Whether People Should Fear Sharks: ABC News' T.J. Holmes Finds Out

— -- There have been at least 11 shark attacks off the shores of the Carolinas this year, most of them happening in the last three weeks.

Hunter Treschl, 16, was mauled by a shark on June 14. On June 26, Patrick Thornton was bitten in waist-deep water. And on June 30, Kysen Weakley was bitten on the leg.

ABC News correspondent T.J. Holmes has had a close encounter of his own.

“I haven't been in the water in three years. ... I was on vacation in Florida and a shark swam about 15 to 20 feet away from me. It took all I had not to run out of the water screaming,” he said.

Holmes decided to take an informed look at the dangers sharks do and don’t pose to human life.

He met with Paul de Gelder, a shark conservationist who lost two limbs to a bull shark in a 2009 attack, and Charlotte Faulkner, dive coach at Stuart Cove's dive resort in the Bahamas.

“I don't think they intentionally go for a human,” Faulkner said. “They're just, they're hungry, the thing is behaving similar to their food source and they want to see what it is and how do we see what stuff is? We touch it with our hands. Sharks don't have hands, they have very sensitive jaws.”

Sharks’ jaws are sensitive and powerful. The jaws of a larger species of shark can generate up to 40,000 pounds of pressure per square inch in a single bite, making them twice as powerful as the jaws of a lion, according to Oceana, an international ocean conservation and advocacy nonprofit.

Sharks find their prey using a complex sensory system which allows them to feel vibrations in the water and hear from a distance of up to two city blocks away.

So, should people fear sharks?

De Gelder says “no.”

“We should have a very healthy respect for them, they have their place, we have ours and just because some people ... get bitten by sharks doesn't mean they're out to get us,” he added.

Holmes then took a dip with Caribbean reef sharks. He believes he may have overcome his fear and called it “a life-changing experience.”