Today we had Andy Starbuck doing a special European Shark Week edition of the Cool Seas Roadshow at the London Aquarium entitled Give Sharks A Break. Andy has brought along a great white shark, a baby basking shark and a hammerhead shark to illustrate the message of shark conservation to children and adults at the Sea Life London Aquarium. For those in London there is still a chance to catch Andy’s presentation tomorrow before he moves back to presenting the Roadshow to schools in Wales.
Andy Starbuck with his baby basking shark at the London Aquarium
For more info, to sign the online petition and to see other European Shark Week events happening around Europe see the website: www.europeansharkweek.org
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Australian Footie Team the Montpellier Fire Sharks Support European Shark Week
Australian football team the Montpellier Fire Sharks came face to face with their aquatic colleagues at the French launch of European Shark Week in Grau de Roi. This goes to show that in spite of their reputation, sharks inspire support from many sections of French civil society.
It wasn’t just the football team, many turned up to celebrate the launch of European Shark Week at the Seaquarium in Grau de Roi and what a launch it was!
Held in an impressive and immense area dedicated to sharks there was really a lot on offer:
- Bernard Seret, shark specialist gave a fascinating presentation
- Bastien and Sarah, responsible for care and welfare of the sharks invited people to a feeding session and explained how they look after their needs.
- Everyone learnt something from the exhibition by 13 year old shark fan, Ondine Elliott
- There were also three more exhibitions on offer by :
- Pascal Kobeh (on shark diversity)
- Hélène Petit (on shark fishing)
- Anthony Barberian (on the skin and teeth of sharks)
- Rachel Campergue’s film, The sharks of Rangiroa, from legend to reality on “finning” (the wasteful practice of slicing off a shark’s fins and discarding the body at sea) in the South Pacific was also playing at the event.
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Welcome news indeed is that UK ministers are to announce during European Shark Week a complete ban on shark finning in UK waters. Under the planned legislation all sharks must be landed with their fins still attached.
Although a similar ban was imposed back in 2003 by the EU, loopholes mean that sharks continue to be finned. Shark fins can fetch in excess of £200 per kilo due to the high demand for shark fin soup, an Asian delicacy, hence the strong financial incentive to cut the fins off at sea and discard the comparatively worthless body. Essentially, with the appropriate permit, sharks could still be finned provided the weight of fins on the vessel did not exceed 5% of the weight of shark carcasses on board. The idea was that this would force fisherman to land the whole shark, which would then take up considerably more storage space than the fins alone, thereby making it impractical to land as many fins – and consequently sharks – as they normally would.
Finned shark in the Red Sea
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With the start of European Shark Week, three major supermarkets chains within Europe – Alcampo, Sabeco and Simply Market – have made the decision to stop selling products from endangered shark species and to only trade in those not listed as threatened. Between them, these three chains possess in the region of 200 outlets. This move comes only a couple of days after the Spanish government announced further legislation to protect threatened shark species.
This move iterates these supermarkets’ intentions to support sustainable fisheries to ensure an ongoing supply of fish and follows their decision more than a year ago to cease trading in bluefin tuna products. Other fish, such as European flounder, have also been taken off the shelves. (more…)
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European Shark Week starts tomorrow with people all over Europe coming together to support shark conservation. Here are 10 facts you might or might not know about sharks and their conservation.
1. Sharks have evolved over 400 million years, appearing roughly 200 million years before dinosaurs.
2. Most sharks are especially vulnerable to overfishing and slow to recover from depletion because they generally grow slowly, mature late and produce few young. For example, spiny dogfish sharks don’t have babies until their teen years and give birth to as few as two young after a pregnancy of nearly two years!
3. Scientists estimate that 26 – 73 million sharks are killed each year for the global fin trade.
4. Most European shark fisheries have declined along with their target populations. Still, shark catches by EU vessels remain largely unregulated at a time when demand for shark meat and fins is rising.
5. One third of European shark, skate and ray populations are classified by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) as Threatened with extinction according to the criteria of the Red List of Threatened Species (as Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered); another 20 per cent are at risk of becoming so in the near future.
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