The Lion's Pride vol. 2 (Jun. 2014) | Page 45

38 recounts is the experience of marine ecologist Dr. James Bruno from the University of North Carolina’s “research station in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador”. He was required to assist the police with identifying some 350 sharks on a boat where some of the fins were already removed. Bruno explains the severity of that situation stating, “This was in the Galapagos, a national marine reserve and national heritage site” (Rosenthal, 2012, para. 15). This just goes to show how little many of the fisheries really care for the laws or the sharks they hunt; in the end, their only concern is the amount of money they can make. Unfortunately, laws that merely slow the rate of which sharks are fished only sidestep the problem, and because these fishing companies are making so much money, they are able to send more boats out to increase the amount of sharks they can catch. There are other difficulties that can be seen in the ineffectiveness of laws that protect certain waters. Some sharks migrate from one area to another, and there is no way that we can keep sharks in a protected area. Generally speaking it seems that it is incredibly easier to protect land animals than marine life. People have more control over the land on which they live than they do over the ocean. Here in