Endangered Sharks
There are many endangered sharks in the world and many more on the verge of being endangered or of becoming extinct. The reasons for endangered sharks can all be contributed to human activity. The top three factors are habitat destruction, commercial fishing (food), and over-fishing for cultural practices, which includes shark fins for the Orient and those sharks whose parts are used for medicine.
Every year over one-hundred million sharks are caught by humans. The catching of sharks for the shark-fin trade is becoming one of the most controversial shark exploitations. Shark fin soup is a status symbol in places such as Hong Kong and China and the soup sells for as much as $100 a bowl. Businessmen in China, for example, claim it would be disrespectful not to order the soup when taking clients out to dinner or lunch. This might seem like a small thing to some people until you look at the numbers. Right now, every year, 22,000 tons of shark fins are sold worldwide, most for shark fin soup.
The method used to acquire shark fins is also receiving much public outcry. The fins are cut from live sharks that are thrown back into the ocean to die, painfully, over a length of time estimated to be as long as two weeks. The only countries that have passed laws against this practice are the United States, Canada, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Spain. In addition, in some countries sharks are killed so that their cartilage or the oil produced by their livers can be used for medicinal purposes. This is done without regard for the species of shark, which is what makes endangered sharks a reality.
Sharks are being killed in large numbers each year by the commercial fisheries industry, where the shark meat is sold as food. This is not a problem when shark populations are being managed and only a certain number are being taken. A good example is the Dogfish Shark, which is fished commercially in the Pacific with fisheries in Washington State and Alaska. The fish is abundant and the numbers processed by fisheries are not interfering with maintaining an adequate shark population. But other sharks, such as tiger sharks, mako sharks and blue sharks are being taken in many locations with no attention given to population decreases. This is how sharks become endangered.
Endangered sharks also exist because of habitat destruction. Shark pups have historically been kept safe from other sharks and large fish that want to eat them by being able to live in mangroves in shallow water until they were large enough to be able to survive on their own among other ocean sharks. Now, there are fewer and fewer mangroves and more and more marinas and resorts where mangroves used to be. Young sharks are no longer being protected and species are producing fewer and fewer adult sharks. One example of this has been reported in the Philippines. There the mangrove habitat for sharks has decreased from five thousand square kilometers to five hundred.
The top twenty endangered sharks are: Ganges Shark, Borneo Shark, Basking Shark (North Pacific, North Atlantic), Speartooth Shark, Whitefin Tope Shark, Angular Angel Shark, Smoothback Angel Shark, Spinner Shark, Pondicherry Shark, Smoothtooth Black Tip Shark, Black Tip Shark, Dusky Shark, Grey Nurse Shark (Sand Tiger), Great White Shark, Gulper Shark, Basking Shark, School Shark (Tope Shark), Bluegray Carpetshark, Porbeagle Shark, and the largest shark in the world--the Whale Shark.