#savethesharks

Sharks often get a bad rap, but did you know they’re vital for keeping our oceans healthy? These incredible creatures help maintain balance in marine ecosystems — and many species are now endangered due to overfishing and habitat loss. 🐋⚖️

World Ocean Day

World Ocean Day

Written by: Kelsey Samantha Crooks

 Today I’m shedding light on one of the most powerful apex predators of the ocean. Explaining common misconceptions, facts, and the future of the majestic and complex Great White.  

Great Whites exude confidence and dominance, making most everyone terrified of any encounter.

Typically, most humans have not been exposed to understanding sharks or educated on their behavior and nature. How Great Whites hunt, migrate, and the level of comprehension a shark has in realizing its surroundings are crucial when entering their environment. We don’t drive without learning all the responsibilities that come with being behind the wheel. Maybe we should try applying that to understanding the habitats that we enter, giving these apex predators a better chance at not being villainized but respected.

 Senses: Sharks are older than dinosaurs. Their ancestry dates back more than 400 million years, and they are one of evolution’s greatest survival stories. These animals have adapted to their ocean environment with six highly sophisticated senses of smell, touch, hearing, sight, taste, and their most extraordinary sense electromagnetism. It has been thought that Great Whites have difficulty seeing, which is where the misconception that attacks happen because of their vision issues. Indeed, the Great White cannot see directly head-on, but other senses that Great Whites have help them understand their surroundings, such as smelling and electromagnetic currency sensors that are embedded into the Great Whites. With these instincts, the Great White has more of a chance to identify its surroundings. Meaning that while they may need to get closer to use these senses, they aren’t interested in stalking humans down as prey. Sometimes curiosity takes over, but most times, it’s the shark’s way of seeing what is in their habitat.

Mating and breeding: although there have been no recordings of where great whites exactly mate and no record of the birth of a pup, it is proven that a female white must reach the mature adult stage to be able to breed. Being large enough is a critical element of being able to carry her pups. The adult stage for a female is thought to be age 13-15, and females are believed to be able to take as many as 15 pups at a time.

Migration pattern:  Some Greats have been recorded making journeys from the Hawaiian Islands to California; one Great White shark that swam from South Africa to Australia made the longest recorded migration of any fish. The torpedo shape of the great is built for speed: up to 35 miles per hour. Great Whites have been stunning scientists for quite a while due to their changing patterns of migration. Since the ’70s, these sharks have gone from being pacific coast sharks to, well, everywhere sharks. They were feeding on the east coast and making their way back to the west. There really is no explanation other than what is thought to be climate or feeding changes.

Feeding and keeping our ecosystem clean: Great Whites are notorious for keeping the ocean's ecosystem in balance. Feeding on dead whale carcass and infected or sick fish that otherwise would have the opportunity to infect other fish groups and even affect those seafood lovers on land.

Number of fatalities: In comparison, we humans kill 100 million more sharks than sharks kill humans. We rarely kill sharks by accident like the Great White, whose fatalities are typically mistaken as prey. In the US alone, seven shark fatalities happened just last year. Three of those were by White’s.

Capturing and netting: As the top predators in the ocean, great white sharks face only one real threat to their survival, humans. The assaults are many. By-catch: the accidental killing of sharks by fishermen's longlines and trawlers. Illegal poaching: selling shark fins for soup. Illegal hunting: sportfishing for shark jaws as trophies. Nets: placed along coastlines to keep sharks away from beaches. Pollution: toxins and heavy metals that build up in the shark's body. In some areas, significant white populations have plummeted by over 70%. If not stopped, it could lead to the extinction of this ancient species.

Finning sharks: Shark fin soup is considered a delicacy in many Asian countries, once reserved only for the wealthy or for extraordinary occasions. But rising incomes in Asia are having a disastrous impact on sharks. To make the soup, the fins of the sharks are sliced off, and the rest of the body is tossed back in the water, dead or alive: a method called shark finning. It's estimated that 100 million sharks are killed annually to supply fins for soup. Fins from great whites can fetch the highest prices because of their rarity and size. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, conservationists and chefs are leading campaigns to stop serving shark fin soup. 

Future of the Great White: According to the IUCN, across certain regions, the White Shark is estimated to be declining from historic levels in the Northwest Atlantic and South Pacific and increasing in the Northeast Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The trends among ocean regions are highly variable. While they are primarily based on long datasets, they are extrapolated over a very long three-generation length of 159 years which increases the uncertainty in the estimated regional trends.

These comic are so sad. I cried over every single one. Sharks are so important to us and they're just like water puppies! >0<