Shack Hunting

“The Misunderstood Shark” was written by Gregory Skomal, a biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and shark fanatic. His article was published by The Wall Street Journal on August 7, 2015. The engaging title, itself grabs the reader’s attention, making the reader feel sympathetic towards the shark. Upon hearing the word, “shark”, an individual may cringe. The author makes a solid claim that our attitudes about sharks are changing, but not towards direction it needs to be. He supports his argument with strong appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos throughout the article.

One of the major problems is shark finning. Shark finning is the practice of removing the shark’s fins after it has been caught. They keep the fins and the body is usually thrown back into the sea, and usually the shark is still alive when this happens. When this is done sharks are not able to swim, and eventually the shark dies from suffocation, blood loss or being eaten another predator. The reason why the fins are kept are because shark fins are one of the most expensive food items in the world and can be worth more than over $400 per kilogram. One of the problems with finning and the selling shark fins is that it has caused a lot of declines in shark populations. Shark finning is unmonitored and unreported so the actual amount of finning is unknown. Finning is done at random and unbiased, they go after any species, sex or size of shark. Research has been done on some of the fins brought in by fisheries and it shows that even fins from great white sharks are appearing in shark fin

Overfishing is a death sentence to the world’s oceans. As technology continues to improve a great deal of fish can be caught quicker; but at what cost? The effects of overfishing can lead to the extinction of not just the animals being fished, but also the predators that rely on fish to eat. Ninety percent of the ocean’s largest animals have been wiped out due to overfishing (“Overfishing- A Global Disaster”, 2011). National Geographic cites the academic journal Science (2006) that predicts by 2048, all fisheries will collapse due to lack of ocean wildlife. Fish are not the only animal caught in the nets used by fishing vessels. Often animals such as dolphins, sharks, turtles, and seabirds are

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.

The issue surrounding the Western Australian shark cull initiative will be the central topic of discussion in this critical essay. A rise in shark attacks in recent years has caused the Western Australian government to employ the Department Of Fisheries Western Australia to pursue a systematic and regulated cull of sharks. However the Greens – who are a political party and pressure group – are advocating for this cull to be stopped through lobbying.

The Shark’s place in the marine ecosystem is as a predator at the top of the food chain as there is no natural predator of sharks. Sharks are not very fastidious about what they eat but their diet generally consists of seal, crab, squid, lobster and fish. If sharks were to become extinct there would be an ecological cost. The marine life that is the shark’s food source would start to overpopulate with nothing to prey on it. One possible reason that sharks are coming closer to shores is that their natural food source is diminishing due to overfishing by humans. To stop sharks from being too near to popular swimming locations, fishermen need to expand or change their hunting areas.

Whenever you go to the Fish and Chips shop, have you heard about “Flake”? Flakes are a type of shark. They have been killed just for us to eat. The price of them are also increasing. At least 100 million sharks are killed every year. In Eastern parts of Asia, Sharks were being culled for shark fin soup. Dragging out the sharks out of the ocean and cutting off their fins and throwing their dead body back into the ocean is unacceptable. How would you feel if we were dragged out of our home by a random person, got our arm cut off and got put back into our home again? I’m sure that we would all be horrified and terrified by this. It is said that Shark Fin Soup costs around $100 per bowl of soup. There are also some countries that have completely banned shark culling. They are Israel, Ecuador, Mexico, Egypt, Indonesia, Fiji and so on. It is very unfortunate that Australia isn’t a part of this. Sharks also help with ecosystems.

Hyndes has supported his contention by offering suggestions to shark culling at the conclusion of his article. He states that we should be looking at ways to reduce our encounters with these “predators” as us humans are the people who continue to invade their habitat. Tracking systems is also another suggestion that Hyndes has offered in his article, as well as electronic devices and wetsuits. He hopes to convince the audience that we all need to be placing more effort and more funds into such an important issue by testing and develop these devices so that we can either deter sharks from entering our populated beaches or reduce our encounters with them. Hyndes hopes to emphasise that there are other solutions rather than culling these precious species.

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 infographic states, “Between 1999 and 2009, an average of fewer than five people died from shark attacks each year worldwide.” This indicates that humans are harming sharks even more than sharks are harming humans. Instead of hunting these innocent creatures, people should be saving

Within 1996-2000, shark fin imports increased by 6%. To get the shark fins, men would catch sharks, cut off their fins, and then throw them back into the water. Are shark fin soup worth killing millions and millions of sharks? There are also many different uses for the different parts of the shark. For example, shark oil can be used for makeup and cosmetics, shark cartilage pills supposedly benefits our health and is old in health food stores, and shark steaks are sold all over the world. Although there are many economic benefits from shark finning, it can also threaten recreational fisheries, and other traditional ways of fishing.

II Over the years there has been a huge drop in the population of sharks, because of the popularity of Shark fin soup in china, and this can later on lead to the ocean ecosystem to be disrupted, if sharks are extinct.