Why Shark Week should be every week!
Why is it that sharks are only celebrated one week each year? They are amazing creatures! Did you know that sharks have been around longer than trees? Sharks have been on Earth more than 450 million years, that’s 100 million years more than trees AND they’ve survived four of the last five mass extinctions!
Many sharks live as long as people, 80-100 years. The age of one Greenland shark was estimated to be between 272 and 512 years old!
Another superlative is that the largest fish in the ocean is the whale shark. It was more than 40 ft. long and weighed 40 tons or 80,000 pounds. The second largest fish is also a shark. Basking sharks grow up to 32 ft long and weigh more than 5 tons or 10,000 pounds.
There are many misconceptions about sharks. For example, sharks don’t instantly die if they are stopped from swimming. They DO however need to move forward in order to breath That’s because sharks need to oxygen, like humans, to live and they get their oxygen from water as it moves through their mouths and over their gills. Gills extract the oxygen from the water. There are species of sharks like nurse sharks and zebra sharks that can get oxygen without physically moving. Some sharks can rest on the bottom and by opening and closing their mouths pump it out over their gill to the oxygen they need.
The biggest myth is that sharks are the most dangerous creatures in the ocean. Can you name the most dangerous creature? If you said humans, you are correct. Humans kill around 100 million sharks annually as a result of fishing. This rate of killing is not sustainable for shark populations. This is particularly true for shark species that take 10-25 years to reach reproductive maturity (i.e., able to have offspring). Shark populations need time to rebound from over-harvesting when and if unsustainable practices stop. Currently, nearly 25 percent of all elasmobranch species—sharks, rays and skates—are under threat of extinction. Many other populations are in serious decline.
I created Souped Up in response to the gruesome practice known as shark-finning. As the name implies when sharks fins are caught their fins are cut off. Without their fins, a shark is unable to swim. It can’t swim, hunt for food, and sinks to the bottom. The demand for shark fins is fueled in some places by a belief that the fins have medicinal qualities and in some cultures, the fins are considered a delicacy.
Souped Up features a steampunk-fashioned great white shark. Its 19th-century-looking fins allude to the practice of shark finning. The picture also suggests that the shark may yet have its revenge. Research has found in blood samples taken from wild sharks that there are high level of poisonous heavy metals, metals like arsenic and mercury as well as a substance linked to the development of neurogenerative disease. Although the sharks appear to be tolerant of these toxins, these substances may be harmful to humans who eat the sharks, particularly to pregnant women and children.
