Shark Encounter in 180: Worth More Alive | National Geographic

My name is Jim Abernathy. I'm a shark expedition leader. I'm the pioneer of large cageless shark encounters worldwide. My whole conservation effort is based on the simple fact that our wildlife on planet Earth, especially sharks, are worth more alive.

I knew that I wanted to focus on the world's largest predatory sharks, so I searched all of the Bahamas looking for this place and finally found Tiger Beach. There's such a diversity of species: the tiger shark, the great hammerhead, the bull shark, the lemon shark, the Caribbean reef shark. Pocahontas is just one of the great hammerheads that lives at the Bahamas this time of year.

If we were to kill her, her fins would probably be worth around 350 or 400 dollars. But the Bahamas has embraced shark diving. It's literally about a hundred and thirteen million dollars annually, every single year, that this shark and others like her are generating year after year after year alive as a renewable resource. So clearly, it doesn't make sense—they're worth more alive.

It saddens me greatly to see that on every single dive, everywhere I go on the planet, you're seeing the effects of our plastic pollution. You're seeing the effects of our water pollution. We have quite literally used our only home as a garbage dump.

We are at a pivotal point in the history of our planet. We're about to lose sharks and many other animals if we don't step up to the plate right now and make the changes that we need to do in order to protect sharks worldwide. We need to take care of the animal that's responsible for maintaining the health and balance of its. That’s that simple.

So whether you like sharks or hate sharks, for our own existence on the planet, as well as the future of planet Earth, we need to protect sharks.