In defense of sharks

Consider the shark: a creature that has ruled without serious challenge the major part of the Earth’s surface for at least 100 million years; a creature so supremely adapted to its role in nature that it has had to change hardly at all since the time of the great dying-off of the dinosaurs more than 60 million years ago; a creature whose occasional attention to man has made it the most universally feared and loathed of our cohabitants throughout recorded history. Yet, after all those eons, and despite all of man’s concern, the shark retains an air of mystery.

Great White Shark
Dangerous to man, the great white frequents almost all oceans, at a wide variety of depths and temperatures. The bite of an eight-foot bull shark may exceed 18 metric tons per square inch. Only Neptune knows what kind of force a 20-foot great white shark can muster.

Thresher Shark
Most sharks have tails with upper lobes longer than the lower, a characteristic dramatically evident in the long, whiplike tail of the thresher.

Sandbar Shark
This species, once thought to reach maturity in 3 to 4 years, now is known to take 12 to 14.

Mako: In short bursts, the mako can swim at a speed of 40 knots. A beautiful and deliciously edible game fish, it fights ferociously when hooked, leaping high and sometimes rushing the boat.

Blue Shark:
Most sharks seem to be migratory, either seasonally or in conjunction with feeding and reproductive cycles. Shark tagging by the National Marine Fisheries Service has proved that the blue shark migrates over considerable distances, between New England and West Africa and between the Canary Islands and the British Isles.

Whale Shark:
This 40-to-60-foot shark is the biggest fish in the sea. A harmless plankton feeder, it swims with mouth agape, gill rakers straining the myriad tiny creatures it encounter.

Gray Nurse Shark:
Popular lore has it that sharks are ravenous creatures. Yet a gray nurse shark thrived for years in an Australian aquarium, eating only 50 pounds of fish per month in summer, and only 10 to 15 pounds a month during the winter.

Porbeagle:
Known also as the mackerel shark, porbeagles are so popular in Italy that they are sold with the rough skin on so consumers will know they’re not anther fish. These sharks produce only two to four pups per brood.

 

Aside from a few physiological facts, little can be with confidence about sharks that applies to all species and every individual. Today’s truth has a way of becoming tomorrow’s rejected hypothesis or discredited error. We do know that there are 250 to 3000 species, a diverse lot shaped by evolution to fill dominant niches throughout the complex marine ecosystem. Indeed, for nearly every creature that swims in the sea, there is a shark superbly adapted to be its predator. Sharks live in all the oceans, from tropics to polar seas, from sunlit waters of the surface to the eternal gloom of the deeps. The shark’s skin is thick, tough and covered with denticles – scaly projections – that can dull the finest knife. On the Mohs’ scale, which is used to measure the hardness of materials, shark teeth rank about the same as steel. Because of its armor and armament, the shark has no natural enemy in the sea besides other sharks.

But whether the shark is holding its own, expanding its dominion or sliding toward extinction, we don’t know. Clearly, it could use friends. Only a few dozen species are known to be dangerous and no shark can be fairly called a maneater, a creature that customarily dines on human flesh. Yet, since the publication of Jaws in 1974 and the ensuing movie, fear of sharks has taken a steep climb. Growing hordes of fishermen are setting out to catch the “killers,” and shoreside mobs have stabbed, stomped and bludgeoned sharks brought to dockside scales.

There is no justifying the morbid and irrational fear that provokes this mindless savagery. More people die from the stings of bees and wasps than from the bites of sharks, and each year in the United States alone more than three times as many people are struck by lightning as are bitten by sharks in all the waters of the world.

Prejudice against sharks runs so strong and deep that most people are unaware of the shark’s many benefactions to mankind. For centuries, they have been used for food, fertilizers, cosmetics and hides, and sarve as a source of vitamins and medicines. National Institutes of Health researchers have determined that sharks can survive brain damage better than most mammals. Now it seems that sharks may be immune to cancer, and researchers have begun to study the shark to discover why.

Thus in our ignorance we fear, and in our fear detest, one of nature’s most impressive and potentially useful creatures. For the astonishing possibility exists: someday a shark may save your life!

Tagged as: Defense of sharks, Shark, shark history, shark species, Sharks