Sharks are in trouble
Summer on Cape Cod goes hand in hand with the oceans’ top predator, sharks! And better yet, this week was Shark Week! While gift shops across the Cape sell their shark-themed t-shirts, coffee mugs, and boogie boards, shark fins from as many as 73 million sharks end up in the market every year. The demand for shark fins incentivizes overfishing and shark finning, the cruel and wasteful practice of removing a shark’s fins at sea and throwing the body back overboard where it drowns, starves to death, or is eaten alive by other fish.
A study published earlier this year in Nature found that global oceanic shark and ray populations have declined by more than 70% over the last 50 years, with overfishing as the primary cause. Although shark finning is illegal in U.S. waters, fins can still be bought and sold throughout much of the United States. Luckily in June, the Senate passed bipartisan legislation to ban the buying and selling of shark fins. Now it