| Summary: | [photo] A victim of shark finning (33) The practice of shark finning involves catching sharks, slicing off their fins, and then simply throwing away the wounded sharks, leaving them to drown or be eaten alive by other animals. Therefore, the Greenland shark with its poisonous skin has the ultimate defense against the horrible act. Additionally, it is in the same family as the dog fish shark so it has very small fins: an almost non-existent dorsal fin and very short pectoral fins. It is thought that it has developed this anatomy because of lack of use. So its location and its difference in anatomy have aided it in avoiding this act of human cruelty. (6) Yet the tiger shark has not been so lucky, because its habitat puts it into close proximity of people, and because of its fast-moving nature, it’s dorsal and pectoral fins are much larger. Having those larger fins is a key factor in its predation methods, but they also make it a key target for shark fishermen. In a 1993 study from the University of Hawaii to determine population numbers, a team of biologists set out to tag 420 tiger sharks of which only 50 returned to the island waters during the one year study.(31) Perhaps it’s not only the environment that the Greenland shark prowls that aids in its mysteriously long life, but the lack of attention it has received from people that has given it the ultimate protection. Both species are the apex predators of their given environment, both possess acute senses that have evolved over more than four million years to be the dominant presence in marine predation, arguably taking into account how little the environment changed through the course of history resulting in an almost perfect makeup (13). Everything about these animals makes them 41
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