To the people who like shark fins and people who enjoy fishing

I am a Korean student in SIS. I hope you are doing well in the covid outbreak situation. If you have some time, and you are interested in sharks, it might be productive to read the following letter that I am writing to you, suggesting to give attention and effort to the serious situation of shark mortality.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The future depends on what we do in the present.” This means that things that happen every second, can affect the future. Do things carefully, and choose the rightful thing. Right now I have decided to send this letter to the United Nations, to recognize the significance of sharks and the horrible result of what will happen when we are keeping on this cruel process of increasing shark mortality. These days, thousands and millions of sharks are getting killed by humans, mostly because of shark finning, illegal shark fishing, cage diving, and much more. Sharks that eat the wrong bait suffer, sharks that humans cut fins out of, are crucially sent back to the ocean, sharks that are fished up on the land are all, crucially killed by humans. We humans these days, cannot recognize the significance of the shark roles in the world, and are hugely mistaking sharks as a useless, dangerous, scary, and a harmful marine animal. However, this is not true, because sharks are far more interesting than you think. I think sharks should be protected from humans. Firstly, sharks have an enormous role in the ecosystem. Second of all, sharks are going extinct. Lastly, sharks are covered up with misconceptions.

Firstly, sharks have an enormous role in the ecosystem. They are the top apex-predators. According to Mystic Aquarium, sharks limit the abundance of their prey. This is a very important role, because an unbalanced ecosystem can occur when suddenly one species breeds too much(increased numbers). For example, hammer sharks hunt skates and rays. But as hammer sharks disappeared in that area, rays and skates started increasing, and all the scallops that were living there would disappear, since the scallops would be eaten by the rays and skates. This can even harm our lives too. Scallops are used as one of the best ingredients for seafood, but if they suddenly disappear, restaurants that use scallops will economically get affected, because they cannot sell certain menus. Many people that benefit from fishing will be affected, as their job will be at stake. The global fishing trade might lead to a sudden shock or a paralysis. Fishers that get scallops can be affected too, because the economic cycle will stop. 

According to Mystic Aquarium, sharks also do the work of taking care of the habitat. When animals die, sharks eat them before the ocean water gets dirty. Tiger sharks prevent herbivores from overgrazing on particular seagrass, by being in that particular area. Since sharks are apex predators, animals like dugongs or sea turtles cannot easily graze the seagrass that is where the shark is particularly at. Lastly, they eat groupers, which eat coral reefs. This is important because if there are no sharks, groupers will increase rapidly and this will cause extinction of coral reefs. Coral reefs are very important because they stop strong storms from coastlines, and they become shelters for marine animals. This shows that sharks are very important in the ecosystem.

Second of all, sharks should be protected from humans because they are close to being extinct. As I said before, sharks are very important in the ecosystem because they protect the habitat, and they prevent one species’ rapid increase in numbers. If these sharks disappear, a horrible result will occur. The bigger problem is that this may happen soon. 37% of the sharks and rays are in great danger. This means that if we keep on this process for a few years, sharks are going extinct, since there were less numbers of sharks originally. If there were about 3 billion sharks in the world, it would be ineffective to kill a lot of sharks. However, because of our actions, shark numbers have been decreasing rapidly, and the number of sharks became fragile. The number can suddenly turn into 0. Many people might think that sharks are truly needed for humans who have particular diseases or sicknesses. However, we humans are only thinking of ourselves, and think that it is okay to make an animal specie suddenly disappear.

Lastly, we should protect sharks because sharks are just covered with unbelievable and untrue misconceptions. If many people recognize the word “shark”, they start to think about the movie “Jaws”, or crazy killers killing massive amounts of humans. They really fear sharks, just because of what the media was doing in the past few decades. According to WWF(World Wildlife Fund), people have misconceptions about sharks because of all the stereotyping and the sensationalized stories that the media have been making. The media for a few decades planted fear of sharks in people’s heads, by showing unbelievable movies and videos that demonstrated sharks as a dangerous and cruel killer. The truth is that those cruel and dangerous killers are humans, in sharks’ perspectives. Humans kill millions of sharks each year, just because of their culture, they want to act rich, or they just want a lot of money. According to Al Jazeera, half of the sharks humans kill are because of shark finning, which is used for celebrations or shark-fin-soup. After the rising demand for shark fins, more and more sharks are getting killed. Many people might ask, isn’t this disrespect towards Chinese culture? However, those people  need to think about it again, then are we respecting sharks? Further on, are we even caring about sharks? Absolutely not. This shows that we should protect sharks since sharks are just covered with misconceptions and untrue information.  

Are sharks really the dangerous and scary and useless animals for us now? I urge you to push the negative and ugly perspectives and words about the not-real sharks that come out in unrealistic movies like Jaws, because it is all nonsense. They won’t even rip you into pieces. Right now is not the time to be scared of those sharks after looking at those movies that can’t even be possibly true. It is the time to quickly start to recognize what situations sharks are in, and help them. Not only sharks, but a lot of different animals are in danger, and they all have important roles in nature. I hope now you realize the reality of this horrible situation. To every problem, there are always solutions that we can use. Just a little bit more attention, and the effort to change the world, can all make a difference.