Shark Watch

We're Going To Need A Bigger Perspective

Going back to a decade ago around the time I started blogging, one of the things I used to track was shark attacks. I did it for two reasons, one for amusement factor, but the other was the strong suspicion that eating out fish stocks in the ocean would force apex predators to target something else. This is because in 1996, I was in Saikung, where the fish markets are for Hong Kong and were shown what that looked like. They had an Aztec pyramid row of fish tanks filled with fish - all kinds of fish - some of which were protected in Australian waters, but here they were, crammed into fishtanks on the shores of HK.

My guide to Saikung was a guy called Krys who was an ex-pat Aussie plying the catering trade. Kris too was overwhelmed by just what was there, ready to be eaten. It was that astounding. I'll never forget seeing amongst the fish, a big parrotfish.
"Do you think they know what it is?" I asked Krys.
"No, of course not. They're just going to eat it because it's pretty," he replied, unable to hide his moral contempt.
A parrotfish is beautiful, elegant fish when you see it in its habitat near coral reefs. Apparently they taste fatty and not very nice. But somehow the Hong Kong markets were selling these fit aplenty because they were "good luck". It's kind of strange how a fish species utterly unknown to China and its 3500years of written history, suddenly gets to be "good luck" to eat.

The way Krys saw it, the moment the Chinese got rich, they would eat out the world's fish stocks. There were a billion of them and if they all got a taste for sushi, the world could kiss all varieties of tuna goodbye. That was 20years ago. Since the Chinese fishing fleets have been going far and wide to service the ever-growing appetite for seafood on the mainland. Naturally, one has to wonder what this does to the food chain. If humanity goes in there and gouges a large chunk out of the middle, what's left for the apex predator?

Twenty years ago, coastal sightings of Great White Sharks were relatively rare. Attacks by Great White Sharks around the globe were even rarer, so much so marine biologists likened the odds of getting attacked by a great White Shark at around the same order as winning Lotto. There were single digit number of attacks around the globe any given year. The common consensus amongst divers that I knew was that bull sharks and tiger sharks were more likely to attack than Great White Sharks.

About ten years ago when I started blogging, I noticed this number had risen and we were seeing around 3-5 attacks a year, just in Australian waters alone. If you wanted any kind of indication the food chain was being affected by overfishing, you didn't have to look much farther than what was happening with the apex predator.  Now, we're reaching the point where marine biologists are saying surfers should pay for shark protection measures.

The Great White Sharks are clearly coming closer to shore in search of food. This stuff simply never used to happen with the kind of regular frequency we're seeing today. If you have any kind of living memory, then it is alarming to see the rate at which this has happened. They nibble at humans because their normal targets are not there, and they're probably experimenting out of starvation. It's a little bit like big cat species that start hanging around closer to human habitation because their food chain is destroyed by encroaching civilisation. If this doesn't send waring signals to fisheries around the world, I don't know what will, but I don't seem to see that discussion going on. The Ocean just might be close to a mass extinction event., and hardly anybody's talking about it.