AR-News: (US VA) Researchers Praise Monterey Bay Aquarium Efforts to Reveal Threats Facin

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

Posted by: aquaken on Monday, March 29, 2004


Topic Environment


For many, the word "shark" conjures up a picture of the tooth-filled mouth of 
the giant from "Jaws". Yet few sharks fit this man-eating model. The great 
white shark featured in the book and film is just one of nearly 400 species of 
sharks, with the vast majority more threatened by human activities than the 
other way around.


In fact, said one leading shark researcher, sharks could go the way of the 
dinosaurs unless there’s a dramatic change in fishing practices and a concerted 
effort to protect global shark populations.


"We have to understand, after 400 million years of survival, how close to 
extinction some of these shark populations really are," said Ransom Myers, a 
noted fisheries biologist based at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 
"The time to act is now, before they have reached the point of no return. I 
want there to be real hammerhead sharks when my five-year-old son grows up, not 
just models like we have today of dinosaurs."







full story:

http://www.pnnonline.org/article.php?sid=5099&mode=thread&order=0 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040329/2f48ff2e/attachment.html