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Help Save the World’s Shark Populations with WildAid

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Slaughtered sharks on the shore.

Dan Holz / Tandemstock

S.O.S. = Save Our Sharks
Due to threats like shark finning, shark culls and accidental bycatch, sharks need our help now, more than ever. WildAid informs the public and helps promote sensible action.

Mission: Saving the world’s shark populations by building awareness, education and action
HQ: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2007; merged with WildAid in 2014
Contact: wildaid.org
Project: Shark Savers works to reduce the demand for shark fins and to increase the scope and regulation of shark sanctuaries worldwide. “Sharks play a critical role in marine ecosystems as the top predators that keep populations of other species in balance,” says Marcel Bigue, WildAid’s marine program director. “The health of our oceans depends on them.”

In search of a worthy cause? Here’s how you can help.

1. SAY NO TO FINS
Shark finning kills roughly 73 million sharks each year and is rapidly driving many species toward extinction, but you can help stop that. Join Shark Savers’ movement, I’m FINished with FINs, by signing an online pledge to not consume shark fin under any circumstances. But don’t let your involvement end with a signature: Talk to legislators about banning the practice, and locate restaurants in your community that have shark on the menu. Sparking conversation is the first step in fighting the problem.

2. DIVE FOR SCIENCE
Even if biology wasn’t exactly your best subject in school — we’re not judging — Shark Savers wants you to join the front lines with its SharksCount program. Divers of all skill levels are given tools to count and identify the sharks they see underwater. The data collected is added to an online database to help provide essential information about local shark population trends, and your dives help promote sustainable shark eco-tourism. Email sharkscount@sharksavers.org and specify where you dive most often.

3. HELP SANCTUARIES
The Shark Sanctuary Program supports local initiatives to protect sharks around the globe. “Marine protection areas, particularly those in the developing world, are dependent upon the support and expertise of groups like WildAid to safeguard their natural treasures,” says Bigue. Donate at wildaid.org, and contribute to expanding and safeguarding these areas. You can also increase awareness of the importance of marine sanctuaries in your community by using educational resources available on Shark Saver’s site.

Looking for more ways to help? Here are 30 Things You Can Do For The Marine Environment

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Video: Diving Cuba’s Gardens of the Queen

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http://cf.c.ooyala.com/l4dWcwdzoQEqV7OMfjOtNLaFMLEtZ4-S/QCdjB5HwFOTaWQ8X4xMDoxOjBzMTt2bJ
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Map of the Gardens of the Queen - Cuba

Google Maps

Jardines de la Reina
The 90-mile arc of mangroves and keys along Cuba’s southeastern coast encompasses an 850-square-mile no-take marine reserve.

Cuba is a dream destination for many divers, and this video highlights the country’s beautiful dive sites in Jardines de la Reina, or Gardens of the Queen. This area is part of an 850-square-mile no-take marine reserve and is home to a huge variety of marine life including plenty of sharks, grouper, and crocodiles. The Gardens of the Queen is earning quite the reputation for the large number of sharks that can be found swimming within its pristine waters.

Ready to dive the Gardens of the Queen and take this trip yourself? Click here for trip and travel information on scuba diving Cuba.

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Becoming a Shark Conservationist

Marine Life, Rebreathers, scuba diving news, Scuba_News, standards, Teach First Aid/CPR, Tec, Tec Diving, Technology, TecRec, TecRec IT Crossover, UW Photography, Wrecks /
Shawn Heinrichs in front of a pile of shark fins.

Paul Hilton

Stop Shark Finning
26-73 million sharks are killed for their fins each year.

SOMETIMES THE BATTLE TO SAVE SHARKS GETS UGLY

Fighting for shark conservation is often frustrating and discouraging.

With more than a decade of investigative experience, I have seen just about every imaginable act of cruelty and wanton destruction. I have gone undercover in some of the most remote locations in the world: Taiwan, Indonesia, Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica, Fiji and Africa. My objective is to combine powerful stories with images, exposing the truth.

One chilling experience occurred in 2010 in Manta, the shark-fishing hub of Ecuador. I was on assignment to document large-scale landings of shark species. With its tuna stocks severely depleted, the local fishing community had turned to targeting sharks.

When I entered the town, the tension weighed heavily. What followed next were perhaps the most intense 24 hours of my life. In the first hour, I had to fend off teenage bandits using only my monopod. Dinner ended abruptly when the restaurant owner informed my group that intoxicated fishermen were about to storm in and assault us. We slipped quietly out the back door.

Wielding bloodstained machetes, fishermen hacked the fins off the bodies of sharks piled on the beach. Twice a razor-sharp machete was pressed against my jugular, as angry fishermen cursed me and threatened to cut my throat. Each time I defused the situation with a smile, proclaiming myself a pescador de tiburones (shark fisherman). As the last sharks were processed, our fixer grabbed me and said, “The fishermen say as soon as they are done chopping the sharks, they are coming for you.” It was time go.

Our photos were the “smoking gun” images circulated globally by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Almost overnight, sharks became a priority on the CITES agenda. Finally, at the 2013 CITES meeting, historic protections for many species of sharks (and rays) were achieved.

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What It’s Like Free Diving To Tag Great Whites

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Illustration of free divers tagging a shark.

Steven P. Hughes

Team Work
Free divers work together to tag sharks. While one diver focuses on tagging the sharks, the others maintain visual contact with the sharks so that they keep their distance.

To tag a great white, first you must know if it’s a player. By that I mean, will it get close? Many are shy. People believe that if a white shark approaches, it attacks. But luring a shark to the research boat takes work, encouragement. We use bait, which we remove when the free divers enter the water, one at a time and with no splash. Splashes scare sharks.

White sharks are ambush predators. We can free-dive with them only in Isla Guadalupe, Mexico, because the visibility is 100 feet — they can’t sneak up on us like they could in South Africa, where the water is murky.

Our free divers work in teams of three. It takes focus to tag a shark, so while one diver is tasked with tagging the shark, a second acts like a bodyguard, maintaining visual contact with the animal or animals at all times. If they know they are being watched, they’re far less likely to get inquisitive.

The third diver photographs the shark. So far in Isla Guadalupe, 158 individual white sharks have been identified. We want to know whom
we tag: Is it one we have seen before in Isla Guadalupe or a new individual? The pattern of pigmentation around the gills, pelvic fins and tail distinguishes each.

The free diver tasked with tagging must swim within roughly 6 feet of the shark; depending on the shark, this dive takes around two to
three minutes. The V16 tag — stainless steel and 3.5 inches long — is shot into the base of the dorsal fin on the left side. We tag only the left side to streamline the process. We need to know where to look to see if an animal has been tagged. If you tag the same animal twice, it will emit two frequencies, which collide and cause problems.

As soon as the animal is tagged, the diver surveys his surroundings, and then heads straight back to the boat. Then we wait for a new shark to approach.

Nature is unpredictable, which is why my trips to Isla Guadalupe last three months. Sometimes we’ll tag six sharks in three days, and at other times we’ll wait two weeks before seeing one. To tag two sharks in one day is good; five is amazing.

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The Colossal Humphead Wrasse

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The humphead wrasse (Cheilinus undulates), commonly referred to as the Napoleon wrasse, Maori wrasse, or Napoleon fish, can be found hanging around coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific Oceans “from the Red Sea and the coast of East Africa to the central Pacific, south from Japan to New Caledonia”. Most people […]

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