Sharks are endangered

[Sarapva]

I just saw the documentary film "Sharkwater" about how sharks are being hunted to low numbers for their fins (to make shark-fin soup). I never knew much about sharks (only what I'd seen from the movie "Jaws", which makes them out to be man-eating machines).

The man who made the documentary, Rob Stewart, scuba dives with sharks and even pets them. He says they're afraid of humans and don't normally attack. Sometimes they bite people to try to see what they are, or sometimes they'll attack thinking a person is a seal (because when people swim we splash around like a seal does if it's sick and weak). He says that elephants kill more people a year than sharks.

Here's a link to the Sharkwater web site:

Sharkwater: Extinction

 

[Uchite]

I love Sharks. I think they are beautiful and have a right to life as much as any of us.

Just don't go in the water without realizing the risk you are taking. By going in their part of the earth, we are taking risks.

Mind you I wish to never be around one! Nor would I want to be around a Tiger or Bear!

But that these Animals defend themselves and naturally want to eat is no reason for us to go out and kill them for the "sport" of it.

 

[Haruspex]

Again, chopping up the poachers would solve the issue... but we must remain true humanists, and kill everything other than us. Kill those damn hunters!

 

[Sarapva]

...Just don't go in the water without realizing the risk you are taking. By going in their part of the earth, we are taking risks.

But that these Animals defend themselves and naturally want to eat is no reason for us to go out and kill them for the "sport" of it.

Yes, I agree completely! Actually, part of what was mentioned in the movie was that by endangering sharks we're actually endangering ourselves - because they're the top predators in the ocean they keep down other species of fish that feed off phytoplankton (or something like that). If shark numbers dwindle then the numbers of these other fish will increase, meaning they'll eat more of the phytoplankton, which creates oxygen for us. So this means we'll have less oxygen. There must be other ways that the ecosystem is damaged by our over-fishing that we don't even know about.

Quoted by Derfel:

Again, chopping up the poachers would solve the issue... but we must remain true humanists, and kill everything other than us.

When I saw the scenes in the movie of the poachers cutting off the fins and tails of sharks and then dropping them back into the water, sometimes still alive, I felt so angry and distressed and wouldn't have minded seeing the poachers getting what they deserved. But of course violence only begets more violence. I can only think that people who maim animals (or other people) don't really understand what they're doing in a cosmic sense. I'm sure it comes back to them in some way.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I agree, people hunting sharks for their fins is a disgustingly cruel and wasteful business. I think sharks as vicious animals are over-hyped (probably due to films like Jaws and Deep Blue playing on people's fears of sharks), but they're hardly harmless animals either way. The best thing to do is to simply stay out of their way and treat them with respect- like most potentially dangerous animals in the world, they won't attack you if you don't make them feel threatened or stressed.
But to be honest people trawling fish and farming fish poses a far greater danger to sharks than the trade for shark fins does- trawling and fish farms cause huge damage to many species though, like turtles, dolphins, sharks, fish etc (trawling nets just catch everything in their way, while the colossal nets used to house farmed fish, trap scavenging or predatory animals which come to feast on dead farmed fish which get caught in the nets etc). You might not eat shark fin soup, but you can be supporting just as damaging a threat to sharks and other animals by eating farmed fish or fish caught by trawling etc.

 

[Sarapva]

That's true. Part of the "Sharkwater" movie was about long-line fishing. The divers came across a 60-mile long line that was put in the ocean illegally (I think in a protected area around the Galapagos). There were 16,000 hooks on this line, and hundreds of sharks and other fish and turtles were trapped - some still alive and some dead.

Some of the interviews in the movie discussed how it's almost impossible to enforce laws on the open sea because it's such a huge area. I just hope that gradually people will go over to thinking more about protecting the environment instead of making a profit at any cost. That's probably idealistic, but movies like these and the movement toward environmentalism is encouraging.