I’m watching Asia’s Deadly Dozen, about sharks and snakes and such, on National Geographic HD. Good stuff. I just heard a claim that stopped me cold:
“We kill an average of 36 million sharks every year.”
That’s exactly what the narrator said. I rewound it to verify it. (DVRs are neat.)
All righty, then.
There are millions of people who think species conservation is a worthless pursuit. There are millions more like me, who are pretty sure there’s some public value in it, but find the details highly debatable. But anyone who considers the claim even for a moment knows that the human race doesn’t kill 36 million sharks every year. It’s absurd enough to fail just on logistics. That’s more than 98,000 sharks every single day. That’s one billion sharks every 28 years.
No way in hell.
The last thing like this that gave me this kind of pause was a claim concerning the effect of plastic trash on our oceans. Did you know there is a mass of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean that is the size of Texas? There is an expanse of plastic in the Pacific that stretches for more than a quarter of a million square miles.
Some of the claims are “twice the size of Texas,” and a commonly cited weight is “3.5 million tons.” I’m not going to attribute this claim, because it’s all over the place. Google it.
Get your brain around that. I’ve illustrated the massive pile of plastic to the right. See it?
Hmmm. Seems like there’d be a picture or seven of such an impressive expanse of plastic, don’t you think? Are there any? I certainly couldn’t find one. Yet I can see my dogs on Google Earth.
Legitimate environmentalists (as opposed to those with ulterior agendas) of all causes, listen up: you folks badly need to sell your concerns with facts. I understand and respect your passion. But if you really wish to effect change, you need to persuade intelligent people who, convinced of a genuine problem, might let go of $20 once in a while to help you.
I’m one of those people, but I don’t like the taste of shit, and I’m not swallowing any. You do your entire movement a huge disservice when you float absurd claims like this, because people get disgusted with the entire idea of helping you. Is it any wonder, when you’re delivering nonsense like this and expecting to be believed?
I’m certain the actual problems are grave enough. Stick to the facts.
You might also like:
- Cuil
So a triumvirate of ex-Googlers unleashed Cuil (pronounced “cool”; it’s Gaelic for knowledge) three … - The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and Joe Biden won the election
The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years, give or take a few million. I have no interes… - Hillary Clinton stumbles from “dead broke” to not “truly well off”
Evidently, Hillary Clinton has someone or a group of someones in her ear telling her it’s important … - Hackers threaten release of extensive user data from #adultery site #AshleyMadison.com
I know bunches of people who have cheated on their spouses. You do too. You know how I know that? Be… - Texas Texas at Anaheim Chili
It came from out of the south. It was formidable. I wasn’t sure. I did eventually fell it. Behold Te…
How much do I LOVE that you actually did this math?!
I musta seen that same show, because I heard that statistic too, about the sharks. I just wonder if the folks making the documentary just made an error. Doesn’t it seem that there are just too many documentaries about sharks, swimming with sharks, etc.? They always have to say sharks have “razor sharp” teeth, which they don’t. They often say they are going to an area “infested” with sharks. Infested? I can get infested with crabs. My house can get infested with roaches. Are they saying sharks, by living somewhere, amount to a noxious pest to be exterminated?
How come if sharks are dwindling shark bites are up? How come we still see dramatic footage of absolute masses of them?
I think the environment needs help, but exaggeration is not the way.
Do you know for a fact that the shark estimate is wrong? I did a quick google, and it does seem that most of the quoted statistics originate from this article:
http://www.pewoceanscience.org/press/sharkfins/resources/PI_Ecology-Letters-Shark-Fin-Release.pdf
This article uses a method of averaging the weight of hunted sharks to calculate a number of hunted sharks, and the median value of this method is 38 million. So it’s a guess.
Still, it seems that most of the hunting is coming from the need for shark fin soup, a delicacy at Chinese weddings. So I wondered just how many weddings could there possibly be in China in any given year. Quite a few it seems….the population of China is 6.6 billion. In 2003, there were 8.3 million couples who registered to be married. This compares to ~2.4 million weddings in the U.S. against a ~301 million headcount, so this actually reflects a smaller “per capita” weddings in China than in the U.S.
So if each of the Chinese weddings needed a fin or two for their festivities, that 38 million suddenly seems within reach, ’cause that’s just China. That 38 million might yet be exaggerated. But if it’s not, you’re really right to be shocked – Since it takes sharks 10-22 months to make babies, it could be a real problem if you care about species preservation. Just sayin’.
Melanie, I don’t wish to be cantankerous for the sake of it. No, really. 🙂
I’ve read this press release twice, and as close as it gets to describing how it determined its numbers is talking about “(tapping) into fin auction records and (converting) from fin sizes and weights to whole shark equivalents,” and then saying “a team of researches calculated the number of sharks represented in the fin trade using a unique statistical model and data from Hong Kong traders.”
That’s not enough. Rigor is necessary when tossing these figures around, and 36 million (or 38 million, in this release) sharks killed by people annually is an absolutely incredible claim. That’s more than one shark per second, all the time. That’s one shark killed for every 183 people on the planet every single year.
(Incidentally, you’re giving the world’s population as China’s population, which is about 1.3 billion.)
To be sure, I am not defending the practice of “finning,” i.e. cutting a caught shark’s fins off and tossing it back in the water. What an extraordinarily cruel death to inflict on a living thing. But here’s the deal: people do it because it’s profitable. It’s profitable because there’s demand for it.
To reduce the practice, reduce the demand. To reduce the demand, educate. To educate, raise funds. To raise funds, convince people like me.
Ah.
I care. But tell me the truth.
Yep, like I said – reading the article, it really did seem lik that number was a guess. I do think that National Geographic would have checked; they are sort of the authority on nature documentaries….
Sorry about the population mistake….really stupid. But here’s another way to look at it. Here’s a government web site that shows the number of fisherman in China in 1992.
http://www.lib.noaa.gov/china/archi/statistics.htm#labour_income
Let’s say that the number never got bigger, even though the years from 1980-1992 average 7% increase.
In 1992, there were 1,525,233 full-time marine fishermen in China. Plus there were a bunch of part-time ones. If only the full-time guys were going after the sharks, they would only need to catch .6 sharks/day – let’s say 3 a week – to make 98,000 sharks.
And you’re right — it’s all about the profit. One web site I read said that they can get $80/pound for shark fins, and I guess a fin averages about a pound. So you can see the motivation.
I don’t argue that the demand is the problem. I don’t think it’s a vigourous argument just to dismiss it because it’s a really big number.
I don’t think every shark that got counted was a really big shark. Probably lots of lots of small ones. Does that make it any more possible?
Did I mention that work has been less than stimulating lately? So much more fun to debate with your friends.
Love ya. 🙂
Is the claim related only to shark fishermen in China? If you count shrimp boats and sharks getting caught in the nets, that number can go up in a hurry. For example, On a ten mile stretch, if ten boats caught ten sharks a day that would seem a believable senario. Then multiply that by the amount of linear costline used for shrimping. It gets more believable.
Personally, I really don’t care how many sharks die a year. Yeah, sure, screwing up the eco-system and all that… but, hey, sorry, I just don’t like ’em…
Me neither, Lea. I just like to argue.