I love shark week because I love sharks (well I like all animals). But I gained a special fondness for sharks after seeing the film Sharkwater (Warning: film will make you cry/disgusted with humanity) sometime a few years ago.
The documentary examines the popularity of shark finning and it's impact on sharks/the eco-system. Each year 73-100 million sharks are killed for their fins. Shark population has dropped by 90% and almost 1/3 of shark species have been finned to near extinction. In China, the shark fin soup is considered a delicacy and to serve the soup is considered a sign of respect, honour, and appreciation to your guests. Shark fins are also used as an 'herbal' supplement of sorts because they believe that since sharks are immune to cancer, ingesting the fin will improve health (wrong!) Shark finners can earn around $300/pound and it brings in a lot of revenue (in the documentary it shows the Costa Rican authorities turning a blind eye to shark fin poachers)
I really don't like the idea of any animal being killed however the manner in which the sharks are finned is particularly cruel. The process of shark finning involves: catching a shark, removing all of the shark's fins, throwing the shark back into the water (most often still alive) and the fresh blood will attract more sharks to catch. That's right, poachers are not even using the whole shark. Remember that warning before? I could not stop crying at this part because in the documentary there is no shortage of of horrible footage of sharks being stripped of their fins and tossed back into the water. It's the equivalent of cutting a human's arms and legs off and tossing him or her into the ocean to drown or bleed to death (shark's will drown if they can't swim).
Reasons to not murder sharks:
- Duh! They're awesome
- Murder is wrong
- Sharks are incredibly old -- definitely older than humans. They're been around for 400 million years, pre-dating dinosaurs by 150 million years
- They're not dangerous if you respect them. Shark attacks are few and most are adolescent sharks who are confused as to what constitutes food (seals) and what does not (humans). According the the International Shark Attack File, your real odds of being attacked by a shark are one in 11.5 million and 0 in 264.1 million of being killed by one. (Only 38 people have died of a shark attack between 1580 and 2003)
- We depend upon sharks to survive. As in all ecosystems we need a top predator (sorry humans, that can't always be you.) In the ocean there are tiny plants called Phytoplankton, an important plant that consumes carbon dioxide and provides more than half of the oxygen we breathe. Being tiny, phytoplankton are not on the top of the food chain and are consumed by other marine populations, which in turn are consumed by sharks. Therefore sharks = oxygen.
- Shark meat and shark fin contain mercury and other toxins; some fins have been found to contain over 40 times the permissible limit of mercury for human consumption. So it would be healthier just to leave the sharks alone
Toronto is not yet Shark Fin free -- here is a link to the petition asking the City of Toronto (where I'm from) to put a ban on shark fins: Fin Free Toronto
Here is the trailer for Sharkwater. I think you can watch the whole documentary on Youtube.
Also, here's the intro for Sharky & George because it's Shark related and that cartoon was awesome.
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