3 Facts You Need To Know About The 100,000,000 Sharks Killed Last Year

National Geographic Traveller India?has published a story exposing the brutal reality that we have now pushed this species that has lived for over 400 million years to the verge of extinction.

Dhritiman Mukherjee writes,

?India is one of the biggest exporters of shark fins in the world. It’s a subject that needs to get a lot more attention; sharks need to be protected from not just poachers but the threat of reckless fishing. The number stands at a hundred million deaths in a year worldwide. Just how high does it need to be before we take notice??

I wonder the same thing. Here are three facts you need to know about the mass killing of one of the oldest living inhabitants of the earth.

Fact #1: Long-line fishing is extremely dangerous for sharks and is a widely used method. If continued without change, all sharks could meet their demise within a decade.

Fact #2: One of the biggest risks is the massive shark finning industry in which all the fins are cut off the shark while it is still alive and then the fatally injured animal is thrown back into the water to sink to the bottom of the sea to die from suffocation or as meal for another predator, unless the country of origin has bans on this practice. If that’s the case, the shark bodies are brought to port.

Fact #3: Sharks are an extremely important part of marine life and without them the ecosystem in our oceans will collapse.

All for a bowl of soup.

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Elizabeth Preston is a thirty-something wife and mother of three living in Florida. She is a fierce liberal with a passion?for equality and justice. She is a skeptic by nature and often the Facebook friend that rains on the urban legend parade with fact checking. Give her?Facebook page?a?like, follow her on?Twitter?and check out her personal blog,?My Four Ha? Pennies.