Bimini Bull Run Trip Report April 2013

“This is by far the best hotel in Bimini unless you want cookie cutter places. Must do: Shark Tank!! Please remember you are on”

We did the Living Social Deal that offered the Baleria shuttle leaving Miami Friday morning staying at BBC and returning Sunday evening.

The boat ride over was the "vomit comet". North winds made it so rough it was horrible! Many, many people got sick. Finally arrived and it took another 40 minutes to get our bags and get off the boat.

Arrived at the Big Game Club and was met with cool AC, friendly staff, and complementary punch. Once we got our room (101) which was clean, big, and the patio was right off the pool and tiki bar.

Be aware of the restaurant. Patience is needed (all around the island). We call it Bimini Time. The portions are HUGE. You can easily share a meal (I had the seafood sampler $19 and it was good) and there is 18% ALWAYS added on food and drinks.

A MUST:::: The Shark Tank was FANTASTIC!! Words cannot describe this. We had 6 sharks inches from our faces. Amazing smaller fish, a barracuda, and a big stingray (briefly) were also there.

I will be back here for sure!! Staff was friendly, helpful, and honest. Rooms were big, clean, and welcoming. The pool was clean and well kept and there were a few hammocks in the shade.

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

To Save Everything...Click Here

With the success of CITES this year and the listing of several new ocean species the next step for conservation is enforcement.

Regional fishermen and fishing interests are slow to adopt CITES agreements, and set aside areas are often plundered for quick returns regardless of species listings.

Dive Sentry was created to address these problems:

There are an estimated 22 million divers worldwide, of those "active divers" about 1.2 million take regular dive trips around the world to experience the oceans.

Many of these divers recreate in places that are considered Bio Sphere reserves, or Sanctuaries of one form or another. Of these divers many witness regional fisheries abuses like long lining in Coco's, and nets in Galapagos. They often take videos and images of these abuses but are told not to report these events by dive operations who are likely to be negatively impacted by regional politics should their operation be labeled as the "whistle-blowers."

Dive Sentry is engaging our greatest resource for conservation, 1.2 million eyes on the ocean.

Additionally, Dive Sentry automatically allows divers to submit formatted reports and to contact regional fisheries agencies of violations, these regional and international contact lists are updated quarterly. These user generated reports include real time videos and images of netted, finned, and long lined animals.

In an age where millions of square miles are being declared as Shark Sanctuaries without any enforcement or monitoring budgets, Dive Sentry looks to be the eyes and ears of these set aside areas to realize conservation change by highlighting abuses in a real time and very public format.

Intent and Purpose 

The Dive Sentry website has two components to it making the reporting of fisheries violations both anonymous and effective and will enlist the media by providing a real time RSS feed and posted reports. The first section is the reporting section. Divers are asked to submit reports by well defined regions with drill down to actual dive sites like Cocos. Each regional report will auto send uploaded video and images to various regional fisheries agencies responsible for fisheries monitoring and enforcement. These reports will be anonymous, the divers and the operations on which they witnessed the violations will remain secure.

Dive Sentry will actively help the individual diver both with the formatting of the violation report, and providing tips how to shoot effective images and video for enforcement and the media, such as vessel identification numbers, time and date of the violation, species reports, and flag recognition.
 
Dive Sentry will also post all reports on the homepage with an RSS reed for the media along with a geographic tag and free use of images and video with submitted reports. The Dive Sentry website will be linked to all social media outlets and will include an iPhone app that will allow divers to take images and video and submit reports from anywhere in the world, including docks, marinas, and land based outlets selling fresh and dried products.

The media component will be essential. Typically the media is far too busy to chase down reports of fisheries violations. Additionally compounded violations are hard to track. With Dive Sentry a lasting record of repeated geographic violations within set aside areas will be realized. Imagine the impact of just one years worth of video and images of long lining, gill nets, and dead animals on the seafloor attributed to one set aside area.

We all know that poaching happens, we are aware that set aside areas are repeated violated by operations that operate in the shadows. Dive Sentry seeks to alert the world to these violations by exposing them to the media and in a place where, over time, people can connect the violators to the site, and perhaps provide the overwhelming evidence to those who should be monitoring and enforcing these sites that something must be done.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Imagine a world where 1.2 million words are compounded by 100,000 images and video that are all fed to a waiting regional and international media.

