monline

Today I saw news of a recent -presumably deadly- shark attack near the West Australian coast. If you google on the event, you'll find that only half of the news portals mention that the victim (Brian Guest, 51) was an avid fisherman and diver, and he had campaigned to protect sharks from hunting.

"Our place on earth is not so sacred that we remove every threat that exists," (*) he said in a forum about sharks on the Western Angler website.
"Every surfer, fisherman and diver has far more chance of being killed by bees, drunk drivers, teenage car thieves and lightning."

I've seen a very short report on this attack in TV and they did not mention anything on the victim or his point of view. The news was all about the "horror" and shocking the viewers. Searching on the net also revealed that Mr. Guest's family explicitly asked for the shark not to be hunted since the man would have not wanted this to happen.

There're quite a few numbers floating around regarding how many deadly shark attacks happen a year. I've read that together with the current one, there were only 2 deadly shark attacks at Australian coasts this year and there were all together 12 such attacks since 2000!

Now if you google for the words "million sharks killed", you'll find that recent research shows around 38 million sharks are killed every year! Commercial fishing is mainly about shark fins (eg. for soup), recreational shark killings are more about the excitement. Unfortunately we cannot tell how many sharks are out there, but at this rate I'd not wonder if my descendants would never get to see a shark in real life (only on screen). Maybe I can be considered lucky to have seen a few with my own eyes. Talking to more experienced divers showed that indeed there's a very real and detectable decline in the diversity of sea life. It gets more and more difficult every year to spot sharks, turtles, etc. eg. in the Red Sea.

You might ask why you should care. Sharks play a vital part in the ecosystem of seas and oceans. They are the top predators of open water (aside from mankind), responsible to keep the numbers of smaller species (fish) at bay. Getting them extinct will definitely have a serious impact on water life. Of course we cannot predict how serious it will be, but denying it would be an act of mere stupidity.

(*) I've registered on the Western Angler website's forum and tried to find the referred post, but did not. Maybe the quote I fetched from a news portal is not quite exact.