What If There Were No Sharks?

We all are familiar with sharks. We have seen sharks in films, television channels, documentaries etc. Sharks are big fishes in ocean. There are around 400 species of sharks in the world and are in the ocean for more than 400 million years. So now let’s look how sharks are beneficial to human beings, do we need to fear sharks or not, and finally what if there were no sharks.

Contents

Importance of sharks

Since they are big fishes sharks feed on other small fishes which in turn feed on small algae eating fishes. So if there are no sharks then surely the number of small fishes will grow highly in number and organisms like algae which are beneficial to human beings will be lost. In one of the coasts of North Carolina in U.S, due to overfishing of sharks the amount of scallops, shrimps, crabs etc. were all decreased significantly.

What happens if there are no sharks?

First of all it affects the food web. We cannot correctly predict how the food chains will be disordered but we can imagine the problems that will be caused by the absence of an organism which has evolved over 400 million years. We can blindly say that sharks balance the ecosystem. Since sharks are a slow evolving species and breed very less it might have taken years of adaption which are important for ecosystem balance. Millions of people now depend on sharks for one or other thing. So if there are no sharks, then that will not be good for humans.

Do we need to really fear sharks? I think “No”, because each year we humans kill around 100 million Sharks and only one or two humans lost their life due to shark attacks. So in other words it is actually the sharks who are in fear because of us. So let us all be aware about this. Not only about sharks but also about other species in oceans too.