Da-dum…da-dum…da-dum du-dum…
(My own painting)
This one of the most famous theme songs to ever be written, even without music
or words billions of people around the world associate this with the picture
painted in the 1975 film Jaws of the blood thirsty shark. This film, along with
other movies, books and video games has thrown a judgment on sharks. And that
judgment is anything but good.
So next month I’m moving to SA, and it is highly unique in
that it is at the meeting place of the cold Arctic and Atlantic Ocean currents
and the warmer Indian currents. On one side of the country it’s so cold most
people wouldn't venture in, and on the other it is a warm bath temperature that
would be great on a sunny day. This unique combination lets South Africa have
one of the richest and most diverse ocean ecosystems in the world. And in
these waters more than 140 different species of shark have found a home. Most
of these sharks can be found scattered across the globe, but in the mixed
waters around the cape coast all able to thrive forming the largest collection
in the world.
And it is here, surrounded by cape fur seals and a blossoming
ecosystem, that the great white shark has reached its pinnacle. Great whites
can be found in all the oceans of the world, making it the most wide ranging
predator on the planet and one of the last great predators that can roam free
on earth. No land animal can come anywhere near matching its range and incredibly
diverse diet (and spoilers, people are NOT on the menu). On the Skeleton coast juveniles
can easily reach 8-14 feet, and when I went cage diving there I saw a 16 footer
that the boat men said still had a bit of growing to do. They do so well because
of the large mixture of cold and warm water fish swarms, and a large abundance of
fur seals that live and breed on the coast.
The fear that so many people experience when thinking about
great whites is made up, it comes from movies and books portraying them as
horrible man eaters, even though that is nowhere near who sharks really are.
Most people see that big solid eye and picture a dumb savage that is more
coldblooded then T-rex was, and not many take the time to see how intelligent and
apprehensive these predators are. Sharks actually have fairly complex socials lives,
with hierarchies among groups of nomads, kills rarely get into the ‘feeding
frenzy’ that is plastered over the media. Great whites have both short term and
long term memory, they are able to observe the world around them and learn how
to overcome obstacles from observation. Although you occasionally get some hot
headed sharks that jump right into things, most are hesitant and wary and will
not just attack things they aren't 100% sure is food. A lot of how people get
bit is through ‘test bites’, since sharks don’t have hands the only way they
can really investigate something is by putting it in its mouth. And after
finding out what we taste like, they don’t like it and let us go. They aren't
violently biting and ripping, most damage other then puncture marks is when
people yank their arm away and essentially cut themselves. And most is just the
simple fact that they don’t know what the heck we are.
I LOVE sharks, they are awesome; they are incredibly designed animals and
are highly complex. They are cold blooded fish, and in cold Pacific and Atlantic
waters they are sluggish most of the time, but great whites they have a line of
deep muscle that is kept warmer than the rest of the body and allows for an
exploding burst of speed and can launch them out of the water. All sharks have electromagnetic
sensors on their snout which allows them to pick up the minute pulse that all living
things make. Hammerheads are thought to have the most acute of this sense, when scientists dive with these sharks they
have to remain very calm of the excited quick beats of their heart can actually
spook them (P.S. No human has every been recorded killed by a hammerhead). Bull
sharks can survive in both fresh and salt water; they have been seen 100 miles
in land and will hunt and kill large crocodiles. Mako sharks are sea cheetahs
reaching 56 kph (about 16 meters a second). While most sharks have a sense of smell
to put a blood hound to shame the blue shark tops them all, able to smell one
drop of blood in 25 million drops of water (that’s about 340 gallons, so about
10 bathtubs full). And there are 3 types of shark that can produce their own
light! They produce chemical reactions in specialized skill cells making a completely
natural light over its body.
Hopefully this isn't freaking you out as much as convincing
you how truly amazing sharks are. If still unconvinced think of it like this, nobody
would go running by a group of lions. Lions have a chase instinct built in, if
you run by there is a 90% chance they will chase you. But people do the same
type of thing with sharks every day, we dive into the water surrounded by them
and bringing down a bucket of food. Even in times like these sharks don’t go
crazy and attack the humans, they are timid and usually calm, allowing people
to pet them and swim next to them (and sometimes ride them, true story). But people still
fear sharks… and this has lead to a staggering disaster, as 5000 of them are
killed every 30 minutes.
Shark fin soup is a delicacy in china, one bowl can cost $70
usd. But the shark industry is being extremely over farmed and illegally slaughtered.
In order to get fins long lines are cast into the sea with hundreds of hooks on
them, animals from fish to sea turtles are caught, most dyeing from suffocation
and simply tossed back into the ocean. But that is nothing compared to the violence
against sharks; their dorsal fin, tail fins and pectoral fins are hacked before
casting them back into the water. Most of the sharks are still alive and painfully
drown, unable to pass the water over their gills from their continual swimming.
The sad part is the shark fins themselves add no flavor to the soup. Over 100
million sharks are killed each year for fins, people care so little for sharks because
they fear them. Less shark = less attack. Humans have next to nothing to fear
from sharks, they do not want to hunt us, they simply want to live. Sadly that
is a choice that is being taken from them.
Death from Hippo: 2,900 Deer: 130 Vending machines: 13 Toasters :790
A mere 5 human deaths are caused by sharks per year, which
is nothing compared to how the human race has retaliated. The population is
estimated to have declined by 90%... Sharks very well may be the largest most threatened
group of species on the planet, but almost no one knows it. In one year,
crocodiles killed as many people as sharks did in the last 100; these reptiles are
protected while sharks are pushed to the brink.
South Africa was the first country to protect the sharks of
its waters and with so many of these fish in their waters, the South African’s
have a healthy respect and understanding of how important they are. Removing
any keystone predator is deviating to ecosystems as we have already found, but
removing sharks from one that makes up 70% of the earth would be far worse of an
unfathomable scale. Sharks are truly amazing, take a step back from your
preformed views and just watch them swim with as much grace as any whale or dolphin.
Don’t be afraid of them…
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