The Shark Industry
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Written by: Lauryn Niles
This is post 2 of 3 for the Shark Week series!
One in five million… One.
Even when we look across multiple statistics, this is the average chance of getting bitten AND killed by a shark. Some sources say it’s a much smaller percentage.
The Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File (ISAF) reported 57 unprovoked shark bites worldwide in 2022. Only five of these were fatal.
This means that in the so very teensy minuscule chance of getting attacked, odds are you’ll live to tell the story with a rad scar to prove it. A super cool icebreaker at parties, and if you’re trying to be different from this modern world of shallow trends and Tik Tok dances, here it is.
Let’s put this into perspective. One study found that 24 people die per year in France from champagne corks nailing them in the face at weddings. Lawnmowers kill an estimated 70 people per year in the US. So next time you stay out of the water because you’re scared a shark is waiting to ambush you from underneath, maybe think about also buying Dad some metal shin guards next time he pulls out the John-Deere. Aligning logic.
Once we recognize these facts, seeing the irony in our fear of these beautiful animals is pretty funny. But I get it. I get the unease of not knowing what swims beneath you in the water. I understand that paradoxical feeling of constantly wanting to stick your head under the surface to check out the scene all while forcing yourself not to because it’s “just better not to know”.
The reality is that sharks are misunderstood, and we shouldn’t accept this fear-driven narrative from the media that they are lurking in the waters waiting to feast. Anything that relies so heavily on feeding into people’s fears is covering up the truth, and the backbone of shark narratives in media is fear. All of this mass communication that reinforces our fears makes sharks all the more susceptible to many threats. But they are complex, graceful, and powerful kings of the sea that need to be recognized as more than just mindless killing machines. Even the author of Jaws himself, Peter Benchley, regrets his decision in writing the book. He stated in an interview, “No one appreciates how vulnerable they are to destruction.” Steven Spielberg then echoed these feelings after making it into the wildly popular film: “I regret the decimation of the shark populations because of the book and the film.”
Because of this continued trend in Hollywood movies, our fear has been fortified like a barricaded door, thus more work must be done to change this trajectory. We should seek the knowledge to understand these guardians of the ocean.
There are over 500 species of sharks, ranging from a couple of inches to 60 feet long. The whale shark, being the largest, is completely harmless, feasting on zooplankton and algae. Of these 500+ species, only 3 - 5% of them have been reported to bite a human. And only 3 of these species have ever made it into the double digits in reported bites.
Sharks are an ancient animal. They have survived four mass extinctions making them practically living fossils. Their resilience to destruction and extinction has been exceptional.
But something has changed. We are now seeing shark populations depleting at such a rapid rate that the entire ocean’s health is being affected. Sharks play a key role in the marine ecosystem. They are the apex predators at the top of the food chain, and certain shark species regulate all the species below them in the complex marine food web. They eliminate the weak and sick and maintain the balance with other competitors. This ensures species diversity.
We on this earth have got our hands on a pretty intricate ocean environment. One that is so beautifully and creatively designed that it relies on all species working together in harmony to function properly. Now, that ‘harmony’ could be a Great White viciously tearing apart a sick and dying whale, but these kinds of things keep all species at a healthy and sustainable population level.
So here lies the problem. The frightening decline of sharks is not due to this wild and natural process between species. We now play a key role in the current dwindling of shark populations and many species’ populations for that matter.
An estimated 75 - 100 million sharks are killed annually by human actions, and about 50 million of these are killed as bycatch from large-scale fisheries. We have essentially created millions of massive killing machines that stay on the water for months at a time, setting enough long line every day to wrap around the planet 500 times. The fishing nets cannot capture targeted species, so all species suffer from it. The scale on which this occurs is devastating and pretty unfathomable because we don’t see it happening.
The commercial fishing industry has drastically shifted our baseline of healthy marine populations. The global abundance of sharks has decreased by more than 70%, with some species declining by 80-99%. Sharks are especially threatened because of the multi-billion dollar shark finning industry. So not only are they victims of bycatch, they are targeted and killed for their fins. Most shark fins are shipped to China where shark fin soup is a delicacy. Fishermen can get up to $500 a pound just for the fins, so they choose to cut the fins off the animal, throwing the alive shark back into the water to store more fins on board. Unable to swim, the shark suffocates if the blood loss hasn’t already killed them.
Can you imagine a more terrible death for an animal? The kings of the ocean are being cut apart for a single dish that contains a toxic level of mercury for human consumption. That alone should keep shark meat out of our bodies, but there are also byproducts of the shark industry like cosmetics. It’s an industry that makes a few people terrifyingly rich and powerful. It is often criminally involved with countless reports and investigations having found mass corruption and shady actions around every corner.
I think a lot of us can look into the gnarly reality of shark finning and get a little twang in our stomachs. It’s a brutal and seemingly heartless action done to a beautiful animal. And it becomes easy to aim our anger toward the fishermen, but these guys are just trying to survive and feed their families. We cannot put ourselves on a pedestal and claim that we wouldn’t do the same if we were in their position. I hope we all agree that feeding a person, our family, is more important than a shark’s life. The problem is that there is an incredible amount of money in the shark industry. It’s hard to believe because most of us are understandably detached from it. But when we follow the money, high and power-hungry people’s fangs are exposed. They don’t care who or what is being taken advantage of; their lust for money is too powerful. They are blinded by their own greed.
This is why it’s crucial to share this information so we can be aware. Many unknown industries like this hide in the depths, exploiting our natural world and the labor of our brothers and sisters. Once we can find the truth behind our fear, we can start doing something about it.
Sources:
https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/shark-attack-statistics/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2019/03/26/why-sharks-matter/?sh=6bb29d4e535c
https://europe.oceana.org/en/importance-sharks-0
https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/sharks-rays/shark-finning-sharks-turned-prey
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/10/stop-plunder-of-the-high-seas
https://www.maturetimes.co.uk/joyce-glasser-reviews-sharkwater-extinction/