Sharks Under Attack (As Usual)

A new report from Greenpeace outlines the dire situation faced by sharks in the North Atlantic.

Shark fisheries suffer from chronic under reporting and deficient data collection and figures remain contested. A recent paper has estimated 100 million sharks are caught and killed in fishing nets every year, a vast proportion of which are unintended ‘accidental’ catch, yet serves to further the lucrative trade in shark fins. 

The overfishing of sharks in the North Atlantic mirrors the situation found in many other parts of the world. A 2014 global review of the status of 1,041 chondrichthyan fishes – sharks, rays and chimaeras – estimated that a quarter of them are threatened according to IUCN Red List criteriadue to overfishing (targeted and incidental).

Humans can't kill everything in the ocean except the fish they want to catch without destroying the whole ecological system.  And, by the way, we are drastically overfishing the species we intend to eat.