Shark Alert

A nightmare for many people: meeting a shark while swimming in the sea. Especially the Great White Shark is feared as a cold-blooded killer and maneater. However, sharks love to eat fish and other marine animals.

And the largest of all sharks, the Whale Shark, feeds mainly on plankton. Sharks have been at the top of the food chain in our seas for more than 450 million years. Long before dinosaurs populated the earth, sharks were already making their tracks through the depths of the oceans.

They are immensely important to the ecosystem because they often hunt for sick or weak animals, thus keeping the population of other fish species intact. But for a few decades, sharks have been ruthlessly persecuted in all oceans. In Asia, shark fin soup is considered a status symbol and stands for wealth and luck. Already 20 percent of shark and ray species are listed as threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List.