Scroll down for more info about the shark fin trade and some amazing footage and photos of divers swimming with a 20″ white shark!
For Friday 25th January: A selection of films focusing on successful initiatives to help stave off the destruction of our oceans and the organizations behind these actions.
Our First film Extinction Soup CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FILM (1 hr.)
is an explicit take on how humans have been largely conditioned and self-programmed to fear and to avoid learning about sharks even if we’ve never seen one! Sharks are the ocean’s top natural predator-guardians, just under the apex orca (killer whales).
The film begins as Director Waller admits that an introduction to surfing saved his life, then shifts to Hawaii where he follows his high-risk sports adventurer friend. That leads him to shark-dive leader/educator Stefanie Brendl, and her fight to pass the nation’s first shark-fin trade ban in Hawaii. The film deftly delves into the history of our prejudicial animuses against sharks, and a shark-fin trade feeding rising cultural demands for shark-fin soup, ending in the near annihilation of sharks by one third. Yet evidence now shows that the demand for shark fin-soup has steeply declined:
What the film focuses on is the need for the states to ban being a go-between for the shark-fin trade. Only slightly more than 1/5 of the country has banned the shark-fin trade (as part from the law banning fining itself). So in all these other states, whatever airlines and shippers have not banned the sending and receipt of them— voila— we have shark-fin trading hubs! See what is being done here:
Click here for Wildaid site
Demand for shark-fin soup has purportedly dropped 50-80% following Hawaii’s passing the nation’s first shark-fin trade ban in 2010, and this film’s release in 2014.)
Short Film from Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina
CLICK TO SEE FILM HERE (25 mins approx.)
Off the coast of Belize is the world’s second largest barrier reef after Australia’s Great Barrier reef. Outside Belize’s barrier reef in open ocean lie three coral atolls. Within one lagoon lies Glover’s Reef Reserve, a no-take sanctuary perfect for shark research
Shark Reef also briefly shows fin soup boycotting campaign in Hong Kong, by SharkSavers. At one time led by the widow of JAWS’ author, Wendy Benchley, the shark-saving nonprofit was subsumed into WildAid. Their boycott fin soup campaign in Hong Kong had to have spread its success deep in mainland China.
http://www.fisheries.gov.bz/glovers-reef/
The Sacred Island:(25 minutes)
SEE THE FILM HERE
This third film concludes depicting an unusual science/spiritual ocean-ethic fusion. In that, it shows a village-led enforcement system, part of the Misali Island Conservation Association, off the Tanzanian coast. Then it dives into the deeper ecology principles of Islam: “You are as God’s steward. Your job is to protect.”
Amazing footage and photos of divers swimming with a 20″ white shark!