Essay Database

Clipping the Fin Trade www.sciencenews.org Summary Two years ago, Michael Aw was monitoring the health of local coral in an area that is protected from most fishing. The last thing he expected to find was a finless, dying shark. Someone had hauled in the six-foot gray reef shark, sliced off its fins and tossed it overboard; to cover up this act they tied a fifteen-pound piece of coral to the remains and let …

…of the number of lower animals on the food chain. Yet the population of the shark is fragile. An example of this would be the European over fishing of porbeagles in the north Atlantic in the 1960's that almost caused extinction of this shark. It took nearly thirty years to recover. Around the world, fishing fleets take and estimated hundred million sharks yearly, mostly just for fins. OceanNEnvironment has launched campaigns to cut the demands.