Best PR for sharks....

.... is to get serious and environmentally engaged journalists interested in the plight of these endangered creatures. Professional writers are the ones who can make a difference by informing and educating their readers.

They need good PR professionals, badly!

Photo: Wolfgang Leander (Tiger Beach / Bahamas, 2010)

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Here we have a good example how this can be done: Juliet Eilperin, "Washington Post" reporter, took a bunch of journalists on a shark tagging tour with Neil Hammerschlag of the University of Miami.

Read this one account of the trip, put together by Todd Woody, a "Forbes" editor.

Good job - excellent, far-reaching multiplier effect!

And dig this: A very well researched new book on sharks written by Juliet Eilperin. Highly readable, highly recommended!

Costa Rica did what?

Costa Rica, usually known for it's forward thinking when it comes to the environment, seems to be one of the most backward countries when it comes to protecting sharks.  And what happens when the shark populations in their own waters dwindle...you find Costarican fishermen in Colombian waters killing sharks off Malpelo...and apparently this is not the first time either.  Galapagos and Cocos Island are not off-limits either.

For those who know Spanish - please read the following post and watch the video below...

Please sign this petition!

This shark's fins are at risk of ending up in a bowl of soup in Hong Kong.

Photo: Wolfgang Leander (South Africa 2008)

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Alex Hofford*) has posted this in a shark forum today. We simply pass it on to you requesting you to sign the petition and distribute it as widely as you can.

Thank you!

Felix and Wolf

*) Get to know Alex: Great guy, great photographer, committed environmentalist, British to the bone!

The Economist - Shark Fin Soup

It is always great when reputable media cover shark finning.  Today The Economist published an article about the Chinese going green and doing away with traditional habits.  


"But if disapproval of the consumption of shark’s fin encourages the Chinese to see it as luo hou (backward), one of the most dreaded of all Chinese epithets, they might want to renounce the stuff anyway.


This has already happened with spitting in the streets, which many Chinese now regard as a backward habit. Eating dogs, too, is increasingly viewed as barbaric (a 600-year old dog-eating festival in eastern China was cancelled in September after public uproar). If the new Chinese elite can be persuaded that deliberately eating endangered species ill befits their aspirations to cosmopolitanism, there might be some hope for the sharks."


Be sure to read the complete article here

WildAid has recently launched a campaign to get people to stop eating shark fin soup.