Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Sharks in Sweaters

It so happens that the other day I came across an article about the world’s population of sharks. Real swimmy swimmy sharks, not the other kind, who give you money and then break your legs when you don’t pay. Though, I suppose, swimmy sharks could do that to. I mean, the cash would get rather soggy and they’re more ‘biters’ than ‘beaters,’ so to speak, so the leg breaking would be difficult.

NOTE: Some of you got the ‘biter’ and ‘beater’ reference. Feel free to feel superior. For those who also got the ‘swimmy swimmy’ reference, feel free to don a monocle and add an ‘esquire’ after your name.

But I digress. It seems that the population of the swimmy, swimmy sharks (hereafter referred to as just ‘sharks’) is down by some 30% across the world. Human over-fishing seems to be the culprit and real, honest-to-god experts have theorized that the sudden increase in shark-fishing is due to the movie Jaws, which scared the poop out of everyone about 30-years ago.

For those of you who have not seen the movie, a shark pretty much eats everyone in a small seaside town until Roy Scheider blows it up with an air tank, a feat which was later totally disproven on an episode of Mythbusters.

Sharks became the new symbol of fear and we humans have done what we do best when confronted with something scary: we kill the crap out of it. Oh, I’m not bagging on humanity here. Killing stuff that scares you is a very important survival trait, ‘cause there’s generally a good reason to be scared of it. The cavemen that tried to pet the pretty cobra didn’t survive, whereas the cavemen who screamed and killed the cobra with a rock did.

Anyway, the problem here is that sharks eat lots of other, equally scary things and now that the shark population is so low, the other critters are multiplying. The Humbolt Squid, in particular, used to be found in one area off of Mexico. Now they’re hanging out in malls in Minnesota and trying to pick up girls.

So basically, if we want to keep things in balance, we ought to do something to help out the sharks. We could simply stop killing so many, which would work. Or, we could go totally overboard and actually start adopting them. It would be simple: you agree to raise a shark and when it’s old enough, you release it into the wild (aka: college). Not only will this help increase shark populations, but maybe, just maybe, sharks and humans would form a bond of love and friendship. Sharks would stop eating people. People would stop hunting sharks. A whole new industry of shark products would arise, including shark chow, shark leashes, and woolen shark sweaters for when they got cold.

Plus, if aliens ever messed with us, we could totally sick our sharks on them. Which would rock.

I think I’ll name my shark ‘Mr. Bitey.’


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