Avon, Colorado & Cape Town, South Africa– May {  }, 2020 –  Arniston Media is pleased to announce the release of its feature-length, award-winning Great White Shark documentary, “Apex Survival | Maiden Voyage.”   Five mass extinction events have swiped across the Earth. It's frightening, but true: Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction, unsettlingly-named “Anthropocene,” or the age of the humans.  Being perpetrated by humanity, at least 20,000 species have gone during the Sixth Extinction.  

 

One of the first great rules of terrestrial biology is that no species is forever.  Sharks have inhabited our planet for almost half a billion years, long before humans, trees or dinosaurs.  They have survived all five mass extinction events.  Ecologically, humanity has been noted as an unprecedented "global super-predator” that consistently preys on other apex predators.  As such, in the past 50 years, some shark populations have declined by over 95%.   For example, once the home of the greatest concentration of Great White Sharks in the world, scientists estimate that there are likely less than 100 Great Whites left in all of South African waters.

 

The ocean is Earth’s life support.  70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants – much more than all of the world’s rainforests combined.  However, in the ocean, nothing exists alone.  As apex predator, sharks are essential in maintaining a delicate oceanic equilibrium.  Without sharks, our oceans will become unhealthy and oxygen levels will decline in Earth’s atmosphere.  

 

Humanity’s broken relationship with nature is reflected in the “wet markets” of Asia, human consumption of shark fin soup and exotic animals and our planet’s changing climate. Having likely jumped to humans from China’s wet markets, the COVID-19 virus pandemic is another urgent indicator of humanity’s flawed interface with nature.  This fractured relationship is even reflected in our media consumption -- with shows like Jaws, Shark Week,  and Tiger King.