Can Great White Sharks Be Saved?

Sharks are some of the most feared and misunderstood creatures in the world and because of this, many people think that it would be best to let them be destroyed and not attempt to save them. Sharks are nearly at the pinnacle of the marine food chain and because of this; their extinction would be disastrous to the ecosystem of the ocean. It is therefore imperative that all attempts should be made to ensure that the sharks are protected from extinction not only to save our ocean’s ecosystems but so that future generations can be able to see and enjoy their beauty. In this paper, we shall specifically discuss the Great White Shark which is the apex predator in the ocean and whose extinction would lead to an ecological catastrophe.

If we were to allow the extinction of the Great White Shark, then the consequences would be very dire indeed especially for ocean life. For example, the Great White preys on seals and its removal from the food chain would mean that the seal population would not be controlled leading to their feeding on medium sized fish. A result of this would be a significant reduction in the population of medium sized fish leading the extinction of seals and this pattern would continue until all marine life ceased to exist. Opponents of this view believe that even if the Great White Shark became extinct, there would be no great consequences to ocean life because another predator would just fill in the vacuum left by the Great White. They believe that the extinction of a species is inevitable and all that is being done to save these sharks is being done in vain.

Over the last fifty years, there has been a great decline in the number of Great Whites all over the world and it is our duty to ensure that they are saved not only from those who would hunt them for their fins, but also from those who wish to destroy them because of fear. There have been arguments that since the laws protecting these sharks were put in place, their numbers have increased dramatically, putting many lives in danger. This is despite the fact that many humans are currently encroaching on the territory that belongs to the Great White due to an increase of commercial and recreational activities on the oceans and rivers.

It is a very rare thing for sharks to attack human beings but many argue that they should be left to become extinct because they pose a great danger. This has been proven not to be true because cases involving Great White Sharks attacking humans are very rare and statistics show that less than one percent of human deaths over the last half a century have been shark related. It is therefore a fact that we should not let go of the Great White so easily because of a few, unfounded and  irrational fears without first considering the benefits of saving them, which are numerous.

I believe that it is a necessity to save the Great White from extinction if we wish to preserve marine life as we know it. Furthermore, arguments that the population of the Great White has increased are unfounded and in fact, it is the human population which is ever increasing. The irrational fear of sharks by humans should be corrected and they should be educated on the true nature of sharks.

In conclusion, it can be said that the Great White Shark is a necessary part of the marine ecosystem and its extinction would be catastrophic. It is imperative that this shark species be saved for the sake of future generations. People should learn more about this species and should not rely on the misconceptions developed from movies such as Jaws which have no basis on fact.

How the Environment Influences the Body Plans of Organisms

The body plan of an organism is the most basic arrangement of the tissue layers in that organism without any details concerning the arrangement of its internal organs and the most basic and greatest influence on the body plans of organisms is the environment. The fundamental body plans such as the size of an organism can be determined by the environment in which it lives. According to Fastovsky and Weishampol (2005), all organisms are subject to design constraints. Organisms that live in the air or in water are acted upon by gravity and this causes their ancestry to limit the structures that they can evolve. For example, you will never find a propeller on the nose of a bird, even though that would be the most efficient way to propel the animal, because the evolutionary process works by descent with the modification of existing structures and not the wholesale invention of new ones.

Hoffmann and Parsons (1997) state that the body plans of organisms can be influenced by the types of landscapes encountered by them.  It is very difficult for a population to move from one environment to another when natural barriers such as mountains and seas because there are large differences between their current forms and the alternative forms which they would need to cross these barriers. Therefore, these natural barriers keep the organisms within one environment and in order to survive, they will have to develop the essential body plans to suit that environment. In other words, their inability to move from this environment will lead to a stasis in the development of their body plans and these will instead remain in their current state with little or no change over a long period of time.

Tobin and Dusheck (2005) declare that the body plans of organisms such as the particular arrangements of bones in the limbs of horses, whales, and humans may simply be a case of organisms making do with what they have. Organisms tend to reuse the same parts and materials, reshaping them for new purposes. A good example of this would be when one considers the whale which, although it is a mammal, lives in the ocean. Unlike other mammals, it does not have the legs it would normally have had if it had been living on land and instead, those limbs that would have formed legs on land have instead developed into fins to enable it to survive in the ocean efficiently. Furthermore, the body of the whale is too big to survive on land and it is instead adapted to life in the ocean because the water can not only support its weight, but there is also enough space within it to ensure that the whale is able to navigate within it.

In conclusion, different environments influence the development of different body plans to adapt to them. For example, the camel is very well adapted to life in the desert because it has developed padded hooves to be able to walk on the desert sand, long legs and neck to keep it from sinking into the sand and enable it to breath respectively, and a hump to store water because of the scarcity of this resource in the desert. Examples of other body plans include camouflage to avoid predators and the extreme height of some trees in forests in order to gain light for photosynthesis.

References

Fastovsky, D E. & Weishampol, D B. (2005). The Evolution and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Hoffmann, A A. & Parsons, P A. (1997). Extreme Environmental Change and Evolution. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Tobin, A J & Dusheck, J. (2005). Asking About Life. Andover, United Kingdom: Cengage Learning.