Need for protection

I READ with interest the article Shark watch (Ecowatch, Oct 9), on the dire situation that sharks around our coastal waters are in. We are in serious need of a new perspective if we are to continue having our finned friends in our marine backyards. And if your article is anything to go by, time is certainly not on their side.

We need an urgent re-think on how we view these animals. Not the dreaded creatures that slice through the murky waters of our imagination with their sickle-shaped dorsal fins, but the very vanguard of evolutionary resilience that they are. Not the bloodthirsty beast of Peter Benchley’s Jaws, but the more mecurial protaganist in Peter Matthiessen’s Blue Meridian. Not the misguided notions of healing and virility that they symbolise, but the very diversity of the marine environment and our natural world that they have come to epitomise.