SIGN OUR PETITION TO STOP THE MINDLESS SLAUGHTER OF SHARKS. MAKE POINT DUME RESTAURANT STOP SERVING SHARK FIN SOUP IN LOS ANGELES! MILLIONS OF SHARKS ARE KILLED EACH YEAR FOR A BOWL OF SOUP. BY REDUCING THE CONSUMPTION OF SHARK FIN SOUP WE CAN REDUCE THE DEMAND FOR SHARK FIN AND SAVE SHARK POPULATIONS WORLDWIDE. SHARKS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR OUR OWN SURVIVAL BECAUSE THEY MAINTAIN A BALANCE IN THE WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT AND LARGEST ECOSYSTEM: THE OCEAN. READ BELOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHY WE NEED TO PROTECT SHARKS. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE TODAY.

Our team at Jaws & Paws is currently working on a project to aid in the ban of shark finning internationally. Over 120 species of sharks are currently threatened by extinction, and shark finning is an enormous contribution to their plight. Sharks have been at the top of the food chain of the world’s most important ecosystem for over 450 million years. Sharks are vital for the survival of all living creatures because they are essential in maintaining balance in the ocean’s ecosystems.  The health of the ocean is essential to our own survival because the ocean provides ⅓ of the world’s food, 70% of our oxygen, and it controls the temperature of the atmosphere. Therefore, it is crucial that we pay attention to the state of the ocean as a whole, and due to the absence of sharks there have been drastic effects on many marine ecosystems. There was already a collapsed shellfish fishery in the U.S. from a decline in shark populations, because cow-nose ray populations weren’t regulated by sharks causing the rays to eat all the shellfish. This resulted in many people losing their jobs and had cascading effects on other species in the surrounding area. Similar instances occurred in Belize, the mid-Atlantic, and Hong Kong due to a decrease in shark populations from the detriment of shark finning. Although we do not know the exact effects of declining shark populations entirely, we know that they will be deleterious in years to come. 

Without sharks scientists can predict that the oceans would be very sparse, fisheries would be depleted, and many species would die out because sharks are regulators in the food chain that keep populations stable so they don’t overpopulate and exploit resources or die out. Removing top predators out of an ecosystem can have cascading effects and can cause many smaller organisms to become extinct due to lack of predatory regulation and ecosystem health. This decrease in biodiversity from shark finning can result in organisms known as phytoplankton to die out, which will be detrimental for our own lives since these microscopic algae produce over 70% of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. 

 GO TO WWW.JAWSPAWS.ORG TO LEARN MORE!