Blue shark near Cork, Ireland

© Cultura/REX/Shutterstock

Blue shark near Cork, Ireland

Our Shark Awareness Day celebrity is a blue shark swimming in the cold waters off Cork, Ireland. The inspiration for its name comes from the blue shark’s back colour, not its mood. It’s currently listed as ‘near threatened’—a status all too common for sharks today. Why celebrate an apex predator that most humans associate with horror movies? Because without sharks acting as population control on other marine life, the world’s oceans would be a very different place. Blue sharks eat a lot of squid and fish, and like land predators, help to keep their prey from overpopulation. Mother Nature keeps us in a delicate balance, so it’s important that we don’t accidentally remove a vital member of that system… even if that creature seems scary to most of us.