Welcome to Dive Sentry. Created in 2011 for the future of the oceans.

If you see it. Report it.


About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Two Sides To A Fin - KOP Productions - Good Stuff

Great little documentary about sharks and shark fin by KOP Productions. 

The issues are not as cut and dry as one might imagine (no pun intended...well yes, there's some pun, about 20%). It is very easy to stand on a Facebook soapbox and cry foul when it comes to sharks.

Lord knows there's millions of petition folks about, but like any complex animal trade issue involving cultures, countries, and economic scales balance and nuance must play into viable solutions.

Of course we just used about six words your average shark conservationist, who fervently believe that blonde swimsuit models or head gear challenged divers, the ones who egregiously molest sharks for their own Facebook "like' number count, have no idea of their meaning. For example the words "viable" and "solution,"...pressing on, there are a few who actually think about these things and write about them too.

Da Shark has some thoughts on this and we'll let him play the Judas Conservationist with this issue because he's waaay ahead of the curve with his solutions and we find ourselves agreeing with them because they contain balance and nuance. Two additional words sadly left out of the Big Book of Shark Conservation these days while folks run off on moronic tangents trying to shoe horn the concept of an upside down Tonic Tiger Shark into some kind of broader conservation meaning.

Without videos like these the conservation movement for sharks would devolve into crudely drawn images on bathroom stalls and shit smeared bumper stickers slogans, wait, that has already happened, thanks to a small group of absolute twits who happen to exhibit a modicum of media savvy - oh and you know who you are, unfortunately we all do.

Sharks these days are running a gauntlet, at sea it's hooks and we can all agree that's bad news, in shore it's idiots with Kardashian sized egos, cameras, and a compliant media who lionize stupid pet tricks with sharks.

Anyway, this is the mainline to good conservation messaging, enjoy:




About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Bull Sharks Killed in Playa del Carmen? Yup, We Know.

Image: proyectotiburon.blogspot.com

When you start blogging about the global commercial shark diving industry in 2008 you cover a lot of topics ranging from sharks, to conservation, to operations.

And after four years of blogging, 3800 posts, and over 1.5 million blog page views, we're running out of things to write about.

Well, let's qualify that to suggest we're starting to blog about the same issues over, and over, and over.

How many times can you talk about the shark nets in S.A?

Case in point, the ongoing shark slaughter (yes it is a slaughter) in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

We have been on this one since late 2009 and early 2010. It wasn't just us. Da Shark in Fiji has devoted many pages of good thoughts on the matter. He's the thing, there are good solutions being put forward by seasoned industry individuals in shark blogs and elsewhere.

Every commercial shark site is unique. Each site has its own mix of government regulation, or non regulation, dive site competition, outside pressures and in far too many cases - unwanted shark harvest.

While these mitigating factors may seem insurmountable they are all governed by basic conservation tenants and a plethora of tried and true conservation ideas and in place programs that work.

Getting back to Da Shark, once again he has proposed a number of these good ideas but will they be adopted? Probably not, and if anyone cares to note we're going into the third and fourth year of slaughter in Playa with no end in sight.

Yes, a number of good people have stepped up to help raise awareness and that is a good first start, but like all awareness programs the rubber meets the road when the slaughter ends or at least is curbed.

So for those wondering why we have been unusually quiet on the blog front? It's been covered.

It's up to the global shark diving industry now to innovate past what we have been talking about for many years. Up to individuals to create new tourism and conservation paradigms for sharks. It's not rocket science, it just takes time and energy and some thought. We're at the point now when it comes to shark conservation and commercial shark diving that many regional problems are in fact global problems being prosecuted elsewhere.

We'll stay active on the blog front, but just don't expect us to jump in on seemingly endless problems when real solutions, out of the box ideas, and innovation is as easy to access these days as a click of the mouse.

The commercial shark diving industry was born from the dive industry. It's time for those who dive with sharks to leave behind the stagnation and non innovative culture of diving and create something completely new and vibrant.

We know there are people out there ready to make this move. Make 2013 your year and maybe save some sharks along the way.

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Sharks with Frickin' Lasers - The Website

Wait, there's a website?

Of course there's a website, you don't think a new fin clip innovation that will revolutionize shark research as we know it would rely on a few images in three thousand print media outlets plus mainstream media video to make the case did you?

