After watching Rob Stewarts film Sharkwater I have gained a keen insight into the cruelty and lucrative trade that surrounds our precious oceans. Threats arrive to the ecology of the world when humans use poor fishing methods like bottom trawling and intentionally hunting down very specific animals in astounding numbers (Kempster). This is because methods like “finning” sharks take an unnatural amount of sharks out of the natural food cycle that has been so delicately crafted over millions of years, and with a decrease in the number of predators in an ecosystem you will find that there will be heavy increase in the number of smaller fish and medium sized fish that were once fed on by sharks. By having this influx of lower-food-chain animals
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The criteria should be used to make that determinations between what should and should not be fished would be gathered by scientist all over the world and delegated on at quarterly meetings. What this would effectively do is keep the fragile and direly important food chain of the ocean intact and decrease the chance of major ecological changes (Encyclopædia …show more content…
Unfortunately this seems to leave a loophole open for the finning community because by allowing one shark to still be hunted those who are still engulfed in the black-market shark fin trade can still sneak in fins from other banned sharks. From my observations the largest threat to all animal species on the planet is human greed and over consumption. I do agree with the sentiments made in Sharkwater about how future generations will look back on us as barbarians because we are fully aware of the ecological impacts we are having by hunting and killing animals to extinction just for monetary gain and to make a quick-dollar on “the backs” of other animals (cruel pun, I know). I can say just from writing this paper I learned much more about the over fishing situation that we have in the world but I was unaware on how often sharks were killed and mutilated for their fins to be sold in Asian market places. I think the most valuable thing I will take out of this paper and watching the movie was that sharks really are not evil but sorely misunderstood gentle giants portrayed as cruel and savage animals by the world
The criteria should be used to make that determinations between what should and should not be fished would be gathered by scientist all over the world and delegated on at quarterly meetings. What this would effectively do is keep the fragile and direly important food chain of the ocean intact and decrease the chance of major ecological changes (Encyclopædia …show more content…
Unfortunately this seems to leave a loophole open for the finning community because by allowing one shark to still be hunted those who are still engulfed in the black-market shark fin trade can still sneak in fins from other banned sharks. From my observations the largest threat to all animal species on the planet is human greed and over consumption. I do agree with the sentiments made in Sharkwater about how future generations will look back on us as barbarians because we are fully aware of the ecological impacts we are having by hunting and killing animals to extinction just for monetary gain and to make a quick-dollar on “the backs” of other animals (cruel pun, I know). I can say just from writing this paper I learned much more about the over fishing situation that we have in the world but I was unaware on how often sharks were killed and mutilated for their fins to be sold in Asian market places. I think the most valuable thing I will take out of this paper and watching the movie was that sharks really are not evil but sorely misunderstood gentle giants portrayed as cruel and savage animals by the world