5 Ways to Value a Shark

Is there any more demonized creature on earth than the Great White Shark? But think about it: No Great White Shark created DDT, napalm, nuclear weapons, the internal combustion engine, cigarettes, greenhouse gases, or hydroelectric dams. That's not how most of us look at sharks but unless we change, we're creating a situation that may have no solution. Peter Benchley, author of the book that truly started the shark frenzy, once said: "If we kill everything in the ocean, and if we pollute the ocean to a point where it can't sustain life, we're committing suicide."

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Depending on how we humans choose to view sharks, there may or may not be sharks in the future...and that spells big trouble for the oceans and the planet.

5 Ways to Look at a Shark

1. Soup

Untold millions of sharks are targeted each year for their fins. This practice involves catching sharks, cutting off their fins while they are alive, and tossing the maimed fish back into the ocean (often still alive). Why? SharkFriends.com explains: "Shark fins, once they are harvested, are then dried to be sold in markets to individuals and restaurants to be made into shark fin soup and sold to the public (especially tourists) for as much as $350 per bowl!" To make this even more despicable, the shark fins don't add flavor to the soup. They are added solely for texture.

2. Collateral Damage

As Humane Society International explains: "According to some estimates, between 50 and 100 million sharks are killed each year around the world. Many of these sharks are unintended 'bycatch' by vessels fishing for high-value species such as swordfish and tuna." Funny use of the term "high-value," huh? If you're waiting for me to assign a price to this entry, you're out of luck. Collateral damage has no value. Just ask the civilians in Afghanistan.

3. Entertainment

As mentioned above, it's profitable to "sell" sharks as hateful monsters. Jaws the book sold an estimated 20 million copies. The original 1975 film pulled in $260,000,000 in domestic gross. Plus, as The New York Times announced last year:

"The New York Aquarium is moving ahead with a $100 million plan to renovate its building in Coney Island and create two massive tanks for more than 30 sharks—about four times as many as now ply the aquarium's waters."

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4. Important Ocean Predator

Here's a reality check from Oceana:

"As apex predators, sharks play an important role in the ecosystem by maintaining the species below them in the food chain and serving as an indicator for ocean health. They help remove the weak and the sick as well as keeping the balance with competitors helping to ensure species diversity. As predators, they shift their prey's spatial habitat, which alters the feeding strategy and diets of other species ... The loss of sharks has led to the decline in coral reefs, seagrass beds and the loss of commercial fisheries. By taking sharks out of the coral reef ecosystem, the larger predatory fish, such as groupers, increase in abundance and feed on the herbivores. With less herbivores, macroalgae expands and coral can no longer compete, shifting the ecosystem to one of algae dominance, affecting the survival of the reef system."

5. Living Fossil

More than 200 million years before the dinosaurs, there were sharks. Do we really want to be the species that wiped them out?

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