Kassadi Zguro
What are the consequences of overfishing sharks?
Thanks to the movie Jaws, many people are scared of sharks. Seeing a fin in the water terrifies all but the most experienced of beach goers. Sadly, this perception means that most do not really care if the sharks are hunted to extinction or not. However, society’s opinion on sharks needs to change if we want any hope of saving the world’s oceans. Sharks, as an apex predator, are an important part of the ocean’s food chain. To understand why we need sharks, we have to first look at what an ecosystem is. An ecosystem, as described by the Mirriam Webster Dictionary, is “a system, or a group of interconnected elements, formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with
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It was considered a delicacy for hundreds of years, something only emperors and royalty could afford. But now that China is becoming more industrialized more people and hotels can afford the meat needed for the soup at their banquets. It’s become a cultural dish, served at weddings and other special occasions to celebrate. One shark fin can sell for up to $500 a pound. China is the biggest, but there are also shark finning practices in Indonesia, India, and even the United States. However, the fin is the only part of the shark that gets used. Fishermen cut the fin off, usually while the shark is still alive, and throw the rest of the shark back into the ocean as the rest of the meat does not sell. Sharks are protected from being hunted in mostly North America and South America, but there are very few laws around Japan and China to prevent this hunting from happening. (Fairclough, …show more content…
There is a type of manta ray that consumes scallops and other shellfish. Sharks eat these rays, and keep them from overeating the scallops. Coastal areas used by fisherman to sustainably catch scallops and shellfish would be gone in a few years (Myers, R., Baum, J., Shepard, T., Powers, S., & Peterson, C. (2007). Shark attacks are rare, and most are not even fatal. In fact, there are only 70 to 100 shark attacks on average around the world. You are more likely to die from fireworks, drowning, a car accident, or a heart attack than you are a shark bite. Better medical care and faster response times means that if you are bit by a shark there is a high chance that you will survive. Most sharks take one bite as a test, to find out if you are edible or not. If you are not, the shark simply swims away to find a tasty seal or fish to eat instead. (FLMNH Ichthyology Department, 2005). Every animal is important, but sharks are very high up on the list of animals that humans need to protect and save. Without them, our ocean’s ecosystem and coral reefs would be decimated and humans would take a dramatic hit in terms of what we ate and fished. Sharks keep the ocean’s population in check and make sure that there are enough of their prey to sustainably eat while giving us seafood such as scallops and clams. Just because an animal looks scary does not mean that we should be uncaring about its wellbeing and
Shark attacks still happen to this day. There’s nothing more terrifying than hearing a story in the news of a mighty, great white shark killing an innocent person. He mentions the backlash of Hollywood blockbusters such as “Jaws” and “Sharknado 3” that intensifies one’s fear. Sharks have evolved in our
Sharks do not have skeletons, but just cartilage. Also their jaws can move independently without any of their other body parts. It allows them to have a stronger hold on their prey. Sharks have oil in their liver that allow them to eat less often. So when they eat us up, they must be really hungry. Their fins help them feel vibrations of other creatures so that they can get into position to pounce on their prey.
Sharks are aquatic creatures and very important to the living with lots of information humans may not understand. To start off, femeles give birth to 7-9 sharks per litter that are 3-4 feet at birth. Next humans believe all sharks are monsters but out of 400 species only 4 sharks have been claimed to attack on humans. Lastly sharks attack for 2 main reasons one reason is for defense and predation. They attack in defense when humans are in or around their territory they attack in predation mistaking people for seals. In conclusion sharks are creatures that humans are still learning about and try to understand them better.
Firstly, if sharks numbers drastically decline then it will throw the food chain out of whack. Sharks eat the big fish, who in turn eat the smaller fish, which eat the smaller fish which eat the algae. If sharks were to become extinct then certain marine groups would overpopulate which would endanger a large number of other marine species making them either very rare or even extinct. “According to one study, without sharks the number of mid-level predators will increase many fold. These mid-level carnivores will eat most of the algae eaters. As a result, the seas will be choked with algae and its excretions. The water will become slimy. Sunlight penetration will be reduced. It will decrease coral reefs very soon. So, many thousands of dependent species will also go extinct.” (All Five Oceans, 2016) For example, do you like to eat shrimps, oysters or crabs? Because if shark culling continues then these species will become almost extinct. This is because sharks feed on rays who are the main feeders of these foods, if sharks become extinct then rays will overpopulate and with so many rays feeding on these foods then they will become rare and maybe even extinct.