Never.

Oh, and by the way enjoy. No sharks were harmed, inconvenienced, delayed, disrespected, and or annoyed in the making of this video. As it turns out Mr.Biggelsworth has a bit of a thing for our buddy Luke Tipple.

The Mr Biggelsworth Website

The Mr Bigglesworth Facebook Page

The only shark on the planet with this much pro-shark media around him. How's that for amazing?

Shark Surfing in NZ, Missing the Mark Completely?

We have to admit when we saw the Facebook video coming out of New Zealand featuring beer swilling locals surfing a dead shark our impression of NZ shark conservation dropped another notch.

While global sharkies went to town in a series of cascading outrages, petitions and angry chatter they missed the mark - completely.

How so you might ask?

New Zealand is one of the few Western countries left on the planet that not only allows shark finning, it has set and growing quotas for it. New Zealand is a main purveyor of legal shark fins to the Asian market.

Gasp.

And where is the shark army for that stunning fact? They all know it, and yet NZ seems to inhabit and strange and bizarre bubble of indifference when it comes to outrage against shark fins.

Four years ago we posted, When One Dead Shark Helps a Species, the idea that one dead shark could help turn public opinion. For the hundreds of thousands of dead sharks that get finned each and every year in NZ as part of a draconian quota system, the outrage over this dead shark was hollow, shallow, and completely misguided.

We all want shark finning to end, and yet the lowest hanging fruit of this effort, a western government adding metric tons of shark fin legally to the system remains untouched and unchampioned by the wider shark conservation world while they chase after shadow boats and shark finning in the remotest places on the planet.

Shark conservationists in New Zealand rage at images of dead shark in Japan while the same images, sanitized, legalized, and part of a fisheries profit machine get little to no mention at all.

Because there are no images.These same finned animals, these same quotas, go by the wayside.

New Zealand needs to wake up to shark fin in their own backyard.

The global shark conservation machine needs to wake up to this as well because the outrage over some misguided locals and one shark is a joke, because somewhere in a glass jar at $350 a kilo are the fins of New Zealands legal system. And somewhere in a dusty warehouse are the thousands and thousands of bags of these same fins that say "Fisheries New Zealand" on the side.

We would like to see pictures of those one of these days. It would be a good first start.

More from GrindTV.

Celebrity Sharks Cages in Florida?

 Hell yeah, if the Shark Brothers have anything to do with it, and they do.

Hang on to your hats kids, get ready to be amazed and strap in because the Guy Harvey Catch and Release Shark Tournament is back in town and this time it's bigger than ever.

I know we said that about last years event, but this time it is even bigger than ever.

We remember back to the early days, the raised eyebrows, the not so discreet emails flying about, and hey what about that bunch of sharkies lurking at that picnic table? You guys still around? No?

Glad to see even the most hardened of you out there finally "get" what this grand experiment was all about, and thanks to MOTE Marine Labs for the support as well.

So here's to the third installment, the shark fishing madness, and to a new way of doing business for shark tournaments all over the world.

Oh, and yes we hear tell there will be a Celebrity Shark Cage on site, donated by the friendly shark folks from Shark Diver. Yes we have been fans, supporters and the kind of shark folks that like to see those who take big risks, those who try new things, those who are truly fearless when it comes to helping out shark friends.

You may not think a shark fishing tournament could help, but it does, and it sure beats a bunch of dead sharks on a town dump.

See you in Florida!

Say It Ain't So Matt Rand!

What started as a rumor last week has been confirmed. Matt Rand is leaving PEW.

As a driver behind PEWS shark conservation program Matt has been a genuine force for good, in fact he's been more of a Tour de Force.

Name one successful shark campaign over the past few years and somewhere in that mix was the long hand of PEW lead by Matt and his team. Great stuff.

Matt is off  on "other adventures" and PEW has lost one of the finest examples of their organizations conservation leadership. Here was a guy who was more than a policy wonk, a front line conservationist who strove for conservation metrics vs conservation hysteria in his programs.

The kind of conservation programs that can be put in place today, ones that can measure success on a year to year basis vs emotional programs that look good to the media, but ultimately fail to translate in a meaningful way to the animals we all care about.

