The World Oceans Now 70% Shark Free

wheresjim writes "According to a study published in The Proceedings of The Royal Society, the world's oceans are now about 70% shark free. This is a bad sign for the sharks, the oceans and of course, journalists during slow news cycles."

Comments

Yes but...

[sirnuke]

What was the percentage in recent years? Assuming the trend is decreasing amount of sharks, how fast is it going? If ten years ago, the sharks percentage was decreasing at .0025/year, but now it's .005/year, that's probably really bad. If now the rate is now .001/year, that's more or less a good thing. At the highest point, what percentage of the ocean had sharks?

Kind of like having a 50% off sale without saying what the original or final price is. Sounds great...

Graphs are really nice.

Sharks aren't the only benchmark.

[Shag]

While sharks, as apex predators, are a good indicator of overall biodiversity / availability of tasty biomass in the oceans, figures on some other species are probably at least as alarming.

I've seen (at things like the UN informal consultative process on oceans and the law of the sea, and the 3rd global conference on oceans, coasts and islands just last month) presentations showing fisheries catch decade-by-decade worldwide, and the trends are just plain scary.

So many things are being done in totally unsustainable ways that popular tasty species have come close to being wiped out over large areas. Cod around Canada, for example. Tuna in some other areas.

I like tasty fish and don't want them to all go away. (Yes, here I am subscribing to sustainability defined as "making sure your grandkids get to hunt Bambi, too.")