Marine Food Web

By: Calandra Waters

Forest ecology effects water quality by acting in riparian zones that hold contaminants, stop erosion, provide shade, and contributes to the aquatic habitat through leaves and dead limbs which forms a fresh water food web. This water works its way through the rivers and lakes and eventually makes it into the ocean where a marine food web occurs.

Sharks Role in the Ocean

Sharks are an apex predator, which means they are at the top of the food chain. This also means that there are not a lot of them because if there were it would upset the balance of the ocean and they would eat too much until there was no food left in the ocean. Sharks play an important role in keeping the ocean healthy and in balance. Their feeding keeps the populations of fish from becoming too high. Sharks also keep fish populations healthy by eating the sick and injured fish, which stops those fish from reproducing and improves the genetic pool. Sharks are also scavengers. They eat dead fish and mammals or any other meat they can get. They also eat trash, especially metal, like license plates and suits of armor which they are attracted too because of the electromagnetivity of the metal. Do you like lobster? If so, you should be thanking sharks. Just like in the food web, octopi eat lobster and sharks eat octopi, so by keeping those octopi populations down there are more lobsters for you to eat (at a better price!).

Shark Attack

Are you afraid of sharks? Are you afraid of coconuts? Well if you are afraid of sharks then you should definitely be afraid of coconuts because coconuts kill more people every year than sharks! There are three kinds of shark attack: hit and run, bump and bite, and sneak attack. Hit and run is the most common kind of attack. This occurs when a shark brushes up against a person and their very rough skin, covered in dermadenticals, creates an abrasion, similar to sand paper. The second kind of attack is much less common but much more well known. Bump and bite is usually a case of mistaken identity, when a person (surfer, boogie boarder, diver) looks like a seal, sea turtle, or other kind of shark food. The shark takes one bite, realizes the person is not the food the shark thought they were, and leaves. This can result in a loss of limb or serious injury, but usually survival. The last kind of attack is the sneak attack, also known as feeding frenzy. This is when there is usually food in the water and a lot of sharks and they become very excited and start to bite at each other, the food, anything. This attack is extremely unusual but often fatal.

Conservation

Do you like lions and tigers and wolves? Why? Do you like sharks? Lions, tigers, and wolves are predators that eat other animals and sometimes attack people, just like sharks! But unlike sharks, these animals are easier for people to associate with because they are terrestrial, cute, furry creatures. Sharks
live in a foreign environment and can look just plain scary. That does not make them any different than the predators on land. There are some groups, like the American Elasmobranch Society, trying to spread the word that sharks are not the monster some people think they are, they are just misunderstood. Sharks deserve our respect, not our fear.

 

Questions:

1. What is an apex predator?
2. What is the most common type of shark attack?
3. Why are sharks attracted to metal?