July 14th is Shark Awareness Day, a day meant to shift attitudes around sharks and boost awareness of these animals and everything they do for ocean ecosystems. For many of us, our cultures have shaped our perception of sharks growing up, often in a negative way.
Why is Shark Awareness day?
July 14 is Shark Awareness Shark Day, a day created to dispel myths about sharks and to raise awareness about the importance of sharks to the ocean. It is a day to recognize the great risk of extinction many species of sharks and rays face, and how we can act to save them.
What is shark awareness about?
Shark Awareness Day aims to both dispel the fear, stigma, and misinformation surrounding sharks and also raise awareness of this creature’s plight, inspiring people all over the world to take action in their defense.
How do people celebrate Shark day?
U.S. Shark Awareness Day on July 14 celebrates the wondrous sea creatures that have had a bad rep for quite a while now.
How to Observe Shark Awareness Day
- Boycott shark products. Sharks are hunted for their meat, skin, and fins.
- Educate others.
- Donate to organizations.
What day is Shark day?
Shark Awareness Day, July 14. Sharks play an important role in the ecosystem.
Why is sharks so important?
Sharks keep ocean ecosystems in balance
Sharks are the apex predators in marine ecosystems, which means they have few natural predators and feed on animals below them in the food web. Sharks limit the abundance of their prey, which then affects the prey of those animals, and so on throughout the food web.
Why should we protect sharks?
Why do we need to protect sharks? Sharks play a crucial role in healthy ocean ecosystems because they are a top predator—they keep prey species populations at a healthy level and prevent algae overgrowth that advances the decline of coral reefs.
What can sharks teach us?
Their wounds heal much faster than humans’. Their unique skin makes for a low-drag glide through the water that engineers envy. Scientists say sharks have much to teach us: from how we treat illnesses to how to make better ships, undersea robots or even swim suits.
Why do sharks go crazy over blood?
Sharks use a different sensory system when they are hunting for prey. Blood can be one indicator that leads sharks to their prey, so if it’s the smell of the prey they’ve been hunting, they will attack for sure. On the other hand, human blood is not as interesting for sharks.
What are 5 interesting facts about sharks?
Top 10 facts about sharks
- There are over 500 species of shark.
- Sharks are apex predators.
- They can vary dramatically in size.
- Sharks live in most ocean habitats.
- They can be weird and wonderful.
- Most sharks are cold-blooded.
- We get sharks around the UK.
- Sharks have a sixth sense.
Why do people care about Shark Week?
It began as a Discovery Channel marketing flourish — a way to draw viewers over the summer by yelling BOO! about beaches and oceans using the power of science. They’ve also used it in the past to encourage conservation and to highlight the problems that shark populations face, and they still say they do, to a degree.
What color most attracts sharks?
Shark expert, George Burgess, refers to bright colored yellow as “yum, yum yellow,” to a shark. Since sharks see contrast colors, anything that is very bright against lighter or darker skin can look like a bait fish to a shark.
How many sharks are killed a year?
100 million sharks
How Many Sharks Are Killed Every Year? An estimated 100 million sharks are killed per year throughout the world, a startlingly high number and one that is greater than the recovery rate of these populations.
Why is it called Shark Week?
Etymology. A jocular reference to Shark Week, an annual week-long marathon of shark-related programming on Discovery Channel, which, like a menstrual period, is bloody.
Is there a shark Emoji?
The Shark emoji ? was approved under Unicode 9.0 in 2016. On all major platforms, the emoji resembles a gray shark facing left. Often, the shark has a pale underside, specifically evoking a great white shark. The Shark emoji ? was proposed alongside other animals such as the Bat ? and Lizard ?emoji, among many others.
Are sharks a threat to humans?
Only about a dozen of more than 500 known shark species have ever fatally injured a human. Sharks are vital to the health of the oceans and most of them pose no threat to humans whatsoever.
What would happen without sharks?
In the Ecosystem
Through the spatial controls and abundance, sharks indirectly maintain the seagrass and corals reef habitats. The loss of sharks has led to the decline in coral reefs, seagrass beds and the loss of commercial fisheries.
What would happen if sharks disappeared?
If you’re not a big fan of sharks, this might seem like a good thing, but the absence of sharks would be devastating to ocean life. Sharks are an essential, keystone species that help balance other animals in the ocean’s food web, and without them, many, many other species would die.
What happens when a shark dies?
What Happens When a Shark Dies? Once dead, the shark’s body drifts to the bottom of the ocean, where it completes the cycle of life by providing nourishment for scavengers, including deep-sea sharks.
Why we should stop killing sharks?
Most sharks serve as top predators at the pinnacle of the marine food pyramid, and so play a critical role in ocean ecosystems. Directly or indirectly they regulate the natural balance of these ecosystems, at all levels, and so are an integral part of them.
Why is killing sharks a problem?
This approach causes unnecessary animal suffering to both target and non-target species. In addition, culling disturbs marine ecosystems and affects protected and vulnerable species including the targeted great white shark and non-target species such as the grey nurse shark.