200 Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide
cultures, and the human participants attach sawfish rostral teeth to the legs
of the roosters as artificial spurs.
Are boats dangerous for sharks?Most sharks are sufficiently mobile to get out of the way of an ap-
proaching boat. However, some of the bigger plankton-eating elasmo-
branchs do not have a natural fear of large, fast-moving objects and are
struck and injured by boats. Manta rays and Whale Sharks have been struck
by boats, and Basking Sharks were deliberately rammed and cut up during
a twentieth-century effort to rid the northeastern Pacific of these plankti-
vores. Some accounts report speedboats using Basking Sharks as ramps to
be jumped (see “Are any sharks endangered?” above). Stingrays that are
attracted to ecotourism feeding sites in artificially high numbers, such as
at Stingray City in the Cayman Islands, are frequently injured by boats as
the rays jockey for position to be fed (see “Should people feed sharks?” in
chapter 8).
What can an ordinary citizen do to help sharks?
A lot! Some actions are quite simple:
■ Refuse to eat sharks, and make your refusal known at restaurants and
seafood counters. Encourage your friends and family to also refuse to
eat sharks. Some shark populations can sustain well-managed fisher-
ies, but most can’t, and seafood sellers seldom know where their sharks
come from and whether they were caught sustainably. There are many
other tasty kinds of fish on the menu. To know which ones to avoid or
consume, consult the readily available Seafood Watch guides such as
the ones produced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium (www.seafoodwatch
.org).
■ Support anti-finning campaigns. Write letters to politicians and gov-
ernment agencies supporting all bans on shark finning.
■ Discourage shark fishing “kill” derbies by writing letters to local papers
pointing out that many of the sharks caught in these “contests” are de-
clining in numbers. Such derbies are commercial enterprises organized
to promote tourism and sport fishing. Businesses hate the negative pub-
licity created by a well-written letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
■ Most importantly, stay informed. The avalanche of information on
sharks and shark conservation grows annually. It may appear hard to
keep up, but a few sites troll the scientific literature and media sources
and summarize current information. If you want access to the best sci-
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