Shark Awareness Day | Pristine Seas | National Geographic

For more than 400 million years, sharks have been vital to the health of our oceans. Sharks are apex predators, by balancing food webs and keeping prey populations healthy. Sharks keep ecosystems healthy. With all these, all these sharks around the submarine, sharks have such an important role in the ecosystem. They keep the ocean ecosystem in balance, and with sharks go, that's the first sign of the degradation of the entire food chain.

What we find in these remote places around the world is that apex predators really dominate and drive the function of the whole ecosystem. In pristine places, we have an inverted biomass pyramid where there's more predators than prey, and these predators control the whole ecosystem. This top-down controlled ecosystem is really what makes pristine places unique. Yet, that's what all places used to look like before humans removed these large animals from the ocean.

The biggest threat to sharks is overfishing. Sharks are killed and sold for luxuries like shark fin soup. Sharks, they've been around for over 400 million years. They've survived several mass extinctions, yet they are being removed at rates that are outpacing their ability to reproduce. Ninety percent of these large animals have been fished. With the absence of these apex predators, marine ecosystems could collapse.

But there's a proven solution: marine protected areas. These are areas where fishing and other damaging activities are prohibited, helping to protect the ocean's biodiversity and creating a safe haven for sharks. It's much easier to protect a place that's healthy than it is to try to fix a place after it's broken.