Well its very true that sharks are hurting and we as people are not doing enough to stop. Our government though has been pretty good. On the east coast there are 13 banned sharks, the actual law is when you find that you have one of these 13, not when you pull it into your boat, you are to immediatly cut the line. I know Tigers, sandbar, both thresher sharks and I believe nurse are amoung the 13. In Cali it is illegal to catch great whites I am pretty sure. The problem is more with Asia than with any of the Western countries, including Scandinavia after we caught on to what they were doing and put an end to it with the Greenland Sharks. I think the number is around 13 million sharks are pulled up by the Asian fishing fleets each year. they simply pull them up, chop off the fins and throw the still alive shark back into the water, murder on a grand scheme. Best part is, they do it with impunity because its in international waters and no one can stop them. It doesnt stop there with sharks though, no they also pull 45 tons of sea horses each year for their tribal impotence medicines(last known info on this was 2001). Only 4 tons were pulled for the aquarium trade, so while we arent totally blameless on that one, its plainly obvious who the real bad guy is. Populations are half of what they used to be. I cheered when I heard about that sub surfacing under the Japanese fishing boat and sinking it a few years back. They deserved it. But wait thats not all and this is our own US fishers doing this, they are complaining about lower catches over the past few years but have actually complained when told they could not drag their nets along the bottom on the continental shelf, whether the govt backed down i dont know, but they were told that the shelf bottom was where most of the fish they caught hide when juveniles. Is that not idiotic? They complain about not catching anything but then
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when told they cant take out the nurseries. Talk about short sighted morons. I hope a big storm wipes them out, they too deserve it. There are other ways to make money besides raping our resources.
Thankfully there is hope. Alaska is a model example of how to run a proper fishery, unfortunately the rest of the world is too caught up in the old ways to change. Australia is another example of a model country doing a good job. They learned the hard way with sharks. Sport catching of sharks was very popular last century, fun to catch and the fishermen didnt mind because sharks ate their commercial fish too. Soon very few sharks were left. Soon very few fish were left as well. The main food of sharks were various seals who primarily ate fish and with no sharks to thin their numbers the seals went wild. Major restrictions were set in place on shark hunting by the gov't. It is still unknown what the result will be though and hopefully it isnt too late. With the seahorse thing, CITES II came about several months ago and introduced restrictions on the seahorse trade too. Hopefully that will make an impact on those butchers. And before someone says it, no I have no tolerance for a group of people who destroy harmless life just to make drugs so they can get it up or mutilate sharks so they can look good at a business dinner(shark soup).
So if you see one at the beach dont yell SHARK!:yes:
