Just prior to a United Nations endangered species conference that begins this week, a government official has announced that Maldives, an island country in the Indian ocean, is banning shark fishing in its waters. “We’ve decided to go ahead with a shark fishing ban,” Ibrahim Didi, the fisheries and agriculture minister, told The New York Times. “Beginning July 1 there will be a total ban on exports.” Maldives is one of the world’s top scuba-diving destinations. Researchers from James Cook University in Australia last year estimated that a single gray reef shark was worth $3,300 a year to the Maldivian tourism industry, compared with the one-time value of $32 that a fisherman would get from the same shark. Didi said his government began planning the ban last year, but was delayed due to objections from fishermen, who were catching the sharks and killing them for their fins. Now, he says, “They understand that it isn’t a sustainable fishery.” The government is planning to provide the fishermen with financial support and retraining. The Maldivian waters are home to over 26 types of sharks, including the whale shark, tiger shark and hammerhead shark.
Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
This is Your Chance to Help Save Sharks!
Bring Sharkwater to China! Act Now!
Dear Friends,
It’s really important that you help us bring the award-winning documentary Sharkwater to China. China is the largest consumer and trader of shark fins in the world, fueling the growing demand for shark fin soup that is destroying our oceans within our lifetime.
Most Chinese consumers don’t know that shark fin soup contains shark, because the translation literally means “fish wing soup”. Shark populations have dropped more than 90% in 30 years, destroying the most important ecosystem for our own survival. Conservation isn’t just saving species and ecosystems, it’s saving humans.
This is a huge consumer awareness issue that we have the power to change. We urgently need your help to create a Chinese version of Sharkwater that will target an audience of over 300 million people. We can change the world, with your help.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Donate now to the non-profit foundation SAVE THE BLUE (savetheblue.org/donate) that is working with us and WildAid to bring Sharkwater to China & receive a special custom-made tribal shark pendant, shirt or bag!
Wear your special shark pendant with pride to engage people in making shark conservation an international priority!
It’s cool to save sharks!
Thanks for helping us save sharks,
Rob Stewart and the Sharkwater Team
Hello,
My name is Jessica. I am a Canadian Citizen living and working at a dive shop in Costa Rica. I saw your movie in Canada a couple of years ago while it was in theaters, and ever since then I have had a passion to help save the sharks, despite at the time never having seen one. Now that I work in a dive shop in Costa Rica (in Playas del Coco), I have contact with divers every single day, and I always always ask people ‘have you seen the movie Sharkwater’? I couldn’t believe how many people, divers, who have never even heard about it! These are the people we need to watch the movie! They are people who obviously care about the underwater environment, and they need to know what is happening to it. I endorse the movie every single day. I tell people ‘when you go home you have to watch this movie’. But it would be easier if I had some movies there to sell people. I don’t know if there is any way we could arrange buying a whole box of the movie so that I could tell ALL of my customers to buy it!
One day a man came into our shop just fuming mad, and he said he had went to a little fresh fish market place to buy some fish and they had at least 60 shark fins and a manta ray all chopped up. We have a huge painting on the side of our shop that says ’stop shark fining’ so as he was passing by to go to the supermarket instead to buy fish, he stopped in to tell us about it, in hopes that we would know who to report to about it. We can’t do anything to report them with out proof. so we sent two of our workers to try to get pictures of it. Unfortunately after the man had made such a big fuss about it they had put most of it away. So when our workers got there there wasn’t much to take pictures of. I share this story with you so you can see that I live first hand every day. We see fishing boats out at our dive sites sometimes catching Octopus for example; and then we see none for about a week when we normally see tons! It is just appalling what massacre goes on out there all the time, and more people need to know about it, everyone needs to know about it.
I have made everyone I know in Canada watch the movie, now I need to get all the people who dive with us watch it.
I want to do everything I can to help, please let me know if you can help me get movies sent to my shop for me to sell to all the customers, or if there is anything else I can do to help save sharks.
Best Regards,
-Jessica
Check out Carson Daily on Feb 5 to watch the interview with Rob Stewart.
It’s filming in LA today - so hopefully it goes well!
Never thought I’d meet someone as passionate about sharks as I…… then I met Jim Abernathy. He’s spent more time underwater with big sharks than anyone else on earth. He just so happens to have the best large shark dive encounter in the world. I just came back from 5 days diving with him in the Bahamas with some 12 ft tiger sharks. Really fun. We were there shooting a special feature for the Sharkwater DVD, and a short film in it’s own right with the “Shark Angels” - 3 beautiful and talented women from Sea Shepherd (Kim McCoy), Save our Seas (Alison Kock), and Shark Savers (Julie Anderson).
visit sharkangels.com for more info.
The main goal was to show women diving with supposed “man eaters” in their natural environment to show that anyone can do what we did in Sharkwater, and to further the awareness so necessary to save our oceans.
It was a storm of media, premiers and way too many flights. We hit theaters across the US, with premiers in NY, San Fran, and LA. Now we just have to get people to the theaters!
