1000 Flowers for the Planet - #502 Save the Grey Nurse Shark
The grey nurse shark lives along the east coast of
Australia, near Queensland and New South Wales. Their numbers have dwindled to
1,500 making the species critically endangered. This type of shark is
completely harmless to mankind but is lumped in with the rest of the shark
species as something to be feared. Bait fishing is their largest threat, but
whilst recreational fishing practices are doing the most harm, grey nurse
sharks can also get caught up in commercial fishing nets or suffer death from
spear fishing. The nature of their species is that they take a long time to
mature and they breed slowly, making recovery from low numbers a slow process.
Their habitat needs protection to give them the opportunity to expand their
population and come back from the brink of extinction. This may mean greater
areas where recreational fishing is banned, but somewhere along the line the
needs of the shark has to be weighed against the needs of mankind. Further
information is available at [http://www.marineconservation.org.au/pages/threatened-spec-grey-nurse-sharks-142.html]
with some background detail and more on how you can help.
No comments:
Post a Comment