European shark week 2009
October 11th, 2009This week is European Shark Week run by the Shark Alliance.
The idea is to spread the word about the many species of shark, ray and chimera that live in European waters, and highlight the problems they are all facing.
The Save Our Seas Foundation is running a great blog throughout the week. Offerings over the weekend include the announcement by three major european supermarkets that they plan to stock only shark products from non-threatened species. It’s a step in the right direction, but how about not selling any sharks at all?
Shark fins without the bodies they came from. Jessica King/Marine Photobank.
Shark Week has just begun and already there is one piece of encouraging news for European sharks.
It’s been announced that shark finning will be affectively banned in the UK. The plan is to close a loophole in existing legislation by no-longer giving fishermen permits to bring back fins that have been separated from sharks at sea. Hopefully this will turn the pressure up on Spain and Portugal, the two main shark-finning nations in Europe, to do something similar.
So, do look out for more European shark news this week.
And you can spread the word a little further yourself by sending out Shark Week e-cards to your friends (check out the theme music!).