"More than a million Atlantic sharks killed yearly: study"
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By Marlowe Hood (AFP) –
PARIS — "At least 1.3 million sharks, many listed as endangered, were harvested from the Atlantic in 2008 by industrial-scale fisheries unhampered by catch or size limits, according to a tally released Monday."
"Of the 21 species found in the Atlantic, three-quarters are classified as threatened with extinction."
"North Atlantic populations of the oceanic white tip, for example, have declined by 70 percent, and hammerheads by more than 99 percent, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)."
"Other species -- including the porbeagle, common thresher and shortfin mako -- have also been overexploited, and may be teetering on the brink of viability."
"Regional studies have shown that when shark populations crash the impact cascades down through the food chain, often in unpredictable and deleterious ways."
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i2TanscntzA7B8E_yY1UDdxqJ_Ng?docId=CNG.f849053e64b86a96d1e446e3e7aa8da9.241
"The porbeagle (Lamna nasus) (pictured directly above) is a species of mackerel shark in the family Lamnidae, distributed widely in the cold and temperate marine waters of the North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere. In the North Pacific, its ecological equivalent is the closely related salmon shark (L. ditropis). The porbeagle typically reaches 2.5 m (8.2 ft) in length and a weight of 135 kg (300 lb); North Atlantic sharks grow larger than Southern Hemisphere sharks and differ in coloration and aspects of life history."
(source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porbeagle )
Source of image: http://www.shark-pictures.com/viewpic/porbeagle-shark-at-surface-316.html
