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Living Ocean

Productions

Genre: Wildlife Documentary

Language: English

Running Time: 50 minutes

Medium: High Definition

Editors: Bryce Groark, Jen Groark, Chris Malone, Chad Campbell

Cast: Marty Snyderman, Bryant Kaonohiokala MockChew, Ed Arnold, Jake Ziegler

Cinematographer: Bryce Groark

Producer’s Representatives:

Film Conservation Partner

Recent Research has shown precipitous declines in many coastal and oceanic shark species in the Northwest Atlantic. It has been estimated that, since 1986, hammerheads have declined by 89%, thresher sharks by 80%, white sharks by 79% and tiger sharks by 65%. All recorded shark species, with the exception of makos, have declined by more than 50% in the past 8 to 15 years.

Research published in May 2003 reveals that these steep declines in shark stock are echoed across a much wider range of predatory fish species. Trajectories of community biomass and composition of large predatory fishes were constructed for four continental shelf and nice oceanic systems, using data from the beginning of exploitation. Results of this research showed that industrialized fisheries typically reduced community biomass by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. The Gulf of Thailand lost 60% of large fin-fish, sharks and skates during the first five years of industrialized trawl fishing.

Shark Stocks Collapse - by WildAid

Recent research using computer modeling has shown that the removal of sharks from their ecosystems could have devastating and unpredictable consequences for the abundance of commercially important fish stocks. Sharks, as apex predators, regulate the abundance of other fish and are therefore keystone species in the health of our ocean ecosystems. The practice of shark finning is capable of removing entire stocks of sharks in a very short space of time.

Many species of shark are highly migratory by nature. They are a truly global resource. The efforts of a growing number of nations to enforce laws prohibiting shark finning in their own waters are consistently undermined by the fact that sharks can travel many thousands of kilometers into waters where finning is illegal.

What is Shark Finning?

Shark finning can be defined as the on-board removal of a shark’s fins and the discarding at the sea of the remainder of the shark. The animal is sometimes alive during this whole process.