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Shark Facts
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• Between the early 1970s and late 1980s, the
prevalence of many shark species found along the Southeastern
Coast of the U.S. declined by as much as 80 percent.
(NOAA)
• Sharks are particularly vulnerable to overfishing
because they grow and mature slowly, have long gestation
periods, and produce few young at a time.
• Great white sharks are on the World Wildlife
Fund’s “10 Most-Wanted” list. They
cite a burgeoning trade in teeth, jaws, and fins, coupled
with increased commercial and sport fishing, for pushing
the great white shark into the ranks of wildlife most
at risk from unregulated international trade.
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The release of Open Water may send some scampering
from the ocean, but the most dangerous predators of
all come out of the water and up onto the beach and line up
at the “all-you-can-eat” seafood buffets. When it
comes to having a taste for flesh, whether it’s leg of
lamb, chicken breast, or shark steak, the biggest predator of
them all—humankind—has a meat addiction that kills
more than 100 million sharks and billions of other sea animals
annually, in contrast to the approximately 10 people killed
worldwide by sharks every year. But unlike humans, sharks are
natural carnivores. They can’t plant vegetables, bake
bread, or cruise the supermarkets.
To get fish into supermarket carts and onto restaurant plates,
huge nets, sometimes miles long, are stretched across oceans,
swallowing up everything and everyone in their path. These are
plastic, weighted gillnets that hang like curtains, generally
to a depth of 30 feet. Because gillnets are left unmonitored,
trapped fish can suffer for days. When hauled up from the deep
(along with dolphins, turtles, seals, and other unintended victims),
fish slowly suffocate or are crushed to death, their eyeballs
bulging out of their heads from the pressure of sudden surfacing.
Others are still alive when their throats and bellies are slit
open. Read more at FishingHurts.com.
The recent injuries suffered by shark attack victims offer
us a glimpse into the terrifying experience that these fish
endure when they are hauled out of their environment only to
be pitch-forked back into the water after their fins have been
sliced off. While their fins are made into “delicacies”
such as shark-fin soup, the sharks either suffocate or slowly
bleed to death.
If you’re concerned about predators in the water—or
ending up in intensive care because of your diet—the best
thing that you can do is to go vegetarian before your next trip
to the ocean: www.GoVeg.com.
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