The 1974 film release of Jaws immortalized the image of sharks as terrifying killing machines. And that thrilling fiction has dominated the reality: that sharks are sentient beings who feel pain, that they are essential to a healthy ocean ecosystem and that they are disappearing from our oceans at an alarming rate because humans are killing them in unsustainable numbers. Research has shown that populations of all large sharks have declined dramatically, some by as much as 80 percent in the past 20 years alone.
Quite simply, sharks have far more reason to fear humans than we have to fear them.
Among the most obvious displays of our misunderstanding of sharks are shark fishing tournaments, in which sport fishermen compete to see who can catch the largest or the greatest number of sharks. These grisly spectacles promote hooking and bleeding, gaffing or suffocating a shark to death for trophy prizes as heroic, when in fact these practices are cruel and ecologically irresponsible.
Unsustainable Kills
Sport fishermen and promoters of shark tournaments are contributing to the ongoing declines in shark populations. International experts have found that fully one fifth of all species of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction. A global shark assessment concluded that extinction is imminent for many species if the current level of fishing mortality remains the same.
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More Dangers for Sharks |
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Click here to learn about the devastating effects of finning on worldwide shark populations. |
Sport, Not Science
Some shark tournament proponents justify the contests in the name of science, saying that biologists study the dead sharks to learn about shark populations. But since tournament fishermen target only the largest sharks, the contests don't provide a useful sample of shark populations. Virtually all of what we know about sharks comes from scientifically valid studies. Tournaments are for sport, not science.
Shark tournaments are cruel, ecologically irresponsible events designed to make a spectator sport out of killing sharks and watching them be killed. The pain and death suffered by those sharks who fall victim to the competitions and the additional cost to already imperiled shark populations are too high a price to pay for that dubious thrill.
Updated June 1, 2007
