Sharks: Friend or Foe?

We are taught our whole lives to fear sharks. With the belief that they’re vicious, human-hungry predators, sharks have a devastating reputation with humans: either kill the shark or be killed. What few people really consider is how gentle and incredible these creatures are. One in 3,748,067 people will be attacked by a shark, a 0.000027% chance. On the flip side, over 1000 times more people will die from bike accidents, yet people still ride them everyday. There is so little understanding of these creatures that their deaths result in little to no concern from those who murder sharks. To this day, sharks are killed at a rate of 100 million per year. That means that within the next couple decades they could be extinct.

Having lived on this planet for nearly 400 million years, sharks have developed a vital role in not only the preservation of the oceans, but also of our lives above water. Beneath the surface, sharks swim at the top of the food chain, providing balance to the ecosystem. By taking out the competitors, along with removing the weak and sick, sharks ensure species diversity within our oceans. By removing sharks from the coral reef ecosystem, the larger predatory fish progressively increase in abundance and feed on the herbivores, causing a ripple in the harmony throughout reefs. Moreover, their food intake and preference sparks an ability to determine how all species below them on the food chain will then exist, ultimately altering the feeding strategies and diets of other species. All in all, this control over the oceanic environment can only remain if the sharks remain.

If sharks become extinct, the effects also extend to the economy as the food chain is disturbed, arousing more predators for what the fisheries intend to catch. This decline in the fishing industry would affect the United States’ 1.5 million jobs and 90 billion dollar contribution a year. With that said, the annihilation of the entire shark population would be nothing short of severely detrimental. As the rate of human-inflicted death on sharks increases, the extinction of these creations seems near. What will their destruction mean for our oceans? What will that ultimately mean for our entire planet?