The first biological "health check" of the River Thames in 64 years has discovered that sharks are inhabiting the UK's most renowned river. The unexpected finding indicates that the river is important to the Selachimorpha species' survival.
Why Sharks Move to Greater Thames Estuary
Tope, starry smoothhound, and spurdog sharks were among the 100-plus species discovered by the Zoological Society of London's "Greater Thames Shark Project.
Sharks move to the Greater Thames Estuary to give birth and nurture their young, according to marine biologists.
So far, few information on the number of sharks in the Thames have been obtained, but future editions of the State of the Thames Report will attempt to shed light on these unknowns.
David Walliams, a judge on Britain's Got Talent, swam a 140-mile section of the River Thames in eight days in 2011. One may think that if the water-loving entertainer had realized at the time that a shiver of sharks were underneath him, he would have swum even faster.
Also Read: Experts Reveal Most Great White Shark Attacks on Humans are Cases of 'Mistaken Identity'
Fishes in the Thames Seems to Have a Bleak Future
Scientists declared areas of the Thames "biologically dead" in 1957 due to high levels of pollution, but the study noted there has been a significant improvement since then.
Water quality has "seen some potential improvements," with lower phosphorus concentrations - a move attributable to better sewage treatment plants reducing dangerous nitrogen levels in the water.
However, nitrate concentrations have been rising for a long time, according to the paper, and the impacts of climate change are evidently affecting the tidal Thames, as both water temperature and sea levels continue to rise beyond historic baselines.
Summer temperatures in the upper tidal Thames have been rising by 0.19°C each year on average, according to the authors of the paper, which would undoubtedly alter the estuary's fauna, leading to changes in life-history patterns and species distributions.
How Polluted is River Thames?
According to the survey, 17,770 single-use plastic bottles were summed up and retrieved from places along the tidal Thames between 2016 and 2020, with over half of them being water bottles.
According to the research, some of the plastics identified in the river, such as cotton buds and wet wipes, originated from sewage spilling into the estuary, which not only endangers the ecology but also has a negative influence on the recognition of the Thames as 'dirty'.
According to the paper, the discovery of a juvenile short-snouted seahorse discovered in Greenwich in 2017 indicates that the tidal Thames is a regenerating estuarine habitat. The river's value as a breeding ground and nursery environments for fish, such as smelt and European sea bass, has also been documented.
The research has allowed the team to analyze how far the Thames has progressed on its road to recovery since it was pronounced biologically dead, according to Alison Debney, conservation project head for wetland ecosystem recovery at the Zoological Society London.
While pollution levels in the Thames have improved, it does not seem that this has translated into more fish, since the number of fish in tidal regions has decreased during the 1990s.
Scientists point to global warming, plastics, and greater amounts of nitrate as possible culprits, and they urge people to act now as Cop26 rumbles towards Glasgow.
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