Don't Watch 'Jaws'

  I know a lot of people who are afraid of sharks. Who don't like the beach. Who don't like the ocean. But being afraid of sharks is irrational. Sure every year 10 people get killed by sharks, I'm not trying to justify that. But every year, us humans kill over 100 million of them. That's crazy. We are the predators here.
   Most of those sharks are killed for their fins. Hunters cut off their fins and put their dead bodies back into the ocean, just for shark fin products and shark fin soup. There are a couple things wrong with this. Firstly, it is inhumane. Secondly, shark fins (for soup) don't have much flavor, and they contain high amounts of mercury. Thirdly, sharks are actually super essential to the balance of the food web, and the health of all the coral reefs. Once all the sharks get taken out of that food web, the middle-predator fish population increases, as there are no sharks to eat them. Once there are more of those fish, they need more food, right? So they feed on the herbivorious (don't think that's a word, but screw it) little fish that eat algae. So those fish have a population decline. With no fish eating the algae, the algae increases.
  But what's so terrible about algae? Well friends, and overload of algae is called algae bloom, which normally comes to the surface of the water and looks like this:

Looks like Gatorade.

BUT THE WATER LOOKS SO PRETTY! No. Just no. Since all the algae is covering the surface of the ocean, or whatever body of water, it absorbs allllll the sunlight, and prevents any sunlight from getting down to the coral reefs

Dead as a doornail.

  Dead coral reefs mean a couple of things for us. No more fish to eat. No more "pharmaceutical coumpounds" for our medicines. No more scuba diving (not as important, but still). 

  So what can we do? Well children, there is this petition going around, through stopsharkfinning.net , and basically all you have to do is click HERE, and you can virtually sign a petition to ban shark finning and all shark fin products! It's pretty cool. I suggest you sign it. And tell people about it because it took me time and effort to educate y'all. But it was fun. So no hard feelings. So go be aware of the dangers of shark finning! The sharks shall thank you.

I googled 'cute sharks'.

.     Thanks!

        Claire