are few and deadly ones even fewer.
2006 registered 86 known and suspected shark encounters, with 7 fatalities, and the shark involvement in another two ocean fatalities uncertain, according to the data of Global Shark Attack File.
The rate of shark mayhem reached the number of about 100 million sharks and relatives annually, deliberately or as by catch, as found the Shark Alliance, an international coalition of advocacy and ocean recreation groups.
"Over the past 15 years both the public and government ocean managers have come to realize that sharks - which include more than 400 species - are a more diverse group than the voracious monster portrayed in "Jaws"," Fordham said.
"Sharks underwater are just the most magnificent animals," said Marie Levine, executive director of the Princeton, N.J.-based Shark Research Institute. "They just move with such grace you expect to hear music."
Sharks' variety is huge, from the world's largest fish, the whale shark, reaching up to 50 feet (15 m) long and eating only tiny plankton, to the diminutive cookie-cutter shark, an up to 16-inch (42 cm), a bioluminescent deep sea fish, but only few species can be traumatic for humans.
Paradoxically, the most feared and dangerous, the great white shark is also among the most protected and also the most threatened.
New Zealand is going to install fines of up to $172,000 and six months in prison for harming the fish.
"The path to protection, however, is more difficult for lesser known shark species such as the spiny dog fish, which has an unfortunate name and what some call "beady eyes"," Fordham said.
The biggest threat to shark life is posed by shark finning, killing sharks for their fins used in a popular and expensive Chinese soup.
But not only Asians consume sharks.
"British fish and chips and German beer garden snacks have used the meat of spiny dog fish, which takes up to two years to develop inside its mother before being born," Fordham said.