It's a real conservation distinction and one that Matt during his short tenure at PEW championed.

Matt and his team managed in a very short time to leave the world a better place.

The conservation community wishes Matt the very best, waiting in anticipation for Matt Rand 2.0

Good hunting on your next adventures sir, wherever they may lead you!


About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Maldives Shark Sanctuary vs Military Coup 2012

In 2010 the Maldives government was lauded for declaring its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), 90,000 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean, as a shark sanctuary free from all shark fishing and also banned all imports and exports of shark fins.

Today the Maldives is in the middle of what many are describing as a full blown military coup.

The first very real test of the global shark sanctuary effort will take place in the Maldives over the next two years.

For a look at how this might play out we went in search of a website that would give us the, 'Maldives political landscape in a nutshell' and found it here at the Institute of Development Studies:

"After the 2004 Tsunami which devastated the Maldives, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States offered reconstruction funds and support to educate imams and teachers. This was coupled with the introduction of conservative Wahabi and Salaist interpretations of Islam. Since then, public flogging of women for alleged offenses has re-occurred, and more conservative dress and practices are on the rise. The Islamic political party tabled a law banning massage and alcohol on the tourist islands; although this decision was quickly repealed, since it was not in the interest of tourism industry elites."

There's a lot going on in the Maldives these days, suffice to say that sharks and shark conservation might not be a top priority.

Stay tuned.

Counting Fiji Sharks 1...2...3

The folks in Fiji, I mean where do we start?

You want to do conservation right?

Here's where you start.

Mike aka Da Shark has unveiled a multi group effort to count the sharks in Fiji - and we like it.

You can actually join them in April if you are of the counting and diving type, hmm April in Fiji?

Take note Florida, Bahamas, elsewhere, you all have a nice new tool to use underwater and it's a winning combination of groups who are supporting this effort.

As Da Shark says:

"Everybody has been duly notified and barring the advent of a couple of Johnny-come-latelies, these are the operations who care and thus, the places where you should book your April vacation in Fiji. They are all excellent outfits and I highly recommend every single one of them. And should this be too short term, don't despair as we're likely to repeat the exercise in November!"

Hmm, November in Fiji?

SeeFood Shark Movie - Great Stuff - PEW?

Is it just our imagination or is something very conservation creative going on out there?

This film shows great promise. Let's get it a distribution deal here in the U.S.A.

Hellooo PEW Trusts, this is out-of-the-park conservation opportunity knocking:

“Sharks create oxygen”: A scientific perspective

The entire planet can all breathe easier now!

 Huzzah!

Thankfully the world is not "going to run out of oxygen to breathe if we run out of sharks".

So says David Shiffman, an actual shark scientist.

It took an actual shark scientist to put the final rusty nail in the coffin of the Oxy Shark Myth. A myth created out of whole cloth by a guy trying to sell a shark film a few years ago, a myth that has since taken on an almost 1950's Radioactive Monster feel and scope since it was first uttered.

This myth was the worst of shark conservation filtered through the meat grinder of Facebook hype.

It was also an issue that we swore, up and down, that we would not get involved with unless someone paid us a bunch of money to do so, and yet was so compelling that we just had to jump in with our own brand of "pseudo science snarkery".

Let's face it, it's been a lot of fun.

So now, thanks to The Shiffman and his out of the park, take no prisoners science lashing directed at  the last few hold outs of the Oxy Shark Myth, (Erik Brush we're looking at you pal), we say, victory.

It is over, the end, now we can all go back to the challenges of real shark conservation letting this amusing side show pass. What are we going to do about Latin American shark fin treaty sliding, and what to do about the Maldives and a new government who are pro business and pro shark fin?

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Helen Sykes, Making Sense of Sharks

Bahamas Tiger, commercial shark diving

Great article this week from Fiji and the value of live sharks. The international media is slowly adopting this valuable storyline and its first rate articles like this one that "kick the can down for road" for sharks in ways that open minds and spur debate :

A NADI resident who has been closely following the Shark Sanctuary Campaign was disgusted to find that the bodies of mutilated baby sharks are regularly on sale at the Nadi fishmarket.

Lavenia Mataitoga had been made aware of the issues with shark fishing in Fiji through The Fiji Times Save the Shark Campaign and the screenings of the Coral Reef Alliance documentary Shark Hope.
The dive operation she works for, Reef Safari Diving in Port Denarau Marina, also has an active environmental education program for all its staff led by marine biologist Maddy Carse.

