WHOA, for being a site devoted to the care and husbandry of living fish we do have some pretty diverse views on sharks! Its a little frustrating to see people argue that because humans have been killed by sharks that we should in turn kill them back. Well, take a look at the statistics;
Shark attacks on humans
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In 2000, there were 79 shark attacks reported worldwide, 11 of them fatal. In 2005 and 2006 this number dropped to 61 and 62 respectively, while the number of fatalities dropped to only four per year. Of these attacks, the majority occurred in the United States (53 in 2000, 40 in 2005 and 38 in 2006)
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^ ISAF 2005 Worldwide Shark Attack Summary
Considering that there are 6.2 billion humans on the earth and lets say that in 2000 there were 50 deaths from sharks (for "unreported cases"). This means the percentage is so small that I need to use scientific notation to represent it.
Compared to.
Human attacks on sharks
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Shark specialists estimate that 100 million sharks are killed for their fins, annually.
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^IUCN Shark Specialist Group. "IUCN Information Paper. Shark Finning." 2003.
IUCN Shark Specialist Group. "Shark Specialist Group Finning Statement."
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society -
www.seashepherd.org. "Longline Fishing."
WildAid & Co-Habitat. "Shark Finning." September 2003.
Now we don't have a total on how many sharks are actually in the ocean (estimates say that we have already lost 75-90% of ALL SHARKS), just look at the numbers. 100 million sharks to 50 humans? This isn't war my friends, this is one species completely eliminating a whole GENUS of species from the earth. So please don't come on here and tell me that its fair or a good idea to "combat the problem" because that is a very ignorant statement. You all graduated grade 5 and 6, please think back to how important those "food webs" were. You take out the apex predator of the ocean and then the oceans collapse, when the oceans collapse the billions of people who rely on the ocean go into starvation. Guess your expensive and tasteless shark fins won't help you then.
Levi