It’s enough to make a Green Man blue… and then green again.
There’s good news and bad news for life in the oceans this week. On the one hand, the World Conservation Union reports that sharks and rays of the ocean seas are in serious trouble. They identify the following species as being at particular risk of extinction, especially given the pressures of overfishing:
giant devil ray
oceanic whitetip shark
porbeagle shark
longfin mako
shortfin mako
great white shark
basking shark
thresher shark
bigeye thresher
pelagic thresher
whale shark
On the other hand, things are looking much better for the humpback whale than they were a generation ago. By the late 1960s, there were only about 1,400 humpback whales left. Now, however, the population of humpback whales in the northern Pacific Ocean has grown to 20,000.
It’s proof that, in the oceans and on the land alike, conservation efforts can make a big difference. It’s time that the phrase save the sharks gets the kind of attention that save the whales did a few decades ago.
Missing from your list is homo sapiens. It’s a bit further down, but it’s definitely there.
It is startling to look at that list and see how many species of sharks are on it. People have this innate fear of sharks, but the reality is that sharks have much more to fear from human beings. We kill 100 million sharks a year and in many cases it is just to take their fins. You can read more information on sharks and the threats they face here: http://www.oceana.org/sharks/