Sharks Now Protected in Almost All Waters on Earth

Sharks have a tough break. Depending on who you ask, they are the monsters of the sea. A Major threat to divers and swimmers and general menace to beaches worldwide. But they aren’t, really. Sharks are well known not to really care much for humans, and they are severely threatened by like… all of human activity on earth. But now, there may be some home.

A massive conservation pact signed by more than 125 countries protects loads of shark species as well as other aquatic life that regularly migrates through international waters and across borders. Whale sharks, though, the largest true “fish” of the see are the biggest beneficiaries. Classified as “vulnerable” by conservation communities, whale sharks are highly susceptible to the kinds of mass fishing used by trawlers. The new pact adds whale sharks to appendix I — a specially protected category — of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Critically, this means that the species will be easier to protect in some of the more popular hunting waters of the world like off the coast of Madagascar and Peru.

On top of that, New Scientist reports, conservations have achieved a new protected class for blue sharks.

“They’re the most highly fished sharks in the world, with 20 million caught around the world each year. But they’re also the most migratory, so they’re vulnerable to fisheries everywhere,” Matt Collis of the International Fund for Welfare told New Scientist. “This puts pressure on countries to commit to international protections.”

Lions, too, and other larger migratory creatures were accepted and added to the list under appendix II. This helps facilitate cross-border coordination with authorities, something that is of vital importance for lions which have fallen to a mere 20,000. That puts them at a critical point, too. If these populations decline much further, even when (and if) numbers do recover, many will be so genetically similar that a single disease could wipe out the species.

This has already happened with cheetahs (thankfully, it seems, that one wasn’t our fault) and now they are so genetically similar that the species can freely give and accept many organ transplants without fear of rejection.

It’s far too early to tell if these pacts will help long-term conservation efforts, or help offset all the other damage our species is committed to visiting upon the waters of the world. And that’s not to mention the decades of cultural fear we’ve built-up thanks to Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, Jaws, and countless other depictions of the creatures as thirsty for human blood. It is a start, though.

Public Service Announcement

Also, since there’s quite a bit of misinformation floating around about this — it is true-ish that sharks don’t really like the taste of human. Most overwhelmingly prefer fattier meats — think seal and porpoise. Humans are boney, relatively speaking, which can give the toothy fish a hard time. Most often, when a shark bites a person, it’s because they’re curious. Without thumbs or arms or feat or just about anything else to interact with their environment, sharks bite things to understand them. So, usually, a shark takes a nibble on a person (which, to be fair, can be fatal because sharks) and the person, quite understandably, freaks out, scares the shark and then dies.

While I could try to bullshit and tell people being bitten by sharks not to panic (believe me, I’d scream like a banshee), it’s on us as the more intelligent and capable species to understand and respect their habitat. When we destroy their feeding grounds, kill their prey, etc. they adapt by doing whatever they must.