Ren Louie’s Kidlit Books

Indigenous author, Ren Louie (left) is set to release an adaptation of his book for younger audiences, about his childhood journey of connecting with his culture through a drum gifted by his mother.” FULL STORY

 

B.C.’s sharks

March 23rd, 2020

Sharks have a bad rap. Provincial experts know that sharks don’t deserve their bad reputation, much of it driven by sensationalist movies and media reports.

Two of B.C.’s leading scientists, Dr. Jackie King and Dr. Gordon McFarlane have teamed up to dispel these myths with their guide book Sharks, Skates, Rays and Chimera of British Columbia (RBCM $24.95), available May 29, 2020.

The vast majority of sharks, they say, “are cautious and placid, and many inhabit waters that exclude them from human contact.”

Fifteen species of sharks have been observed off B.C., 17 species of skates and rays, and one species of chimera — “a weird-looking fish that seems a mash-up of several different species.”

Sharks in particular play a crucial role in the ecosystem, being apex predators feeding at the top of the food chain. There are exceptions, like the gentle basking shark that feeds on tiny plankton. Its large mouth can suck in the equivalent of 10,000 bottles of plankton-filled seawater in one hour.

Prior to the 1960s, basking sharks were plentiful in certain areas. Problems arose when basking sharks increasingly got tangled in commercial fishers’ nets and, as a result, became the subject of an eradication program. After fishery patrol boats were outfitted with underwater knives, hundreds of these large creatures were killed in B.C.’s coastal waters. Although the eradication program ended in 1970, basking sharks are now rarely seen here.

Other larger sharks have also faced eradication, which has been shown to have a cascading effect through the ecosystem when their prey populations begin to expand explosively and deplete other animals lower in the ecosystem such as scallops, clams and oysters. As usual, things never go very well when people try to “manage” ecosystems.

This book goes a long way to presenting sharks and their relatives as important creatures of the pacific northwest coastal waters, “worthy of respect, study, admiration and protection.”

All proceeds of the book are going to a conservation project, Predators in Peril.

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