Today is Shark Awareness Day! What a great day to celebrate these majestic creatures. Author and animal lover Linda Lombardi gives us good reasons to love sharks, here are my top 5. THEY'RE ALWAYS ON THE GO Sharks never stop swimming, since they need to move forward to force water through their gills. They extract oxygen from the water through their gills, so if sharks stop swimming, they can't breathe. That’s why they really, really need their fins. THEY'RE COOL PARENTS There are so many species of sharks that there's an amazing diversity in relation to where baby sharks come from. Some species lay eggs, some give birth to live young and, for some, it's a combination of the two — the eggs fertilize, develop and hatch inside the female. And female sharks are very self-sufficient moms! They can actually have babies without the help from a male, as scientists discovered when a lone hammerhead shark gave birth at an aquarium in 2001. SOFT SPOT FOR ENDANGERED ANIMALS? Humans kill millions of these beautiful and important creatures each year. It's estimated up to 73 million of them are victims of the shark fin trade. As you already know from having read the petition, shark finning is a gruesome practice. After the shark’s fins and tail are sliced from the body, the carcass is discarded back into the water, often while the shark is still alive. The animal then suffocates or bleeds out to death on the ocean floor, whichever happens first. THEY'RE NOT EVEN DANGEROUS! Did you know humans have only a 1 in 3.8 million chance of being killed by a shark! Lombardi explains that you're more than 25 times more likely to be taken down by a cow. "Many people think sharks are mindless killing machines that will attack any human they see," Shiffman a shark expert says, noting that most sharks actually mind their own business. "Any time that you go to the beach, there are sharks nearby, but they don't bother you." To prove this, he would catch small sharks with his hands to show to fellow beachgoers. THEY KEEP CORALS REEFS BEAUTIFUL These top predators keep our ocean ecosystems in balance. Indeed if sharks disappeared, it would throw the whole food chain out of balance. Fewer sharks on reefs results in more grouper populations, which sharks would otherwise eat. And more grouper means fewer parrotfish, and since they eat algae, fewer parrotfish means too much algae. This can actually kill the coral, which is a unique habitat for thousands of species. A bylaw to ban the trade and import of shark fins in Delta would be a great way to show our appreciation to sharks. You can also share my petition to spread the love. You can read some more good reasons to love sharks in this article by Linda Lombardi: https://bit.ly/2ujzkAo.