• Ecosystem and Economy - The oceans account for about 70% of our planets surface, is home to 80% of all life on earth and produce about half of the world's oxygen. Sharks have been around for over 450 million years and were well established before dinosaurs. As predators, sharks play a vital role in our ocean’s ecosystem by keeping other fish populations in check. Removing this control will have damaging, far-reaching and unpredictable effects to our oceans – the world’s largest and most important ecosystems. Below are a couple examples of what has already started to occur:

In North Carolina, large sharks such as tiger and scalloped hammerhead sharks feed on cownose rays and the cownose rays feed on bay scallops. Due to the population decline of sharks, cownose rays received a population boost. There are no longer enough bay scallops to support the fishery, resulting in loss of food and jobs.
Similar results were noticed in Tasmania, where large sharks feed on octopus and the octopus feed on rock lobster. Due to the population decline of sharks, octopus recieved a population boost. There are no longer enough rock lobster to support the fishery, once again resulting in loss of food and jobs.
Removing large amounts of sharks from our oceans also has damaging effects to our coral reefs. Coral reefs provide a home of thousands of unique species and provide jobs to the eco-tourism industry. Corals rely on sunlight to live and a major threat they face is algae growing out of control and smothering them. Parrot fish eat algae off of the corals, groupers eat the parrot fish and sharks eat the groupers. Removing sharks leads to more groupers, less parrot fish and more algae blooms which kill off the corals.

• Health - Shark meat contains unsafe levels of mercury according to the Food and Drug Administration, the American Heart Association and the Environmental Defense Fund. More information about the dangers of mercury can be found here.

• Sustainability - Due to decades of overfishing, several species of sharks, including threshers, have been been added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as endangered or globally vulnerable to extinction. More… Sharks have a slow recovery rate because they take many years to become sexually mature and have relatively few offspring.
In addition to sharks, many other fish populations have suffered from overfishing. Seafood Watch is a program of Monterey Bay Aquarium designed to raise consumer awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources. Download one of its handy pocket guides here.

Sharks are killed for many reasons such as food, sport, bycatch (Bycatch is a term used to refer to any species caught accidentally while fishing for another species), and sometimes fear. Consumer demand and greed are other big killers of sharks as many shark products have commercial value such as:
• Meat - Sold at restaurants, markets and grocery stores. Threshers, shortfin makos and Pacific angel sharks are some of the more common sharks sold at these businesses. All three species are on the IUCN Red List as globally vulnerable to extinction. More…
• Fins - The fins are most commonly used to make shark fin soup.
• Liver Oil - Used in cosmetics and skin products.
• Cartilage - Marketed as a cancer cure under the premise that sharks don't get cancer, which is not true according to a paper in the December 1st, 2004 issue of Cancer Research, in which Johns Hopkins University researchers highlight these falsehoods. "Since shark cartilage has been promoted as a cancer cure, not only has there been a measurable decline in shark populations, but cancer patients also have been diverted from proven, effective treatments," said Gary K. Ostrander, a research professor in the departments of Biology and Comparative Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University. Shark cartilage is also used to make chondroitin, a joint supplement.
• Spine - Used to make bully sticks (dog chew sticks).
• Teeth & Jaws - Used to make souveniers, jewelery and ornaments.
• Skin - Used to make wallets and belts.

Shark finning is the removal of the shark fins and the discarding at sea of the carcass. This is most often done while the shark is still alive. Unable to swim without its fins, the shark sinks to the bottom where it is eaten alive by other fish as it suffocates and bleeds to death. The shark finning fishery has earned a reputation as the most inhumane, wasteful and unsustainable fisheries in the history of the world.

The fins are most commonly used to make shark fin soup. More… Scientists estimated some 73 million sharks are illegally killed this way each year to meet the high demands for this soup, according to the October, 2006 issue of Ecology Letters. In the last 20 years, the soup has become extremely desirable and available in most parts of the world. The fin is mostly made up of cartilage and therefore has no flavor. The soup would taste the same without the shark fin, which merely provides texture. Most Chinese are not even aware that shark fin soup contains shark, becuase in Mandarin it translates as "fish wing soup."

While many movies such as Jaws and TV shows such as Discovery Channel's Shark Week portray sharks as ferocious predators aggressively devouring innocent swimmers, nothing could be further from the truth. You are far more likely to be killed by an elephant, a bee sting, by falling in a sandpit or even by a vending machine. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission there were 37 known vending machine fatalities between 1978 and 1995, for an average of 2.18 deaths per year. From 1995 through 2005 there were a total of six recorded shark attack fatalities in the U.S., for an average of 0.6 deaths per year. Vending machines are almost four times more deadly than sharks and who worries about vending machines? Some vending machines will sometimes even steal your money (a shark would never do that).

73,400 pounds of thresher shark were landed in the Santa Barbara area in 2008, more than any other area on the west coast of the United States. The total amount of threshers landed in the state of Oregon from 1998-2007 combined was 38,550 pounds (a little over half of what Santa Barbara takes in one year). To view data of commercial landing records for California, visit the California Department of Fish and Game. To view data of commercial landing records for Oregon, visit the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Call CalTIP at 1(888) 334-2258. CalTIP (Californians Turn In Poachers and Polluters) is a confidential secret witness program that encourages the public to provide Fish and Game with factual information leading to the arrest of poachers and polluters. If the information supplied by the caller results in an arrest, the caller becomes eligible for a reward. (Rewards up to $1,000 have been paid.)