A World of Knowledge from a Day’s Presentation

Hi! My name is Daniel Saiz. I am 13 (yeah, 13!) years old and go to Country Club Middle School.

Some reasons I am writing this blog is because one, I found out how sharks are being killed and abused worldwide and I felt disgusted that this was happening. Two, I love writing! And three, I really wanted the “Dolphin Tale” shirt (thanks by the way, I love it!). But the MAIN reason why I am blogging is because I wanted to help.

To start off I would like to say that Christine (Christine Shepard, RJD Multimedia Specialist) gave a flipping fantastic presentation. There was comedy, trivia, fun, and she was just jolly throughout. The most interesting things I learned from the presentation were all the numbers. There are large amounts of injustice and cruelty done to sharks and that really surprised me. I didn’t know the problems were that big and widespread. Did you know that more than 270,000 sharks are killed A DAY? It was really important for me because it changed my point of view of sharks. That still doesn’t mean that I, personally, would go in the water with sharks because I’m still scared that this would happen:

BUT now there’s this connection between sharks and me. It’s kind of like a warm glow, a growing respect. Nonetheless, I still feel like if sharks eat primarily the ‘dead, the dying, and the dumb,’ I don’t know how much of a chance little ol’ me would have! Luckily I probably wouldn’t taste very good to them. Even Stevie agrees…

My favorite shark is the Megalodon. Why do I like them? Well for one thing they can do this:

Fierce is putting it lightly. Megalodon didn’t earn its name (“giant tooth”) for nothing. Their teeth were about 7 inches long. These ancient sharks had more biting force than any other animal. In 2008, a joint research team from Australia and the U.S. used computer simulations to calculate a Megalodon’s biting power. The results can only be described as terrifying. Whereas a modern Great White shark chomps with about 1.8 tons of force (and a lion with a wimpy 600 pounds or so), Megalodons chowed down on its prey with a force of between 10.8 and 18.2 tons – enough to crush the skull of a prehistoric whale as easily as a grape. No one knows why the Megalodon went extinct. They were the huge, relentless apex predators of the Pliocene and Miocene oceans. What went wrong? Well, there’s no lack of theories. Megalodons may have been doomed by global cooling (which culminated in the last Ice Age), or by the gradual disappearance of the giant whales that constituted the bulk of their diet. Some people think Megalodons still lurk in the ocean’s depths…but there’s absolutely no evidence to support this.

Some actions to help SAVE sharks are simple. Stop polluting the water with garbage. They can swallow debris, which can kill them. Use circle hooks. Sharks are much less likely to swallow them and get gut-hooked (damaging their internal organs, or killing pups inside of females). You can stop catching them, chopping off their fins, and dropping them in the water. NEWSFLASH: SHARKS SWIM TO BREATH, and guess what they use to swim. Yeah, that’s right – their fins. If you don’t fish for sharks already, awesome, but you can still help by spreading the word. Remember, knowledge is power, and you can drive change.

Well, this is Daniel Saiz logging off, good night and safe driving.

Sources: Martin, R. A. “Origin of Megalodon.” ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research. Web. 04 Oct. 2011. <http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/evolution/origin_megalodon.htm>.