The Hill News

Before adjourning last month, Congress spread some good will toward our world’s sharks, which have suffered from an unwarranted bad reputation ever since they first hit the big screen several decades ago. The portrayal of sharks as mindless, man-eating killing machines couldn’t be further from reality.  

On the contrary, sharks have more reason to be afraid of humans. Our fears combined with our appetites have made humans an unnaturally effective and efficient predator of sharks. That is why it’s encouraging that Congress took an important first step by passing the Shark Conservation Act of 2009.  The new law is by no means perfect but it is a good entry point for an aquatic species that is under duress, especially when you consider that roughly 73 million sharks are killed each year. That’s about 200,000 per day. Some shark populations have declined by as much as 94 percent over the past four decades. Much of the death comes senselessly in the name! of making of a delicacy known as shark fin soup. 

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