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Great white shark at Isla Guadalupe, Mexico. Credit: Pterantula (Terry Goss), GNU Free Documentation License
They come from above in never-ending waves. They ensnare you, lop off your limbs, chop you apart, then toss your body aside. There is no escape. Unless they decide to stop, your entire species is doomed.
If sharks and rays went to the movies, that might be the trailer for the ultimate horror film. The enemy isn’t another marine creature, though — it’s people. We humans kill perhaps a hundred million sharks and rays every year. In fact, we’ve hunted many species to near extinction.
A recent report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature looked at the prospects of more than a thousand species of sharks and rays. It found that about a quarter of them are threatened by human activities.
The main threat is the demand for shark-fin soup. Fishing fleets haul in tens of millions of sharks and rays each year to meet the demand.
Other threats include bycatch, where sharks are accidentally ensnared in nets or caught on hooks intended for other species, as well as coastal development and climate change. Species that live in shallow coastal waters are especially vulnerable.
Some species are more than just threatened. The Pondicherry shark hasn’t been seen in more than three decades. The common skate and common angel shark have disappeared from most of their European habitat. And critically endangered sawfish have vanished from much of the eastern Atlantic Ocean.
So despite what Hollywood might suggest, we’re a far greater threat to sharks and rays than they are to us.
