[dotancohen]

But we only hear about it when less than 1/5 of that amount _might_ be sacrificed for human health. Stinks of agenda.

Also, without context, is 500,000 a lot of sharks? How many exist in the wild? How many are needed to have a stable population? If we don't cull millions of sharks annually, what effect would that have?

And what is "shark" in this context, anyway? There are dozens of fish species, at differing levels of endangerment, colloquially referred to as "sharks".

[codingdave]

> Stinks of agenda.

Everyone has an agenda. I don't see an agenda of conservation of our ecology as one we need to resist. Especially when their conclusion at the end is not just "Save the Sharks", but a hope that we will research other possible ingredients instead of just running with the first working prototype.

[DeusExMachina]

Many agendas masquerade as "conservation of our ecology" when they are none of the sort and produce no results or even the opposite of what they claim.

The fact that you like it is no reason to not look at what's behind it.

[melling]

Sure, move past the innuendo and offer the theory so we can discuss. Throwing out the innuendo without any reason doesn’t help anyone.

Climate change deniers, for example, say the agenda “the redistribution of wealth“

Now we can have a discussion.

[jagger27]

> look at what’s behind it

Oh yeah, this one has Big Shark written all over it.

The ones that produce no results are more likely to be victims of other agendas than ineffective because of their own.

[dajohnson89]

agreed but the article says that nonanimal sources are more expensive than sharks. so research isn't what's needed, but rather (arguably) things like state provided incentives.

[bufferoverflow]

Mass-murdering sharks for cosmetics is unethical and evil. They feel the pain just like we do.

[melling]

“And what is "shark" in this context, anyway?"

Many people seem to rationalize away much of the destruction that humans do to the world.

That’s probably why we will soon be drilling for oil in Alaska.

[missedthecue]

It may come as a surprise that research seems to show that sharks don't feel pain.

"Snow and his co-workers concluded that elasmobranchs lack the neuronal machinery absolutely essential for the perception of pain."

http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/topics/s_pain.htm

[dTal]

...essential for the perception of pain in humans.

At best this shows that shark pain perception has a different neurological basis to humans. We still have no idea what sharks do and don't "feel".

[bufferoverflow]

Today I learned! That's an interesting turn of events.

[NewOrderNow]

Why do people think that humanity collectively has the same concept of ethics? What is good and bad? You seem to think every human is on the same page of what life is

[aidenn0]

Believing in moral absolutism is different from believe all people share your moral views.

[bufferoverflow]

Why do some people engage in straw man?

[dcolkitt]

On pure utilitarian grounds, sharks are all carnivores who kill thousands of other animals over their life in horrific, painful ways.

That doesn’t mean that there’s not environmental reasons to justify shark conservation. But from the standpoint of animal suffering killing apex predators is almost certainly a net good.

[rleigh]

The opposite has been shown to be true. For example, see the effect of wolf reintroduction upon biodiversity. They keep other populations in check which themselves would overall cause harm.

Look at the situation in the Scottish highlands. The entire landscape has changed beyond all recognition because of the loss of apex predators (wolves, bears). The deer population is massive, and it prevents forest growth and regeneration, and results in a landscape devoid of its natural biodiversity. This isn't just bad for the environment, we also suffer from related problems such as the spread of ticks spreading Lyme disease.

[throwanem]

The same has happened with whitetail in the eastern US, and a lot of people around here are still foolish enough to get upset with the DNR when they do a cull. That the resulting venison goes to homeless shelters seems not to move these weepers over Bambi; presumably, in their coldly rational utilitarian calculus, the life of a deer exceeds in value that of a human, at least once the human's circumstances have been far enough reduced.

Yes, I'm making fun, a little. I think that's fair in this instance. Someone who has taken the time and thought to identify utilitarianism as a philosophy on which to base consequential decisions has I think no excuse for not having likewise studied ecology, and the modern history of the human role in ecosystems, to at least the minimal extent required to recognize that ecology is really complicated and humans don't understand it nearly so well as we like to think we do. When we behave as if we did, we break things that very often can't be fixed.

[quickthrowman]

> The same has happened with whitetail in the eastern US, and a lot of people around here are still foolish enough to get upset with the DNR when they do a cull.

These people don’t understand that we have to manage the environment we created (removal of predatory animals that eat deer) and part of that is harvesting deer to prevent mass starvation from lack of winter food. I’d bet if you showed them footage of a deer starving to death in winter, they’d agree herd culling is more humane.

[dcolkitt]

Then that would be a specific environmental consideration. The argument I was addressing was the consideration on utilitarian grounds.

It's possible that there may be second order environmental affects on the utilitarian calculus. I.e. the loss of sharks, causes enough ecosystem imbalance that it out-weights the direct suffering caused by species X. But that's specifically an empirical claim, and simply claiming that "sharks feel pain" isn't sufficient.

In general there's no reason to believe that the current ecological balance is the utilitarian optimal. Darwin selects for inclusive fitness, and doesn't give a hoot about animal suffering. Imagining that the pre-existence of a large predator population exists to improve the lives of the prey population is succumbing to the fallacy of group selection.

[serpix]

Funny, I thought we are apex predators. Why do you want to kill all humans? /s

seriously though, ecosystems are interdependent and predators have their place. I remember watching a documentary about white wolves on a remote isolated island keeping the local population of yaks and rabbits from eating the island clean. They are absolutely vital for that particular ecology. Similarly it is not our place to rank animals by importance, since we are as a species quite obviously imbeciles.

[Jon_Lowtek]

> Why do you want to kill all humans? /s

Well the sebaceous gland in human skin produces this organic compound called "squalene" and we want that to make vaccines and cosmetic creams. But we don't want to kill all humans: squalene production significantly slows after the age of 30, so its more about killing young humans. /s

[Someone]

Nitpick: not all sharks are carnivores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnethead:

“Bonnetheads also ingest large amounts of seagrass, which has been found to make up around 62.1% of gut content mass. The species appear to be omnivorous, the only known case of plant feeding in sharks. The shark may perform this activity to protect its stomach against the spiny carapaces of the blue crab which it feeds on. A 2018 study with a carbon isotope-labelled seagrass diet found that they could digest seagrass with at least moderate efficiency, with 50±2% digestibility of seagrass organic matter, and had cellulose-component-degrading enzyme activity in their hindgut”

[grufkork]

Humanity really is misled. The production of cosmetics, which I believe is not particularly vital to anyone’s survival, could be cut by ~20% and we could manufacture the vaccine with no change in the amount of fishing of sharks. What is definitely interesting though is that I haven’t heard of this before. I wonder if it could be cosmetic product companies trying to keep things like this in the dark, similarly to how oil companies spread misinformation about fossil fuels? I don’t wish to don the tinfoil hat, but I would say it’s not all that unlikely that it is done. Information is the gold of our age, after all :)

[megous]

What about other questions, like: what does 30% price premium on plant based source of this oil translate to when it comes to cost of the final vaccine? And what are the issues of using plant based source? Is it worth it?

Shark is a wild animal that presumably doesn't want to be murdered by a human, to have their livers harvested, just because humans messed up with other animals and caused themselves to be infected with other animals' endemic viruses. I don't really know. I haven't talked to any sharks about this, just guessing.