What you should know
Sharks represent one of the most threatened forms of marine life on the planet. Globally, most shark populations have declined overall by approximately 90%, and if we continue on the current path many species will go extinct within our lifetime. As apex predators sharks play a key role in maintaining the health, biodiversity, and productivity of the ocean which is an environment that produces up to 70% of the oxygen we breathe. A healthy ocean and healthy planet cannot exist without sharks, and as humans, we depend on the ocean for survival in many different ways. One of the biggest things you can do to help is taking action in your daily life to be a conscious consumer. Know exactly what you’re supporting with your purchases and make the choice not to support industries and products that negatively impact the environment. These actions may seem small but can add up to make a tremendous collective impact. Take action and get involved, there are a number of things you can do to help save sharks and the ocean.
-Don't eat seafood or if you do make sure it is only from individual local fishermen with responsible fishing practices. Remember that industrial commercial fisheries which supply most of the commonly available cheap seafood actually harm the small scale local fisherman and such impacts have been linked to starvation in some nations and there are many human rights issues around industrial commercial fisheries. Industrial commercial fisheries have extremely high levels of bycatch, which means they also kill sea birds, dolphins, turtles, whales, rays, and of course many sharks.
-Don’t support businesses that sell shark or shark derived products which can take many forms: Shark meat, cartilage, liver oil or squalene, shark fin soup, shark leather, teeth/jaws, and pet food and pet toys.
-Get involved with and support organizations that actively work towards protection for sharks. Sign petitions, volunteer your time to spread petitions and information for them. Help organize beach or park clean ups or events. Help produce educational social media for them to further their efforts as a team.
-Ask your local and state government to ban the right to fish for sharks recreationally and commercially, as well as to ban the selling and shipping of sharks, and shark products like their fins, meat, cartilage, and oil.
-Speak up for sharks! If your country is being represented at important policy-making events such as CITES, IUCN, or conservation conventions ensure you are being accurately represented by your leaders. Reach out to them and show your support for further protection of shark species and demand conservation initiatives to be put in place.
-Sign a petition, your voice matters!
See a list of petitions at the bottom of this page. If you know of one that is not currently listed please email us a link and ask us to list it here. (Email: OneOceanDiving@Gmail.com
calling all one ocean ambassadors and volunteers
Projects we are hoping some wonderful volunteers will help out with:
1.
We are looking for people to search the internet for credibly sourced current issues from around the world related to nature conservation, while we want to focus mostly on marine life and ecosystems, but we do want to sometimes share information about terrestrial conservation needs.
Please format a social media post (for instagram, YouTube, or TikTok) that we can share with the world to help raise awareness by:
Informing the public about the importance about the animal/plant that is the subject of the post
Informing the public about the current conservation concern
Providing them with an easy way or ways to take action to help
Finish by citing your news source.
Include 7-20 hashtags that are relevant to the issue and include #oneoceanconservation and #oneoceanglobal and #oneoceanteam and a #with your name and your IG/YouTube so we can reference and appreciate your contribution.
A good example would be the instagram Karmagawa but we are looking to focus on non-human-animal content to give a voice to those without a voice in a highly educational and “gentle” way. We aim to inspire conservation.
Please send your post to OneOceanDiving@gmail.com
We thank you sincerely in advance for helping us to stay current with global conservation issues and use the One Ocean platform to help bring a lot of international attention to important issues the natural world faces.
2.
We need volunteers to continue to translate the Help Save Sharks Letter in the drop down menu of this website under the "Conservation & Research" option. It is the letter for stores, restaurants, and businesses that sell shark fin soup, shark meat, shark jaws, baby sharks in jars, modern (not fossilized) shark teeth, shark cartilage pills, shark liver oil pills, shark skin, etc. It explains why sharks are important, their plight, and why the business should not sell, ship, supply, distriubute, provide, etc shark byproducts.
We need volunteers to search the internet for stores that sell these items and email them the letter and follow up with the company to try to get the product removed/banned/etc.
3.
We need a letter created specifically for shark fisherman and fishermen in general that is very nice and also persuasive to explain to fisherman the importance of sharks for their fisheries and explain best catch and release processes. We also need volunteers to proofread, edit, and translate this after we edit the final draft with our website links for updates
4.
We need volunteers to make video’s about the importance of sharks for different types of ecosystems and send to the One Ocean office so we can upload to the team youtube to share with the world and especially allow everyone to be able to reference a video series for any school presentations anyone works on. Cartoon/animations that show the processes would be the best so that language is not a factor in who uses it in any country, please add the One Ocean logo to the screen, thank you so much, we love our talented global ambassadors.
5.
We need more digital content for One Ocean Education presentations any video’s, animations you can do in a short 1-2 min version that you can send over we want to compile these video’s so everyone can reference for presentation. Please add the One Ocean Logo in the corner of the screen and please put your name in the final screen with a Video by and credit anyone else who helped to put it together.
6.
It is always a HUGE help if you can like, comment, share, or repost any of the One Ocean Global teams or One Ocean divisions posts as the more interaction a post gets the more people will see the post. Please keep an eye on the hashtags #SharkFishing #SharkFinSoup #SharkFin and please write educational (not attacking) comments to those people who are killing sharks and try to win them over, remember you can change your friends, but once they are your enemy they are much less likely to listen. Same goes for companies, stores, restaurants that sell or serve shark byproducts, try to educated them via social media and also get their corporate email to share the letter from HelpSaveSharks.Org
7. Our 2020 and 2021 focus in conservation is BYCATCH anything you can contribute to raise awareness about the impacts of bycatch, what it is, and what everyone can do to stop it is SO APPRECIATED. It could be art, coloring pages, video's petitions, anything we can do to open the worlds eyes to what goes on out of sight and show them what industrial fishing does to the ocean and marine life.
THANK YOU ONE OCEAN GLOBAL AMBASSADORS AND VOLUNTEERS FOR SUPPORTING ALL OF US, EVERYONE HERE, TOGETHER WE CAN BETTER SAVE SHARKS, MARINE LIFE, THE OCEAN, AND THE PLANET.