Consequently when Ms Mataitoga encountered juvenile whitetip reef sharks and endangered hammerhead sharks in the market, she was outraged.

Complete article here.

Wolf in the Henhouse - Costa Rica?

What happens when you appoint a fisheries agency in bed with regional commercial fishing interests to "analyze the management of the country’s marine resources?"

You get the oft bizarre world of Latin America fisheries. In this case 
the Costa Rica Fisheries Institute (Incopesca) long known for pro-fisheries "look the other way" management styles.

Fortunately there's a plethora of NGO's and regional media folks who are watching this development and keeping the world informed and educated.

Keep your eyes on this one as it develops, hopefully the folks over at Incopesca with choose leadership over business as usual and regional shark species will get a break.

Complete story.

Shark Diver is now...Really Good Beer?

In stores today the all new Shark Diver IPA (India Pale Ale).

It's the culmination of a several month long project with a small independent brewery and your friendly neighborhood shark diving company Shark Diver to produce "Conservation Brands."

It's an idea we have been tossing around for a while, creating a long term money making venture for shark conservation with 100% of the profits going back into projects for sharks worldwide.

The idea is not new, thanks to the Cayman Islands Beer, who give back a small percentage of profits for shark conservation efforts.

We decided to give back 100% and this weeks launch of the Shark Diver IPA at select test market stores should tell us how the market reacts to the brand and the beer. It is really great stuff and many Kudos to the brew team who have made the Shark Diver IPA a small but interesting reality in the nationwide micro brew market.

Drink well and be sharky.

We'll be posting a list of stores in the coming weeks where you might discover your own Shark Diver IPA, keep your eyes peeled and let's go save some sharks.

Dive Sentry - See it. Report it.

Dive Sentry - See it. Report it. 

1.2 million active divers from around the world are the eyes and ears of Sanctuaries, set aside areas, and Bio-Spheres.

In the beta testing phase.

The main two elements of this initiative will allow divers to anonymously post fisheries violations from around the world to a central RSS media site which in turn allows the major media, conservation groups, and secondary media (blogs, You Tube) free access to all images, content, and video of violations.

The second element will automatically email regional authorities submitted violations including images and video in english and the native language. Reports will automatically be paired to Google Earth coordinates for ease of tracking.

Dive Sentry is fully integrated on primary social media platforms and has a beta iPhone app that allows divers to upload video, content, and images automatically.

Dive Sentry enguages the major media with fresh global conservation content daily.

Dive Sentry provides a timeline and archive for regional repeat violations in a public format.

Dive Sentry engages regional agencies responsible for fisheries protections and mgmt automatically.

Dive Sentry - See it. Report it.

CNN Sharks: From predator to prey

Shark Diver was asked to help CNN this summer with an investigative report into the state of sharks.

The team, featuring CNN's Kaj Larsen, was introduced to the sharks of the Bahamas by Luke Tipple the Director of the Shark-Free Marinas Initiative. The Bahamas remains one of the most forward thinking governments in the Caribbean when it comes to sharks, conservation, and commercial shark diving efforts.

This is why we do conservation pieces for sharks and when it comes to shark conservation media it doesn't get much better than this. Kudos to everyone who worked on this piece:

Commercial Shark Fin Sales and TradeKey.com - Update

Shark fin for sale under another name?

 In 2010 TradeKey.com, an online B2B vendor and the second largest in volume to Alibaba.com, declared that they would stop selling shark fin online.

The move was lauded by the shark conservation community who posted the TradeKey press release and moved on.

Since that time no one has gone back to TradeKey.com to see if they had removed shark fin from their massive B2B listings.

We did, and what we found today after a brief search was shark fin for sale (sourced 10.26.2011) including the image of a dried shark fin from sources in India, Maldives and Mexico.

These sources sell up to 10,000 kgs of shark fin at a time.

But it goes beyond these overt commercial ads on TradeKey. In fact many sellers of "dried fish products" or "fish maw" sell shark fin and TradeKey has no mechanism in place to stop potential buyers from "asking about" dried shark fin from vendors.

