Wonder how the journalist could have mistaken a basking shark for a blue shark? Ok, maybe not everyone is an expert on sharks, but in this day and age where you can even do a quick search on the net for fish identification charts made widely available, it's disheartening to know that misinformation like this goes unnoticed.
So what's the big deal in wrongly identifying the species,? For one, a basking shark is as harmless as a whaleshark and faces the risk of extinction. The Blue Shark is known to attack humans (though doubt it is by choice) and is probably soon to becoming overfished? Did the reporter not bother to find out what species of shark that was before he wrote this report? It would give those who read the article a blind lead to identify the species (if they should ever encounter one again) as a "blue shark" and perhaps a licence to fish yet another poor victim of extinction outta the sea!
And I wonder what the businessman was going to do with the shark after he purchased it for over SGD20k?
Place yourself in the shoes of this child. What will he think? That a Blue Shark was captured, and it was ok for me to stamp my feet all over this rare find? Perhaps, he witnessed how valuable it is in monetary terms to capture such a shark when the businessman dished out that 100k yuan in exchange for its carcass?
It does not abode well for those who could potentially be guardians of our sea in the future.
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