Harmless blacktip shark on the dissection table at Sharks Board.

Like them or not, sharks play a crucial role on this planet. Remove sharks from the oceans and we are tampering with our primary food and air sources. And the livelihoods of millions that rely on the oceans for their main source of income.

Sharks play a critical role in our oceans – the world’s largest and most important ecosystem. Ocean’s provide billions of tons of foods each year, and more oxygen to this planet than all the rain forests combined.

As the apex predators of the oceans, the role of sharks is to keep other marine life in healthy balance. Remove sharks and that balance is seriously upset. Scientific studies show that elimination of sharks can cause disastrous effects including the collapse of fisheries and the death of coral reefs.

One study in the U.S. indicates that the elimination of sharks resulted in the destruction of the shellfish industry in waters off the mid-Atlantic states of the United States, due to the unchecked population growth of cow-nose rays, whose mainstay is scallops. Other studies in Belize have shown reef systems falling into extreme decline when the sharks have been over-fished. Without predators, the grouper population spiked, which in turn reduced the natural balanced population of algae-eating fish such as the parrot fish, and the coral became overgrown with algae, destroying an entire ecosystem.

On the East Coast of South Africa, the nets have already been linked as one contributing factor to an upset in the ecosystem due to the steep decline of the zambezi shark population – as noted by KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board scientists themselves.