Summer shark scare stories appearing in Bay of Plenty media as the peak holiday season approaches are being slammed by two Tauranga marine conservationists.

Tauranga tourism operator Graeme Butler is labelling media reports of shark danger in the Bay of Plenty as 'demonising”.

Gemini Galaxsea skipper Graeme Butler and internationally recognised wildlife photographer Kim Westerskov say there are far more sharks in the sea than are ever seen along the beaches.

Melanoma and drunk drivers are far more dangerous than sharks, says Graeme.

'There's always sharks in the ocean and there are always sharks out here in the Bay of Plenty,” says Graeme.

'I think the last fatal shark attack was in 1971 in these waters. It came about because the guy had been spear fishing way back in the early days when people made wetsuits out of tractor tyres.

'He was spear fishing and tying his catch to his belt through the gills. He was swimming along with half dead fish bleeding and dripping on his side so at the end of the day he couldn't expect not to get a shark.”

Over the years he's tried to get people in the water with local sharks, but it has proved nearly impossible. Sharks mostly swim away from people.

'While people demonise certain sea creatures, then the whole ocean ecosystem is unsafe,” says Graeme.

'It makes it okay for people to go out there and harass big animals like sharks, and a lot of them are actually quite rare these days.

'A lot of them are very similar to warm blooded animals. They give birth to live young, some of them, and they are also extremely intelligent.

'I feel a little bit gutted when I see all this hype against some of these creatures that I really cherish.

'The animals are unsafe enough now without them being demonised.

'It's just about respect of the ocean. We've seen lots of sharks and we have never had any incident of any shark harassing anybody or harassing any boat.

'If you wanted to go and find a shark to swim with or go and take photographs of, you would be struggling, I think.”

The large bronze whalers often seen along the ocean beach during summer months are not a danger to people, says Kim Westerskov.

'The bronze whalers we get here, I don't think they have one serious attack to their name,” says Kim.

'If you look at their mouths and look at their teeth, they are not designed for eating big things, they are designed for catching small things. They look kind of scary because they are big and they are a shark, but the chances of them attacking are pretty minimal. I feel pretty good in the water with sharks.”

There are always sharks in the Bay of Plenty says Kim.

Most sharks are smaller than people and generally don't attack targets larger than they are.

'They are a predator and they know about predation, and if they see something bigger than them, they bugger off,” says Kim.

'People are probably more solid than the average shark, most are not as big as a three metre bronze whaler, but a lot of the sharks are only about two metres and quite slim.

If not bigger than them, we are big enough, I mean they don't do a great deal of thinking. 'They have got very primitive brains, basically they have a few instincts that have been working for hundreds of millions of years and that includes, if there's something big they go somewhere else – and keep out of trouble.”

Kim's comfortable swimming in the water with sharks. There are two basic shark swimming styles, the normal languid glide – and a more jerky spasmodic style that if you see, you get out of the water.

Or, if you are a photographer you swim towards them. It triggers another instinctive response, says Kim.

There was a blue shark in Tonga that swam straight at Kim and bumped into his camera lens before swimming off.

'It's part of how they check out if something's worth eating,” says Kim.

'Their eyesight's not good. They have a bit of a smell, they come in and can give it a nudge.

'If it's soft and squishy it might be worth eating. If it's hard like Westerskov's camera then it's not worth eating.”