Shark
The broad category shark encompasses many different species of fish with cartilaginous skeletons. But when people use the word "shark," they usually refer to large and carnivorous apex predators. We know these sharks best for their intelligence, longevity, and sleep swimming.
Counted among the oldest vertebrates on Earth, some -- but not all -- species of shark survived mass extinction and ocean acidification. They remain relatively rare examples of fish in the warmed, acidified, cephalopod-rich oceans of the Fifth World.
#Human relations
People who live on the coast sometimes hunt sharks for their meat. Those who do will use their sharp teeth for jewelry, arrowheads, and razor blades. For native Hawaiians and Samoans, sharks have long constituted an important part of their cultures and folklore, and this has continued into the Fifth World.
#Shark People
Living in relationship with sharks will impact their community in a variety of ways, a few of which include:
A community specializing in relationship with sharks will invariably live on or near the sea. Therefore, shark people must, by necessity, also have mastered boat-making, sailing, and catching other sea-meats. Obtaining the wood for building boats, not to mention materials for making sails, nets, lures, and fishing lines, will require some time on land. Shark people may care for the trees they use to make their boats, perhaps developing a scouting tradition to protect the forests from outsiders who might cut them down. Or they may practice a small amount of gardening; growing hemp or bamboo for rope, sails, nets, and lines. Alternatively, they may simply trade with people on land for the materials they need to survive at sea.
Shark people will take great care not to hunt too many sharks, partly to maintain ecological balance, partly because apex predators accumulate whatever toxins may pervade their ecosystem. Perhaps the community will have a tradition of moving from place to place, hunting sharks in certain places only at certain times of year. Their wizards may go into trances to communicate with the sharks, a spirit representative of the local shark population, or an aquatic Keeper of the Game, to ask how many they may take in that particular season. Any more than the agreed-upon number constitutes murder rather than hunting, and the community will have to answer for that transgression.
Shark people know how to swim in waters with sharks, and do not fear them -- but they do respect them. They will avoid wearing shiny jewelry (which attracts sharks) while in the water and, in fact, may come to develop a cultural aversion to metal and shiny jewelry in general. They know how to dive and swim quietly and smoothly, without splashing too much. They know, too, that sharks rarely attack humans -- usually just when they've confused a human with its usual prey. Thus, shark people likely know how to visually and behaviorally distinguish themselves from the squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses that sharks in the Fifth World normally hunt.
Because the biggest sharks have such a fearsome reputation, successfully hunting one constitutes an impressive feat. A community specializing in relationship with sharks may have a coming-of-age ritual revolving around hunting a shark by oneself (or as a small group of initiates). This would, of course, follow a childhood of learning about shark behavior, safety, and effective hunting practices. Such a community may celebrate an experienced hunter for catching a shark -- or alternatively, they may mock both catch and hunter to make sure the hunter's head does not grow too big.
Shark people know that sharks have hunted the oceans for countless eons. Humans, on the other hand, arrived fairly recently on the scene. Sharks have evolved into nearly perfect predators, whereas a subset of humans recently almost destroyed the entire world. Shark people respect and revere sharks as wise elders, who have long known how to live as apex predators without causing the trauma and upheaval that most humans' ancestors did. Shark people learn from the sharks with humility and no small amount of regret (especially as their ancestors nearly hunted the sharks' ancestors to extinction). But this does not imply that they don't hunt them; hunters understand hunters, whether young or old.