Day 24 - More Sharks

I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, really, but I am truly sad this week. Those of you who know me well, know that I am a huge fan of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, a week out of the year where their programming is packed with sharks. I look forward to it every year, own the 20th anniversary DVD’s, hope to one day swim with a Great White, and am the first person to argue in favor of sharks. This year I have yet to watch it. The opening program made me so upset that Joe actually had to tell me to calm down. I can’t help it, us Pitta’s/ Scorpio’s are very passionate people. Last year I was already complaining that they were running out of ideas and should really switch the focus from shark bites to conservation. This year, when I saw the TV schedule I was unpleasantly surprised that they were going one more year without useful information but instead continue to have shows called “Blood in the Water” and “Biggest Bites” or whatever.

Sure, you can go to the Discovery Channel website and READ all about conservation, and shark finning, and how to support sharks. But shark week is about their TV programming, most people don’t READ, they watch. Would it really be that bad for business to make one teeny prime-time effort to inform people of what they can actually do to help sharks? This is the perfect audience, people, like me, who are so fascinated with sharks that they’ll watch an entire week of programming on it. So here are some actual, useful, facts about sharks:

Basically
• There are more than 350 different kinds of sharks.
• Sharks are the closest thing we have to dinosaurs! Most sharks as we know them today developed about 64 million years ago.
• The biggest Great White Shark ever caught was off Prince Edward Island in 1993. It was 20 feet long.
• Some scientists believe there are less than 10,000 Great White Sharks in the entire world.
Debunking the Myth
• You are 1,000 times more likely to drown in the sea than you are to be bitten by a shark.
• The chance of being killed by a shark is one in 300 million. The chance of being killed by airplane parts falling from the sky is one in 10 million.
• Great White Sharks rarely attack people and when they do, more than 70 percent of known victims survive because they've mistaken the person for their usual seal prey.

Our Intervention
• Shark finning refers to the removal and retention of shark fins and the discard at sea of the carcass. The shark is most often still alive when it is tossed back into the water. Unable to swim, the shark slowly sinks toward the bottom where it is eaten alive by other fish.
• Shark finning has increased over the past decade due to the increasing demand for shark fins (for shark fin soup and traditional cures). The shark fin does not lend flavor to the soup, only increasing the “delicacy” aspect of it.
• One pound of dried shark fin can retail for $300 or more. It's a multi-billion dollar industry.

About 100 people in the world are bitten by sharks each year.
Of these, five to ten die.

Humans capture and kill about 100 million sharks annually.