Sharks are always good for a scare, even 47 years after Steven Spielberg so thoroughly battered their image.

A recent documentary claimed that tiger sharks and great white sharks grow to enormous sizes in protected areas as a result of the abundance of food available there.

Marine biologists have proven that this is not true, but the feeling of pleasant terror that these predators reliably trigger has probably once again spread more than the contradiction.

Petra Ahne

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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That's why the news spread on Friday that there had been a breakthrough in the protection of sharks should have left most people at least unmoved.

As every three years, the CITES species protection conference is currently being held in Panama, largely unnoticed.

For two weeks, negotiations will be held on how international trade can be regulated in such a way that animal and plant species are better protected.

The fact that too many specimens are taken from the wild is the second most important reason for the rapid loss of species - after land use and before global warming.

"A moment of goosebumps"

Sixty shark species are now expected to be listed in Appendix II of the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, where the species that are endangered but not yet threatened with extinction are listed.

They may then only be traded sustainably.

The nature conservation organization WWF spoke of a “goose bumps moment”.

So far, only a few shark species have been protected.

According to the widely acclaimed WWF Living Planet Report, the populations of eighteen shark and ray species have declined by a good seventy percent over the past fifty years.

They are hunted for their meat, skin, liver oil and fins, which end up in soups in China and Thailand.

When finning, only the dorsal fin is cut off and the animals die.

Even if this notorious practice has what it takes to cause discomfort, it does not overcome the "conservation bias": the fact that when it comes to the issue of species protection, perception and sympathy are concentrated on a few mammalian species, because humans tend to do what seems more similar to them perceived as more worthy of preservation.

However, most of the million species that could disappear in the coming years have at least six legs, scales or, like sharks, hundreds of teeth.

Once they are gone, the stability of the ecosystems is gone.

The shark illustrates this particularly well: Without the top predators, their prey increases, such as groupers, which then decimate the population of herbivorous fish.

Seaweed and algae are increasing, which in turn is damaging coral reefs with their great biodiversity.

So not only sharks were protected in Panama.

But the sea.