Blog: Jupp on LiveVideo.com

Gender: Male
Status: Single
Age: 70
Sign: Cancer
City: Millbrook, NY
State: New york
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2009

February

Sharks are very important in the oce...

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2009 (6:54 AM)

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Sharks are very important in the ocean

(I'm feeling creative)

It is hard to understand that people are still proud about the killing of sharks and even get paid for destroying the most important animal in our oceans. Sharks are maintaining the biological balance in this very complex ecosystem. They are at the top of the food chain; if we take the top predator away, the whole food chain will break down. Most scientists are in agreement with this statement but the ignorance and greed of those, who promote shark tournaments, just to bring money into the area, is unbelievable.

Don’t they know anything about the oceans? They call themselves experts but don’t care about the consequences of their actions. Every excuse results in monetary explanations and none of the so-called experts have any concern about our environment. The oceans are our life support system and without healthy oceans the human race will not be able to survive. If the sharks are gone, the oceans will die and so will the human race. Is that worth all the money in the world?

We already kill between 100 and 150 million sharks every year and if we continue doing that, there won’t be any left in the near future. I don’t think that 1,000 scientists were joking when they wrote a letter to the
UN saying that by the year 2048 there would be no more commercial fishing in the world, because by then the oceans will be empty. Is that not enough of a warning, that should stop us, especially the professional fishermen, from looting the oceans out of greed and macho thinking?

What is wrong with people who want to kill the biggest shark just to get a photo? Mind you, I’m not an animal rights activist. I have hunted all my life and have fished occasionally. Since I started diving I stopped hunting but I see nothing wrong with hunting for food. Hunters don’t exterminate a whole species of animals; they do what they can to preserve them. But it seems to me that there are a lot of people who love to kill for the sake of killing and to get a photo with the animal they killed. Is that what macho men are all about these days? I find it more macho to go into the ocean and swim with sharks than to kill them from the boat. Maybe they want to try that for a change? I am doing it all the time and am enjoying it a great deal.

Shark killing tournaments should be prohibited and I sometimes ask myself, where are the politicians who spend most of their days trying to patronize us and tell us what to do and how to live our lives? Why are they not doing something about the fact, that those tournaments are putting us all in a potentially dangerous situation? If we all, including the macho shark killers and the “experts” who promote that killing, are too ignorant and decadent to care about the future of our planet, we should at least stop and think about what kind of a world we want to leave behind for our children and their children. All the money in the world will not help them if they don’t have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink or indeed a world to live in. Today, it is popular to talk about Global Warming but this is my humble opinion: Our lifestyle and the way we humans are looting the oceans, is no longer sustainable. If we continue what we are doing, we might soon be looking at the greatest ecological disaster of mankind. Everybody talks about Global Warming these days, but if we lose the oceans we might not even live long enough to witness the full effects of it.

It is very sad indeed that most people have no knowledge of the declining shark populations, nor of the importance of sharks in the very complex ecosystem of the oceans. They are not aware of the daily slaughter of thousands of sharks all over the world. Sharks are being killed for the profit of a few big companies and no government does much, if anything, about it.

The oceans are our life support system and if the sharks disappear, the oceans will die. When that happens the human race will die as well. Why isn’t anybody doing something about it? 70 million sharks die alone for shark fin soup in China, the Japanese kill hundreds of whales and tens of thousands of dolphins indiscriminately and we are all watching this terrible thing to happen without much interest or compassion.

The media regales us with horror stories about sharks and Mr.Spielberg has yet to put some of the millions he made with “Jaws”, back into shark conservation, because his movie has started a world-wide shark slaughter frenzy that has no equal.

I can only hope that articles like this one will finally get our politicians off their behinds and force them to take some action. We are a small group in the Shark Research Institute, at Sharkprotect.com and other NGOs. We need much more publicity and action. I have recently been in 4 talk shows in Germany, which gave me the chance to educate over 4 million viewers about sharks. I have not been successful in getting on an American TV show yet, to do something similar.

Jupp Kerckerinck zur Borg
www.sharks.org
www.sharkprotect.com

Category: Pets & Animals

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Posted Aug 18, 08 by Jupp
OH, I almost forgot. There is a link to the German TV talk shows where I was invited to speak to large audiences about sharks. Just google: sharkprotect.com on TV and you'll see what the shows looked like. All in all we reached well over 4 million viewers.