"Teaching people about the world in which we live."
"Teaching people about the world in which we live."
At the top of
the food chain lie the many shark species who are carnivores. They fulfill an important
role, in that they are the garbage disposals of the ocean. They eat dead, sick and
hurt marine life as well as just about anything else that finds it's way into their
mouths.
Of course, not all sharks are carnivores. There are 350 species of sharks ranging from the 1 foot (.0.33 meter) dwarf shark to the 60 ft (20 meter), 10 ton whale shark, a docile plankton feeder. Twenty of these species live in the oceans surrounding Australia. The best known sharks are the ones with reputations for vicious attacks on humans, although such attacks are quite rare.
In the
tropical waters off Australia (near the Great Barrier Reef), the tiger shark fills this
role. In the cooler waters off southern Australia, it is the great
white shark. All true sharks spend most of their lives in salt water. Fish sold in pet
stores as "fresh water sharks" are not sharks, but are a species of large
minnow. Active tropical sharks (the type found in water the temperatures on the Great
Barrier Reef) include hammerheads, whale sharks, and tiger sharks. At this time, we do not
know enough about many shark species to allow us to understand their behavior or their
population levels. In fact, in 1982 an entirely new species of shark (megamouth) was
discovered. Ecological studies of the type we will be participating in during the first
week of May, 1998, are needed to increase our knowledge of sharks.
