Environmental Damage

There are many endangered species of shark in the world, such as:

Borneo shark
The Borneo shark is classified as endangered. Once again, it is found inshore and in coastal areas and has not been widely studied. It is threatened by a rise in shark fisheries in the region.

Smoothback angel shark
You might think that a good strategy for sharks would be to head for the depths, but you'd be wrong. The smoothback angel shark is a bottom-dwelling species found off Brazil in the waters of the western South Atlantic shelf. Here the species is being depleted by bottom-trawl fisheries. The problem is made worse by the fact that the smoothback angel shark is particularly slow to mature - young sharks are caught before they have a chance to breed.

Speartooth shark
Other shark species listed as endangered include the rare speartooth shark that is at risk from increased coastal development in the Indo-Pacific region which is rapidly destroying its coastal and river habitat.

Whitefin tope shark
The whitefin tope shark is also struggling for survival in the overfished waters around the Philippines. Its range is extremely restricted and there is no recent information.

Hunting

As more and more sharks are being hunted, mainly for their fins, the number of top preditors in the ocean is beginning to decline. This may not seem like a bad thing at first as it means that the lower down preditors, the prey of these big sharks, can thrive and increase in population greatly. However, by keeping the numbers of such middle preditors lower, these top sharks are protecting the sea life at the bottom of the food chain. When the smaller preditors thrive, their prey will decrease in numbers greatly, and combined with the over fishing of common fish, will all but wipe them out.

Global warming

Global warming can affect marine life in a number of ways. Firstly, the warmer temperature of the air means that more storms are likely to occure. These storms are particularly damaging for coral reefs. Hundreds of years of growth can be destroyed in just a few hours. Another way in which it damages the marine life is that the warmer climate mealts away the ice caps which thousnands of marine life, as well as land animals such as polar bears, depend on. This damage to the reaf and to the ice caps also means that it damages the habitats of thousands of species of different marine life, making it harder for them to reproduce, grow, hunt and feed, and hide from preditors.