The Importance of Sharks in Ocean Ecology

Brett here. Many people don't know how important sharks are to the ocean. Sharks help stabilize the ocean's populations between all the animals. Sharks take out the young, sick, or old members of a species. Studies have found that in areas where overfishing has caused shark populations to decline, predators that would normally have been kept in check by sharks became more plentiful and were causing greater damage to the ecosystem. For example, the cownose ray populations in the Mid-Atlantic had increased dramatically and were eating a large amount of the bay scallops, which in turn was causing the scallop fishery (which was going strong for over a century) to almost disappear entirely, with the highest catch only being 13%. Healthy shark population support healthier and more abundant commercial fishing species (such as tuna) by keeping the populations of fish that would normally eat these species relatively low. One study in coral reef degeneration found that a larger number of apex predators such as sharks led to higher reef-building corals and algae, as well as low levels of coral disease. These reefs could also recover quicker from disease and heat episodes caused by global warming (link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001548). If sharks continue to be overfished in the oceans, then the whole world, not just the oceans, is going to slowly degenerate. The species that sharks would normally eat would reproduce beyond control, which would then lead to lower population counts for the species that those fish eat. This causes the whole ecosystem to be unbalanced and unhealthy because of the higher or lower populations of certain types of fish. This is going to cause problems for humans because, in addition to humans not being able to eat species that are now commercially available for consumption, fishermen are going to have to find new jobs, fishing companies are going to go out of business, the ocean tourism industry is going to plummet, and the amount of oxygen in the air is going to diminish because the ocean produces at least 50% of the Earth's oxygen. Think about that the next time you hear someone say sharks are nonessential to the ocean or the world.

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Shark Fin Nutrition

Brett Homme again. This week, I'm going to discuss the nutritional value of shark fins.While many people eat shark fins (predominantly the Asian culture), a lot of people are ignorant about the danger in eating shark fins. Shark fins contain dangerous and poisonous chemicals that are obtained through a process called "bioaccumulation." When an animal eats a plant or another animal, it acquires some of the vitamins, minerals, and other chemicals that were in the plant or animal. As the first animal eats more and more plants or animals, it acquires more and more chemicals from all the things it has eaten. Then, when that animal gets eaten, some of the chemicals it had built up in its body get transferred to the animal that ate it. Because sharks are the apex predator of the ocean, they eat literally tons of fish in their lifetime, meaning they stockpile many poisonous chemicals. When humans come along and kill the sharks for their fins, their fins contain toxins that get consumed by humans when the fins are put in dishes such as shark fin soup. One of these toxins is methyl mercury, which is a neurotoxin that has been linked to serious neurological and heart problems as well as infertility. Two other toxins are Beta-Methylamino-L-Alanine (BMAA), which has been linked to Alzheimer's and other degenerative brain diseases, and arsenic, which has been linked to heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, stroke, and diabetes. In addition to the toxins that shark fins contain, they also contain very little nutrition in them, and have no taste. There is no reason why shark fins should be consumed, seeing as how they only hurt humans that eat them. Especially when fishers waste 95% of the shark to only get the fins and then leave the shark to thrash around the water until it slowly dies from being unable to get oxygen. It's an immoral practice that needs to be stopped. If it's not, humans will have much bigger problems than simply not being able to have shark fins anymore.

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Our Twitter handle is @NoFinning

If you wish to contact us directly, the email address to send to is zooacademy@yahoo.org

Information about No Fins No Future

Brett here. This week I'm going to talk about the group that we made, No Fins No Future. No Fins No Future was started last year by some of the seniors from the Zoo Academy. Those seniors (plus some juniors, including myself) were the ones who talked with the senators and wrote the legislative resolution that we submitted to the Nebraska Legislature. LR207 is now set to be brought before committee sometime at the beginning of this coming year. The seniors from last year didn't really work on gaining support or promoting our group after they submitted LR207, so No Fins No Future died off slightly as the seniors went away to college. At the beginning of this school year, however, some of the new seniors (such as myself) picked up where last year's seniors had left off, and we have done much more with No Fins No Future. We have created a Powerpoint and gone to some of the local high schools to talk to the students there to educate our peers. We have been in communication with conservation groups such as the Humane Society US, Shark Defenders, Fins Attached, Shark research Institute, and many others. We have created pages on both Facebook and Twitter, and I have started this blog to spread information to the public. We are working on creating an official logo to represent our group. We have done research to find facts and information to explain why shark finning is an immoral and unhealthy practice. We are prepared to go before the court when the time comes and get LR207 made into a bill and stop the possession and trade of shark fins in Nebraska.

Our Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/pages/No-Fins-No-Future/284128625056139
Our Twitter page is @NoFinning

We can be reached directly through our teacher's email: zooacademy@yahoo.com

The Truth About Sharks

Brett Homme again. This week, I'm going to tell the people that believe that all sharks should be killed that they have a serious misconception about sharks. Because of major motion pictures like Jaws (who's writer, Peter Benchley, was an avid shark and ocean conservationist until his death in 2006), many people got the impression that sharks are terrifying, man-eating creatures that only exist to wreak havoc for fishermen, swimmers, and divers. On the contrary, sharks generally only take one bite to "taste" something, and then let go. There are unfortunate circumstances that happen on occasion where someone does die or lose a limb because of a shark (like Bethany Hamilton), but those occasions are rare.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/sharks-killed-per-hour-infographic_n_2965775.html

The link above contains an infographic made by Joe Chernov and Robin Richards earlier this year. An average of 12 people are killed PER YEAR by sharks. On the other hand, 11,417 sharks are killed PER HOUR by humans. Stop and think about that for a moment. For every one person killed (1 person per month), 8,220,240 sharks are killed [11,417 multiplied by 24 (to get the number per day), then multiplied by 30 (to get the number per month)]. In order to truly grasp how big of a gap there is, you need to click on that link and see that infographic. Anyone that has a sense of morality should be saying "that's not right," or something similar to that phrase.  The chilling part of that infographic is that it is only measured BY HOUR. PER YEAR, that number changes to roughly 100 million sharks killed because of humans (8,220,240 multiplied by 12). Imagine how long that infographic would have to be in order to show the comparison between the number of humans killed per year and the number of sharks killed per year. Do you want to know the really disturbing thing? The study where that 100 million sharks killed by humans came from (and subsequently the 11,417) said that 100 million was a CONSERVATIVE estimate, and that the actual number of sharks killed could be as high as 273 MILLION. Think about that the next time you are thinking about how much sharks need to be hunted to extinction. The link to the study is posted below.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X13000055


Our group, No Fins No Future, is on Facebook (Link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/No-Fins-No-Future/284128625056139) and on Twitter (@NoFinning)


If you want to contact us directly, we can be reached through our teacher's email: zooacademy@yahoo.com