[Music]
Biodiversity is really
how we define our own existence, isn't it.
It's us and say tens of millions of other species
that occupy this planet with us.
It's like there's this incredible web
where we're all connected, you know.
You start to lose these linchpin species
the environment starts to fail
when we translate human activity
into these forces of extinction
there are several major factors
that are contributing.
One of the major drivers of extinction
is that we hunt some species to oblivion.
It's what we're doing with sharks now
with the explosion of demand for shark fin soup.
Global estimates for the shark fin trade
put it in the neighborhood of a billion dollars.
It's a huge amount of money
so sharks are targeted by fleets around the world.
They may simply cut the fins off and then release them
to a slow and very unpleasant death.
You keep all the sharks or put the bodies back,
done cut them.
We don't actually know how many sharks are in the ocean.
What we do know is that the big sharks, the apex predator
in the open ocean food chain,
their numbers have declined between 90 and 99 percent.
Sharks have survived four mass exticntion events,
they've been around the planet
longer than dinosaurs, a lot longer.
Sharks have ruled our oceans for over 400 million years.
They've been responsible for regulating
and maintaining the entire balance across our oceans.
Now we're in a situation where sharks are being removed from that system.
Humans are really the single most impactful species
this planet has ever seen.
We have these prehistoric brains and we have this god-like technology
and when you bring them together,
the result is not necessarily a happy one.
You know species are like a house of cards
you can't just sort of take one card out of the deck
and not expect the deck to crumble.
You