By Jonathan Copsey/ STAFF

It’s not a good time to be a shark. Not anymore.

For nearly 450 million years, sharks have been the apex of the aquatic food chain, having few natural predators. Now their numbers are dwindling to dangerous levels due to human activity, with the threat of unbalanced oceans looming large in the near future.

This is the point of a new exhibit opening this weekend at the Georgia Aquarium, titled “Planet Shark.” At 10,000 square feet, the exhibit aims to show visitors everything they could possibly want to see about sharks. From fossilized teeth of their ancestors to life-sized replicas to even fully-frozen specimens, the exhibit details the importance of sharks to their environment and the dangerous position in which they have been cast by humans and the media.

Of particular scorn is the movie “Jaws,” which almost single-handedly sparked an anti-shark rage that has given the animals little love with the general public. The most recent incident of this media hype was seen in 2001’s “Summer of the Shark,” with numerous shark attacks ravenously reported by the media, sparking a renewed interest in culling the animals (even though that summer saw fewer attacks than previous summers). To point out just how unlikely it is to be attacked by a shark, the exhibit reveals the astonishing fact that, in the U.S. in 1996, almost 44,000 people were injured by toilets, compared to 20 who were injured by sharks.

Planet Shark ­opens on October 3. For more information on Planet Shark, visit www.planetshark.org or www.georgiaaquarium.org.