Fast fall of Mediterranean sharks (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Sharks in the Mediterranean Sea have undergone a massive decline over the last two centuries, scientists have discovered from historical records.

Some species shrunk by more than 99% over the period, mainly due to fishing.

Researchers used fishermens' notes and archive records to plot population trends of five top predatory sharks.

The study, in the journal Conservation Biology, comes just weeks after a warning that half of the world's ocean-going sharks face extinction.

Sharks and their close relatives, the rays, are particularly vulnerable to over-fishing as they grow and reproduce slowly.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7446112.stm

[Nihil]

1. Homo nonsapiens wins again ...

Evidence for the existence of sharks extends back over 450–420 million
years, into the Ordovician period, before land vertebrates existed and
before many plants had colonised the continents.

The oldest shark teeth are from 400 million years ago.

Even modern sharks can be traced back about 100 million years.

Yet this cancerous upstart that proudly named itself "homo sapiens" has
driven such ancient species into extinction in a couple of centuries.

Sharks survived for MILLIONS of years and then they are being killed off
by an over-breeding, over-consuming, over-polluting ape in just a few
lifetimes.

:cry: