Whales have gotten even for being used as slaves in aquatic shows. Now sharks are getting even too–for having their fins cut off and used in soup. Scientists have discovered high concentrations of a neurotoxin linked to degenerative brain diseases in shark fins. These include Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig Disease (ALS).
read more
Scientists can identify zebras by their "bar codes"–now they can identify shark fins by zip code. Shark fins are illegally poached by the Chinese in order to make one of their great delicacies: shark fin soup. Tens of millions of animals are killed every year to produce this: 73 million sharks are killed by people every year, while sharks kill 4-5 people a year.
read more
It’s hard to feel sorry for sharks, and there’s a lot of new information about them. Some of it makes one feel sorry for them, while other news makes us feel that maybe they ought to all be destroyed. For instance, in South Africa, sunbathers and swimmers saw a tourist being gobbled up by a gigantic shark. When it was all over, nothing was left in the bloody ocean except his diving goggles.
In the January 13th edition of the Guardian, David Smith quotes a witness as saying, “That shark was huge. Like dinosaur huge.” Another witness described it as “longer than a minibus.” People on the Cape Town beach saw the shark rise out of the ocean several times with part of a human body in its jaws.
read more
Sometimes sharks like to eat US when we’re swimming, but without them, WE’RE not going to be able to eat much shellfish. Fewer big sharks in the oceans led to the destruction of North Carolina?s bay scallop fishery and inhibits the recovery of depressed scallop, oyster and clam populations along the Atlantic Coast.
A team of Canadian and American ecologists has found that overfishing in the Atlantic of the largest predatory sharks has led to an explosion of their ray, skate and small shark prey species. Julia Baum says, “With fewer sharks around, the species they prey upon–like cownose ray–have increased in numbers, and in turn, hordes of cownose rays dining on bay scallops have wiped the scallops out.”
read more