Many species of open ocean shark are under serious threat, according to an assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The Red list gives the status of 64 types of shark and ray, over 30% of which are threatened with extinction. The authors, IUCN’s Shark Specialist Group, say a main cause is overfishing.
Listed as endangered are two species of hammerhead shark, often subject to “finning” – a practice of removing the fins and throwing away the body.
BBC NEWS | Many sharks ‘facing extinction’ — I blame China. They’ve gone berserk with all their money and they love shark fin soup.
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The Taiwanese are the ones with the biggest shark-fishing fleet, but you’re correct, it’s the Chinese market driving this. PNG is now almost devoid of sharks.
Species extinction and habitat destruction are real, verifiable ecological disasters. It’s easy math, extinction keeps moving up the species hierarchy until it eventually reaches mankind.
The theory that they are being eaten out of existence is one factor. The other side of that is that the sharks’ food supply is becoming harder and harder to find thanks to over fishing and pollution.
china and japan
And this is bad because…
My parents took us three kids (14, 11 & 9) to see Jaws (the movie) right in the middle of our summer vacation in Florida in 1975. I didn’t get past the hotel pool for the duration. Not quite sure I am over that bit of trauma. This was followed up the next summer by viewing Grizzly (the movie) before a camping trip. This post is not greatly relevant but I appreciate the therapeutic sharing.
hhmmm lets feed the sharks our over abundance of lawyers…
ok that prolly would bring out the peta gang as being cruel to the sharks..
Folks love to use the E word these days. Since we know less about the oceans than we do about the Moon in most cases I’d be a bit skeptical.
Who’s to say that the fish are actually learning and avoiding the chugging things on the surface?
If we heard of NO shark attacks world-wide for an entire year, I’d suspect something was definitely up.
i POSTED SOMETHING SIMILAR, about the over fishing of ALL the worlds waters..
They are estimating that MOSt of the Tuna species will be gone by 2012.
Salmon, soon after.
Between Fishing out the FOOD fish and Fishing off the predators, we will soon have an ocean of jellyfish..
The ocean is taking as much CO2 into it as it can handle, which also means O2 levels are probably DOWN, the chemicals that were SUPPOSED to be cleaned up 30 years ago are still out there..the main FISH routes are also the MAIN SHIPPING routes for OIL..
Does this include the sharks on Wall Street?
Yep, me too..
And we blame the rest on USA. They had done nothing to prevent calamities around the world for the past 8-10 years and now try to blame other? Shaaaame.
Finning is one of the more disgusting practices against nature in modern times.
Goes to show how shallow and primitive humans can be. The governments do nothing about it.
Holy shit!!!
I agree completely with Dallas. (Hell must be pretty cold today)
At some point in the future aliens may come to the Earth and use us as a food source and I wonder how we would like having our arms and legs cutoff and just left there?
I have video of a 10 foot Hammerhead going over top of me in the Bahamas and it was awesome. I’d hate to think of someone cutting it up………
Sad. Although I used to worry a bit while surfing in Great White territory, I didn’t want them killed because I was trespassing on their “turf”.
I was going to suggest that we apply this same method to the over population of attorneys, but prefer #6’s plan instead….it’s more eco-friendly!
If peta wants to save the sharks, they’ll have to jump in the middle of an attorney feeding frenzy (it’s silly idea Thursday).
Being a top predator, mercury levels can get very high in shark flesh. The fins are just cartilage for soup. All the worlds fisheries are doomed, the seed stock below sustainable levels. Aquaculture produces mass market crap. Damn them all. Herring is my favorite breakfast, along with two sunny died up eggs. Don’t get me started on salmon.
Shouldn’t this post be accompanied by a picture of Al Gore in clown makeup?
It’s clear the most dangerous predator on the seas is man.
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# 5 wirelessg said, in part:
Don’t worry — it happens more often than you might think.