Menacing, man eating, and malicious: all words I’ve heard when it comes to the gentle giants of the sea. While JAWS and The Shallows may have ingrained your preexisting hatred of sharks, they’re not the creatures that send a wave of shock over so many. Sharks are in fact, vital to our ecosystems. They play a large role in our oceans, and due to human misconduct, their population is slowly depleting. With such a crucial predator slowly becoming endangered, measures must be taken to ensure the security of our future: both to these precious animals, and our ocean’s ecosystems.
Often, I hear that our oceans are “shark infested”, and to be wary of what lies beneath the vast depths. This statement is completely absurd, for one simple fact: the ocean is where sharks live. Quite literally, it is where they belong. By placing such a negatively connotative phrase alongside the reputation of the creatures, underlying tension and unease towards sharks are fostered and even encouraged. Not only are negative attitudes towards sharks seen in the common people, but through media as well. Sharks are notorious for the attacks that occur in the news. However, out of more than 480 shark species, only three are responsible for a double-digit number of fatal, unprovoked attacks on humans: the great white, tiger, and bull. While the actions of few may unfairly represent the masses, we’ve got to keep a level head and think about the facts. When compared, statistics reveal that less feared causes of death, such as lightning strikes, account for more deaths than shark attacks do. On average, about 38 individuals will die annually due to lightning, which sharply contrasts the one person who is killed by sharks in a year.
The entertainment industry has taken its fair share of destruction towards the shark reputation as well. Well known movie, JAWS, hit theatres in a decade other than our own, in 1975. This movie changed how we’ve viewed sharks forever, and continues to be a classic. The hit’s prime fault was the take they took on sharks, as they were depicted as vengeful predators who had the intelligence levels to seek out specific humans and maliciously attack. Since the movie was released, a spread sense of dread towards our friends has hurt them dearly. In the waters off the U.S. eastern seaboard, populations of many species of sharks have dropped by 50 percent and some have fallen by as much as 90 percent.
“Up until that point, there was virtually no funding for sharks, because they were not thought particularly interesting to humans, not being a major food fish — they were regularly regarded as a pest or nuisance that ate the baits or catches of commercial fishermen,” says George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research in Gainesville, regarding the effect of JAWS.
A more recent shark-focused movie has also restored the common fear of sharks. The Shallows, released in mid-2016, became a huge hit in multiple nations. Raking in over 84 million dollars, the film definitely perpetuated pre-existing misconceptions. Mainstream media continues to misrepresent…. but hey, what’s new about that?
Cultural differences also play a large part in one of the more modern manmade methods of shark extinction: finning. Shark finning refers to the common practice of capturing sharks, often illegally, and harvesting their fins while discarding the rest of the shark in the ocean. Can you imagine this? Could you image minding your own business, when someone comes along and cut off your means of transportation? Without their fins, these sharks are left to die of blood loss or suffocation and in great pain. Shark finning kills sharks at a shocking rate, it is estimated that 100 to 200 million sharks annually are killed for their fins. Through the business, the fins are heavily exploited and sold at great prices: even up to $350 for a bowl of shark fin soup! Not only does this deplete populations, but brings ethics into play. Shark finning is not only a cruel and backwards practice, it is a waste and a travesty on nature and must stop before a magnificent creature of the sea is lost forever.
Speaking of manmade changes, there is no other prime factor leading to the death of sharks other than global warming. In recent years, rates of shark attacks, especially in North Carolina, have been increasing. While the chances of being bitten are still one in 11.5 million, something is definitely going on. Warmer air temperatures have been heating the overall temperature of the ocean as well, which promotes shark migration patterns to stray from paths in the past. Coastal regions are undeniably warming up, which leads to increased attacks due to the shark’s misconception of what a human really is, who thinks they may be a seal. With attacks on the rise, the fear of sharks are most definitely being held to a high standard.
However, there are measures in place to curb these misconceptions and myths. A very popular nonprofit, OCEARCH, is working towards this goal. They focus on the global reach on unprecedented research on great white sharks and other large apex predators. Through tracking and tagging the majestic sharks and even providing a free app on the app store, the public can now track migration patterns of sharks. The team has also partnered with public education systems to provide factual based education on the sharks. Way to go, OCEARCH! By turning our fear into fascination, we can not only help protect ourselves and the sharks, but our ecosystems as a whole for a better tomorrow.
Comments are closed.