Sharks are vicious creatures and eat humans. Don’t go into the water if you see a shark nearby or they will come after you. These are a few of the many things you will hear from the television or even people you may know. Humans are not a part of the shark diet so it is highly unlikely that a shark would randomly go after a human. The media likes to make their shark stories more exciting by adding words like “aggressive” or “threatened.” There was a total of 4 deaths caused by sharks in 2014 which is a large contrast to the 11,417 sharks that are killed per hour by humans. sharks) need to be preserved and protected in order to preserve our oceans. Laws that are more strict should be implemented in order to achieve this goal.
Every Jaws fan knows the shark gets it in the end. What they do not know is that too many sharks have gotten it; and that has caused a rapid decline in the shark population over the past thirty years. Since the 1970's, sharks of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shores have declined eighty-five percent. Sharks are vital animal to our world's ecosystem, and if the decline is not controlled; we could be facing devastating problems in years to come. Information has been obtained from two books: The Shark Almanac by Thomas B. Allen and Sharks, An Introduction for the Amateur Naturalist by Sanford A. Moss. Sources also include a number of online references, among them BBC News, ENS News, The New York Times, and two online scientific
Arising over 350 million years ago, the shark species has been labeled as a human devourer. Now, with the increase in human population, the demand for shark meat, fins, and cartilage are at an all time high; therefore, the existence of the shark is becoming a concern (Budker 1971). Individuals are conditioned to think of sharks as a negative aspect to the environment, which is prolonging the effort to save shark species from becoming extinct. With that in mind, some private as well as national organizations have accepted the challenge of educating and informing people about the existence of the shark specie and its importance to the sea.
Do you wanna know what the chances are for you dying from a shark attack? One in 913,200,766! When 43,000 are injured by their toilet! And sharks don’t even like the taste if human flesh (M. R., Ph. (2015, February 08). The Most Misunderstood Shark Fact Of All Time. From http://www.sharksider.com/misunderstood-shark-fact-time/) With the odds being so slim, we got to love these animals a little bit. I mean it’s the animal you were taught to fear your whole life, when it really doesn’t want to hurt you. But even
People visceral when they see a shark and they try to capture and kill it. Only some people want to protect sharks. Sharks help by keeping the fish population down First, we can protect sharks by doing little things such as stop finning sharks, picking up our trash. Next people destroy environments by oil spills. Not picking up trash. Last if people don’t stop finning sharks and not throwing their trash away our environment will smell bad and we will have no sharks left.
To this day, many of us still see them this way. In fact, coastal states stared to host shark culling events. In these sometime month-long events, a state government will pay any fishermen to bring in a freshly killed shark generous amounts of money. Peter Benchley, the author of "Jaws" doesn't support shark culling, he in fact helped raise awareness about sharks becoming endangered. He wrote articles about how misunderstood sharks are (Benchley, Peter). This is now illegal in the United States, but is still practiced in countries such as Japan and Australia. Even in those countries, shark culling is on its way out. But
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s article “The Brutal Business of Shark Finning” reminds us that sharks play a key role in the ocean as both predators and scavengers.
The environmental factors are about the conditions and the surroundings that we live in. Shark finning is an awful practice that causes negative impacts for the environment. Once the sharks are caught, the fins are cut off and are returned to the waters. Almost always, they don’t survive due to predation to other animals, blood loss or from suffocation. The Shark Population is massively decreasing. Specialists estimate that approximately 100 million sharks are killed. In the marine ecosystem, sharks are probably the primary predators and ocean takers. They are apex predators who are responsible for keeping the population in balance. They have been around Earth for 400 million years. The Earth is 70% covered with water and it houses 80% of life on Earth, which is why it’s important to sustain this
Sharks are one of the most feared carnivores in the sea. There are 365 species of of sharks in the sea as we know today. All sharks are carnivores. Most of them eat live fish, including other sharks. A shark's most common natural enemy is an another shark. Most sharks eat their prey whole, or they tear off large chunks of the bodies. Some sharks crush their prey. Others take out small pieces off flesh from large fish. Sharks also feed on dead or dying animals. Sharks have the reputation of attacking human beings. But less than 100 shark attacks a year are reported throughout the world. Sharks are most common in warm seas and oceans. Whale sharks, are the largest shark known to man. Sharks are classified in the order
I How many of yall like Sharks? Most people are deadly scared of sharks, and some just simply do not like them. Well, I am not here to inform to like sharks, but here to inform you of the issues that shark face today.
The main causes of overfishing are poor fishery management with a lack of regulation, unrestricted access to the ocean and illegal fishing. During the last few decades the demand for edible seafood globally has skyrocketed and the high demand is causing us to overfish to keep up with the demand. Unfortunately, fisherman are catching more fish than can be naturally reproduced. There are only limited regulations in place, which means that fishing companies are basically fishing when and where they want to with out any oversite. Overfishing causes such serious effects such as the ocean life getting knocked out of balance. Coastal communities rely on the benefits of the fishing for social and economic health. When we overfish it