In fact TradeKey offers no alerts or internal guidance that we can find at all regarding shark fin, the sales of shark fin, or the trade in shark fin on their site.

As conservationists we cannot be satisfied with partial solutions to the online sales of shark fins, we have to dig deeper and adopt the mindset of the buyers. Shark fin sales are a multimillion dollar global enterprise and the trade does not just vanish because of "a promise and a press release."

It needs to be monitored.

We will say this, TradeKey.com has pulled the vast majority of shark fin ads from their site but that does not make them partners in the war on shark fin sales, more like unwilling conservation participants.

For the dead shark featured in this weeks TradeKey B2B ad from India, that partnership has not fulfilled the promise and TradeKey.com needs to do better.

They can start with the following:

1. Internal guidance for dried ocean product sellers listing the items that cannot be sold on the TradeKey site with a fine or banishment if they are discovered breaking the rules.

2. A "smart search program" that watches internal emails between sellers and buyers for keywords like "shark fin," and an auto email sent to both parties warning them of TradeKey policies.

3. A revocation of all monies for transactions done with shark fin.

4. A public banned list on TradeKey for companies that break TradeKey policies.

The technology and web programming to completely banish shark fin, educate millions of buyers and sellers, and become an online B2B conservation leader exists - and it's cheap.

Additionally TradeKey could consider adopting a top tier conservation partner like Oceana or PEW to develop out long lasting internal shark policies and forward thinking outreach.

TradeKey are not the bad guy here, they just associate with folks that indiscriminately kill sharks for fins. In a global climate where sharks are rapidly becoming protected and even admired, the ongoing sale and trade of shark fin on massive B2B sites is something we all need to pay attention to.

In summation TradeKey has two options, adopt a strong conservation leadership position or continue with their current and "partially effective" effort to stop the sale and trade of shark fin on their site, which as we have seen this week is not meeting up with the press release and conservation hype.

Man Catches Protected White Shark?

Image Ocean Research

The prize this week for "Simian, Rock Squatting, Douchebaggery with Sharks" goes to this guy.

Yes he's South African, and yes he's just caught himself a nice healthy white shark so he and his son could pose with this "protected animal" before watching its bleeding carcass come off the rocks and back into the ocean whence it came.

To say that we're angry about this is a disservice to the word angry, and you should be, because this is part of an ongoing pattern of animals killed in S.A that apparently enjoy some measure of conservation protection. On paper at least.

"The unidentified man, who told locals he was from Cape Town, apparently spent nearly an hour getting the shark on to the rocks, where he measured it before posing for pictures on Friday." 

Image Ocean Research

Wolfgang Leander, the wizened sage of the shark conservation movement, has been raising awareness about the tragic S.A shark disappearing act for several years now and yet it still happens, and now we have the visual proof to back his many blog posts up.

So before one more so called shark conservationist in S.A stands up to cry about sharks, before we are subjected to another pretty You Tube video from S.A featuring a bimbette riding the fin of a now dead and poached Tiger shark, let's get real about shark conservation.

It starts with this guy and a call for prosecution, the ensuing media madness, and a follow through to see that it is done. This cannot stand.

We understand that S.A is a world away from conservation norms, but to those who would claim that they are the leaders of any conservation movement with sharks in S.A we say "show us what you got".

It's your backyard and this guy just took a great big dump in it.

For this shark at least - time has ran out.

Giving Away URL's - For the Sharks

Years ago when shark conservation was not "in vogue," we were at the forefront of a nascent movement with a few others in the industry to create conservation change.

We started with the Isla Guadalupe Fund back in 2006 and responding to a Tiger shark killed in the Bahamas were the brainchild behind the Shark-Free Marinas Initiative.

Along the way we acquired a number of first rate URL's for use on shark conservation projects that ranged from a set aside global fund for sharks to a social network for sharks.

Alas, time was not on our side, and as it turned out there's only so much one company can do in any given calendar year. Our time has become increasingly limited as Shark Diver grows and we celebrate a decade of shark diving.

To that end we are offering up three URL's to those who might like them in the service of sharks.

The caveat is these URL's will only go to funded entities with a written game plan. We would like these URL's to work for shark conservation and to ultimately be succesful.

Let us know if you are interested by sending an email to staff@sharkdiver.com:

www.sharkfriends.org

www.sharkfund.org

www.saveshark.org