Sharks perform a very important and vital role in the marine ecosystem, which has a flow-on effect to terrestrial systems. They remove diseased and injured animals from breeding stocks and keep certain species numbers under control. Entire ecosytems will collapse without the presence of sharks to keep them healthy and regulate populations. Unlike some creatures which spawn thousands of eggs/larvae, sharks are incredibly slow at reproducing, they have no natural predators (except man) so reproduction rates can be as low as 1 pup every 2 years. At the rate we are decimating them they will probably never recover. At the moment there are only 2 species of shark that are protected in Australian waters, the "Great White" and the "Grey Nurse". Both populations are thought to be already below critical mass, ie. there are not enough breeding adults left to replace the natural mortality rate. It is thought that there are only 500 "Grey Nurse" left in the oceans of Australia.
What can anybody do about this situation? Next time you are in an Asian restaurant and you see Shark Fin Soup on the menu, politely say that you will not support the finning of sharks by eating at a restaurant that encourages it, then leave the restaurant. If enough people do this the restaurants will stop supplying the dish and the demand will dry up. No demand, no finning. You can also write to the Dept. of Primary Industries and insist that the Government fully protect the critical breeding areas. These 13 areas are tiny but because the fishing lobby has so much power the DPI is too gutless to protect them. Almost every "Grey Nurse" that I have seen has had a wire trace from fishermen trailing from its mouth. This will almost always lead to the death of the animal from Peritonitus. A 500m exclusion zone for fishing has been proposed around these critical habitats but so far they have not been granted.
If it were whale tongues or tiger penises the public would be outraged, but because they are sharks, very few people seem to care.




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Please visit my other account [link] for my stock pics...
Ally has been montaged here ---> [link]
Hope both you and Ally like the result ..
Steve
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Please visit my other account [link] for my stock pics...
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