“I hope all the sharks die.” Those, reportedly, are the words of Donald Trump, now US president.
Fear of these animals is common, down to the way they are often portrayed in movies and on television. For example, Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is often criticised for portraying them as scary monsters that pose a much greater danger to us than their . Fortunately, not everyone takes the bait.
Sharks “instantly captivated me with their sheer power and how misunderstood they were”, says marine biologist . Marquez, based in Australia, is studying how our perception of these creatures sways support for conservation, and how sharks feature in indigenous legends, myths and folklore.
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In myths, sharks are often far from bad. In many indigenous cultures, they are not the terrifying Jaws of Hollywood. In traditional Hawaiian culture, for example, they are benevolent protectors or guardians.
That reflects reality. Scientists have learned that sharks play a critical ecological role. In Shark Bay, Australia, for example, it’s not just being eaten, but of being eaten by tiger sharks that prevents dugongs and sea turtles from overgrazing meadows of seagrass. Sharks thus provide top-down protection for the biodiversity that flourishes in such oceanic life-support systems.
A world without sharks would be bad in many ways. We still have a long way to go in understanding the intricacies of marine ecosystems and predicting what happens when they get messed up, says at the University of Iceland. “When sharks disappear, strange things happen,” he says.
Food-web unravelling
In some cases, the loss of sharks triggers a food-web unravelling known as a trophic cascade. That is because many species of large shark sit at the top of the food chain and are thought to keep in check smaller predators that could otherwise overexploit the available seafood.
“If you have this wonderful tapestry and you pull the wrong string, the whole thing might fall apart. That’s what we do when we start to kill off sharks,” says Samuel Gruber, the founder and director of the in the Bahamas. He worries that recent anti-shark sentiment could undermine decades of work to rehabilitate public perceptions.
One big problem is that sharks are typecast as top predators, but that is a gross distortion of their overall diversity. They also include unfussy bottom feeders like dogfish, planktivorous gentle giants like the whale shark, partial vegetarians like the seagrass-munching bonnethead shark and sneaky sit-and-wait predators like the sand-hiding angel shark.
In fact, with over 400 species and counting, we have yet to understand all the ecological roles that sharks play. Even as we probe the vastness of outer space, in our own poorly surveyed seas, we still discover several species of new shark every year.
What would life be like in a Trumpian, shark-free world? Our seas would have less seafood and would probably seethe with jellyfish and algae. But if unswayed by ecological arguments, it bears mention that sharks are a source of economic revenue and too. Whether sharks can be fished sustainably is much debated, but growing shark tourism in the US, , South Africa and elsewhere now generates many millions of dollars per year.
And if we were to make good on irrational fears about wildlife, this probably wouldn’t stop at sharkicide. Elimination of biodiversity that is scary, creepy or inconvenient might see critters with the audacity to stray onto Florida’s golf courses annihilated too. , armadillos, opossums, gophers and geese – ugh, who needs them? Well… we might. These animals eat other pesky creatures such as rats, insects and ticks, while other uninvited golf course guests – bats – gorge on mosquitoes and pollinate some of the fruits we eat.
There is some good news in Trump’s reported revulsion of sharks. It inspired those who dislike the president’s view to bite back. Some shark experienced a Trump bump as anger-inspired donations flooded in. Which hopefully means more sharks, not less. Be careful what you wish for.
Read more: Sharks now protected no matter whose waters they swim in; Rights versus bites: The great shark culling debate
