Photo from Wikimedia Commons user Terry Gross.
Sharks are lovely. They’re 400-million-year-old, perfectly designed superpredators, and they’re the only creatures tough enough to take down Samuel L. Jackson. But unfortunately, according to yet another new study, they should be afraid of us.
The new report issued today is the first global study of open-ocean sharks and rays, and it says that more than a third of them are threatened with extinction due to humans. The main ways they are killed is having their top fin sliced off for shark fin soup (after which they drown, being unable to swim properly), or they get caught in long-line fishing nets along with prey they’re pursuing, often tuna.
Four of the species in the study were classified as endangered, the highest extinction-risk category: the ornate eagle ray, giant devilray, scalloped hammerhead, and great hammerhead. Many others were “vulnerable,” including two kinds of makos and the Great White (above), one of the ocean’s most formidable carnivores and star of Jaws. To learn more, you can read the PDF of the full 92-page report here.