Sharkwater & a shocking proposal

Last night we went to the premier of the documentary movie, Sharkwater in Cairns. Rob Stewart, the Producer and host of the award-winning doco, was there. The movie was released in Fall 07 in the U.S. and I didn't even know! It should be out on DVD now. Everyone must see this movie.

This movie is incredibly emotional and powerful. It blew me away. It's a true story of the lifelong love Rob Stewart has had for sharks, and then how he ended up almost arrested by the Costa Rican authorities for his role in uncovering illegal private docks used for vast shark finning operations associated with the Taiwanese mafia, as well as illegal finning out off of the protected Cocos Island. The movie made me cry. They fin so many sharks, a brutal practice, and it's made sharks around the world decline by 90%. Yet he was shown in the movie swimming with, even holding gray reef sharks and other sharks, and swimming with vast schools of hammerheads in the Galapagos Islands. (I have got to get back there to go diving with them).

And then at the end of the movie he gave a short talk and had a Q&A and dropped this bombshell: Australia has a proposal on the bench that would open parts of the protected Great Barrier Reef to shark finning!!!!!!! (Check out this article in this month's Dive Log Magazine Australia, "Say No to Shark Finning on the Great Barrier Reef"). Everyone here at the Undersea Explorer (Sean works for them as the skipper of the boat and we went with the company) are in shock and trying to raise awareness of this.

Send your objections to:

Anna Bligh MP, Premier of Queensland

PO Box 15185

City East QLD 4002

Email: ThePremier@premiers.qld.gov.au

And check out some links that Rob has put together to do something about this reckless wanton horrific destruction of one of the world's most beautiful creatures, which I can personally vouch for --diving with sharks was absolutely one of my life's best experiences.

• Abandon Fear - the Sharkwater Blog http://www.abandonfear.com/
• Saving Sharks - http://www.savingsharks.com/
• WildAid - wildaid.org-- WildAid is doing incredible things to stop the sale of Shark Fin Soup in Asia, where many people falsely believe this tasteless soup is a sign of wealth and cures disease In reality because of the way sharks concentrate toxins due to bioaccumulation, sharkfin soup would cause more health problems not cure them. A study recently showed that many Asians do not even realize that shark fin soup has shark in it! The translation (at least in 1 language) is "fish wing" soup.

But this practice is just destroying sharks around the world, and there's no telling what will happen if the ocean's top predators disappear or severely decline. We may have just seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is happening to the oceans.