Save Shark Sunday

• Not all species of sharks are required to be in continuous motion to breathe
• A shark’s teeth are usually replaced every eight days.
• Some species of sharks shed about 30,000 teeth in their lifetime.
• As sharks never get cancer, their cartilage is being studied in the hope of developing anti-cancer drugs
• The Whale shark is considered the biggest fish in the world
• The Basking shark is the second largest, it is as long as 40 feet.
• The Pygmy shark is about 11 inches in length
• The Dwarf shark is as tiny as you hand, while some Whale sharks are as large as a bus
• The Dogfish sharks are so named, because they attack their prey like a pack of wild dogs
• Great white sharks can grow about 10 inches every year, thus, they grow to mature lengths of 12 to 14 feet
• Up to 100 MILLION sharks are killed each year for shark fin soup. By contrast, less than 50 people are killed by sharks each year!

Great White more threatened than tigers!!

Great White Shark, taken off Gansbaai, SouthAfrica. Amazing shot! I am hoping to do a cage dive soon. Will let you know how it went of course. Damn! I am looking forward to it. 
The one thing that really scares me is not the multiple rows of around 3000 teeth. Not at all. The thing that really terrifies me is the fact that these apex predators from the ocean are more threatened than tigers! Yup, you read that correctly. More threatened than tigers!
Like tigers, great whites are a top predator and, like tigers, they have suffered in recent years from habitat destruction and hunting. But unlike tigers, great white sharks get little public sympathy, said Dr Ronald O’Dor, senior scientist at the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year study into ocean wildlife.
An article in The Guardian mentions that the number of Great White sharks has dropped to an alarming 3500. This is really frightening, especially when one considers that the demand for shark fin soup has risen steeply over the last few years. Popular movies, such as Peter Benchley’s “Jaws” where these creatures are portrayed as villains don’t help one iota. 
We need to take drastic action. Seriously. Boycott all restaurants selling shark-fin soup. The damn dish has no nutritional value at all and is not doing the environment any good.
On a more positive note, the USA have taken a step in the right direction, and are now at the forefront of shark conservation. The US Senate recently passed the Shark Conservation Act, which bolsters the prohibition of shark-finning in US waters. If you would like to know more about this you can click HERE