That weekend I had the privilege to hang out with Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers - one of my favorite bands. He has been a supporter of Paul Watson’s for a while, and uses his celebrity for good, showing up at Sea Shepherd’s benefit in LA a few weeks back. He put a link from the Chilli Peppers’ site to ours. So cool.
Hello beautiful people,
Hopefully you’ve heard of Sharkwater, the most award winning documentary of the year that broke box office records in Canada. Sharkwater took me 5 years and 15 countries to create, nearly ending my life. Sharkwater opens in theaters in the US November 2nd.
I created Sharkwater because I discovered that shark populations were being wiped out yet people were unaware of the issue because what’s out of sight is largely out of mind.
What started out as a beautiful film about sharks changed into a drama full of corruption, espionage, attempted murder charges, machine guns, hospitalizations and mafia chases in a film about human’s over exploitation of the oceans.
The oceans are the most important ecosystem on the planet, containing life that absorbs most of the carbon dioxide (global warming gas) that we put into the atmosphere, converting it to 70% of the oxygen we breathe. That life sits below sharks in the food chain, and shark populations have already dropped 90%. The oceans and our life support systems are being destroyed.
The largest threat to the oceans is now a lack of awareness. If the public knew what was going on in the sea… that we waste 54 billion pounds of fish while 8 million people die of starvation, that 90% of all large predators in the ocean are gone, that every fishery will be gone by 2048; the situation could be turned around just as it has for whales and for the holes in the ozone layer. But we need people talking and pushing the issue.
Sharkwater is a huge ocean conservation tool. If we can get people to see the film, we can unite the public around a new view of sharks and the oceans, and ultimately that public support will lead to the greatest change, and the perpetuation of human life on earth.
We need people to go to theaters and see Sharkwater opening weekend – November 2nd so please tell your friends and family, and if you have a database, please forward on the Sharkwater website and info to them, encouraging them to see the film and save our oceans.
It’s a guerilla movement to save the seas upon which we depend, but it can be done with your help.
Kindest thanks,
Rob
We’re in Ft. Lauderdale now, after a bit of a cross state trek with Milton (great white) and Spalding (Milton’s hammerhead counterpart). 2 more 17 ft sharks arrive tomorrow, to go up in movie theaters across Florida. The release is pretty exciting, as everywhere we go, people seem to be onboard with the message. Everyone is sick of sharks being portrayed as monsters. Seems the public has caught on… a good thing for sharks and for the movement.
The buzz seems to have spread already… ppl seem to already know about it… some saw us on the Today Show or Larry King… We’re psyched, and so are kids across Florida!
I was on Larry King on Wednesday to be part of a panel on sharks in
support of Discovery’s Shark Week. The panel consisted of Phillipe
Cousteau, Jack Hannah, Les Stroud, myself, and two shark mistake
survivors: Chuck Anderson, and Valerie De la Valdene. Most of them
had seen Sharkwater.
The Discovery and CNN approach to the panel was to languish on the
danger and adventure of sharks, then get into the conservation
issues. What started out as speaking of the most dangerous beaches,
the most dangerous sharks, etc evolved into a very different
conversation. All panelists, including two shark mistake survivors,
shifted the conversation, discussing how sharks aren’t predators of
people, that they make mistakes, that they’re incredibly important to
ecosystems, and that they’re being wiped out. Questions about how
dangerous sharks are were met with answers like, “they’re not that
dangerous, but that’s not even the point. The point is that they’re
being wiped out and we need to do something.”
It was a great day, and a sign in the shift of consciousness
regarding the world’s most feared predator. People can love and care
for something they don’t fully understand. We have that capability.
The conversation about sharks is changing, and we’re all part of it.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) took place recently, and most of the world’s countries gathered to decide which species would receive international protection. There were three shark species proposed to be listed: the spiny dogfish (fish and chips), the porbeagle (like a smaller great white), and saw sharks.
These proposals would add three more sharks to the list that so far only contains the basking shark, whale shark and the great white shark. Getting species listed is often a case of politics, as only the most charismatic of megafauna tend to make it. The great white is the most recognizable shark, while the basking and whale sharks have no teeth, and are popular tourist attractions.
The proposed listing of the porbeagle and spiny dogfish on CITES were met by fierce resistance by the US, New Zealand, with Canada leading the opposition. With having 29000 names and pledges in support of these species protection, and receiving over 2500 emails from savingsharks.com supporters, the US decided to support the listing, while Canada’s stance stayed firm, and they pushed for the species to remain off the CITES list. Canada and New Zealand’s presence at the assembly swayed voters, and the sharks were not placed on the CITES list, despite recommendations by top scientists that their populations had declined by over 90%.
CITES is a bit of a popularity contest, and what is under the ocean is so often out of sight and out of mind. The first fish was put on the CITES list only in 2004, while terrestrial animals enjoyed decades of increased protection.
The movement to save sharks is growing, but it needs more pressure from consumers and the general public. The politicians and decision makers will respond, as the people have ultimate power.