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Shark Population Decline Essay example

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Every Jaws fan knows the shark gets it in the end. What they do not know is that too many sharks have gotten it; and that has caused a rapid decline in the shark population over the past thirty years. Since the 1970's, sharks of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shores have declined eighty-five percent. Sharks are vital animal to our world's ecosystem, and if the decline is not controlled; we could be facing devastating problems in years to come. Information has been obtained from two books: The Shark Almanac by Thomas B. Allen and Sharks, An Introduction for the Amateur Naturalist by Sanford A. Moss. Sources also include a number of online references, among them BBC News, ENS News, The New York Times, and two online scientific …show more content…

They do this because of the limited amount of space on the ship. Shark liver oil is used as a source of vitamin A, and some people believe that the cartilage and liver of a shark are extremely beneficial to human health. In earlier days the sharks' teeth-like scales on their skin was used as fine sandpaper, and when the scales were removed from their skin it made fine leather. This leather was used for making shoes, belts and handbags. Each year thousands of sharks are killed unintentionally due to nets used to catch different types of fish, and sometimes humans kill sharks because they fear them (Springer and Gold, 1989). All of these activities have resulted in many shark species being in danger of extinction.
Sharks grow slowly and reproduce at a low rate. Their natural rate of replenishment is low, because they reproduce late in life and produce few offspring (Sims and Reid, 2002). If too many of a certain shark species is killed in a certain area, it is possible that that species may never recover. For example, the number of dusky sharks and sandbar sharks off the eastern United States decreased by more than 80% between 1985 and 1995. The sand tiger shark and the great white shark are threatened world-wide. Despite reproduction, little is known about the status, behavior patterns, and their migration patterns of most

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