Why Sharks Are the Real Victims of the Deep Blue Sea
I love sharks and I’m equally obsessed with shark films, such as Steven Speilberg’s classic: Jaws.
However, sharks are often portrayed as dangerous boat-eating monsters in most blockbuster films.
Further to this, we only hear of negative shark encounters in the media, making this creature of the sea more and more despised. But, maybe it is time to ask ourselves who the real villains are?
Sharks are magnificent predators at the top of the food chain. There are over 1000 species of sharks; the great white, tiger sharks, and hammerhead sharks to name a few.
These fish have existed 100 million years before dinosaurs, surviving 4 mass extinctions. Lions may be the king of the jungle, but sharks reign the seas.
Sadly, many of these shark species are in danger and face the looming threat of extinction. This largely comes down to human activity including overfishing. Sharks that are caught in the deadly nets of fishermen are often not the intended capture and are returned to the sea: dead.
In other instances, sharks are caught intentionally for their meat, particularly their fins, for the Chinese delicacy: shark fin soup. The soup is commonly served at weddings and is a sign of wealth.
However, the process of obtaining shark fins is nothing short of cruel. The fins are cut off the helpless fish and the rest of the body is thrown back to the sea. Without the fins, the sharks fall to the bottom of the seabed and die.
“73 million sharks are killed each year for shark fin soup”
This figure is alarming. Just for the soup alone, millions of sharks are killed. The threat of endangerment arises when more sharks die than the number of sharks born.
Sharks take a very long time to mature, up to 18 years, and produce very few young. This means that if sharks are killed before they reach maturity, they are not able to make up for their loss by reproducing, driving sharks to extinction.
Why should you care?
Every other day you hear of another endangered species, one day it’s “saves the bees”, the next it’s the sharks. You might be thinking, that sucks, but “why does it matter?”
Studying sharks could also be very useful in finding cures for human diseases, including viruses (which is very relevant at the moment with the current pandemic). Sharks do not get sick easily and their tissue is thought to have anti-microbial properties.
However, we may never get to find out how we can use these properties to cure diseases if sharks end up endangered or worse, extinct.
Additionally, sharks keep coral reefs alive and thus encourage tourism and boost the economy of countries globally. Not to mention… their extinction could be the extinction of humans too.
The number of sharks in our oceans is estimated to be only 10% of what it was 20 years ago… with 11,000 sharks killed every hour this is not a surprise.
The number of sharks that are killed by humans in comparison to the number of sharks that kill humans is not even remotely close (~4 vs 100 million). Not to mention sharks cannot comprehend their actions or feel remorse. They’re simply existing in the ocean, in their home, while an intruder comes in and kills them… for soup.
Without sharks at the top of the food chain, this causes disastrous effects further down the line. Unfortunately, the effects are already starting to show with some coral reef populations having reduced shark numbers. As a result, we can see the prey begins to thrive in number: temporarily.
As the prey increase in numbers, there is more demand for food and they need to eat more and end up eating their prey to extinction. Soon enough, the first prey runs out of food and also dies.
All this results in the overgrowth of algae that kills the coral reefs and the biodiverse species that depend on these reefs die too.
The colourful ocean full of life and wonder ends up being an endless empty deep blue sea.
To maintain a healthy ecosystem, the oceans are largely reliant on sharks. The consequences of removing an entire predator from the food web are unpredictable and undoubtedly would result in chaos.
Top 3 things we can do to help
- If someone offers you shark fin soup, kindly decline. It is the demand for this dish that results in the unnecessary killing of sharks.
- Educate yourself on the importance of sharks in our ocean and tell your friends. Learn about why sharks are so important.
- Support the conservation of our ocean and sharks: https://www.projectaware.org/ways-give
Bruce from Finding Nemo once said ‘fish are friends, not food’ — the same applies to sharks.
If you are still wondering why you should care, the question you should be asking yourself is why don’t you?
