Shark by Richard Ellis

Author:Richard Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461747925
Publisher: Lyons Press

In other words, we’re all in this together: parrots, houseflies, killer whales, spiders, hippos, cassowaries, corals, crabs, dugongs, dingos, flamingos, anacondas, ants, bees, beagles, beetles, beavers, leopards, iguanas, ducks, platypuses, albatrosses, crows, alpacas, centipedes, tanagers, tunas, toucans, tigers, horses, mackerel, mongooses, magpies, moray eels, butterflies, butterfly fishes, polar bears, antelopes, pit vipers, pelicans, gorillas, macaws, octopuses, penguins, porcupines, shearwaters, kangaroos, koalas, oysters, worms, wolves, woodchucks, buffalos, mice, ferrets, scallops, bobcats, turtles, turkeys, hamsters, hummingbirds, rattlesnakes, cowries, baboons, raccoons, dolphins, giraes, sea cucumbers, squid, starlings, cobras, elephants, elephant seals, sparrows, foxes, pigeons, hornets, whales, sharks, and millions of other living things. No creature is more “important” than any other, despite our disastrously anthropocentric view of the world.

Embedded in our culture and consciousness is the idea that humans are the crown of creation, put here to rule over the earth and its inhabitants. Early in Genesis, God tells Noah that “The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands they are delivered.” For centuries, humans have manhandled the earth and its other inhabitants as if this exhortation was a law to be followed, but time and tide eventually began to reveal the cracks in this anthropocentric foundation. There are many religious doctrines that still hold that everything on Earth was put here for our advantage, but there are also people who believe the earth is flat, or that it was formed six thousand years ago.

When Charles Darwin theorized that humans occupied no biologically privileged position, our unchallenged place at the top of the ladder was no longer quite so secure. Still, it is more than a little difficult to view the world from anything but your own viewpoint. “To be anthropocentric,” wrote W H. Murdy in 1975, “is to affirm that mankind is to be valued more highly than other things in nature—by man. By the same logic, spiders are to be valued more highly than other things in nature—by spiders.” Ours is the only species that can actually alter the face of the planet, and while such a realization might conceivably engender humility, it has instead given us a renewed sense that because we can, we ought to. Think of cities, dams, highways, bridges, strip mines, pit mines, garbage dumps, irrigation canals and ditches, clear-cut forests, smog, acid rain, radioactive waste, pollutant aerosols, napalm, and nuclear bomb tests—and the idea that we are somehow “authorized” to hunt down (and sometimes eat) every kind of wild creature on land or sea, solely for the gratification associated with hunting or fishing.

Perhaps because of their reputation, sharks have always been the prime attractions in public aquariums, or, as some are now known, oceanariums. When Marine Studios, America’s first oceanarium, opened in Florida in 1937, it included what Craig Phillips, the first curator, described as a “gigantic circular shark channel ... ring-shaped and 750 feet in outer diameter that would house sharks and other swift sea creatures.

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