shark protection

Sharks, and other aquatic species, dominated the 5-day meeting of the Animals Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) which ended last week in Geneva. I was there representing Project AWARE as an accredited observer NGO. And it was another great opportunity to voice our collective support for shark conservation and to connect with representatives of CITES Parties and NGOs on shark issues.

Project AWARE is pounding the pavement to make the ocean safer for some of the most overexploited sharks. We have less than a year to secure international trade protections for sharks at the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES (CITES CoP16) to be held in March 2013, Thailand.

Asked to imagine paradise many divers think of clear, tropical waters teeming with marine life. Throw in some big sharks to get the adrenaline going and we are in diver heaven.

Well there is no need to dream: divers can find their dive paradise in Australia’s Coral Sea, one of the last remaining places where large marine life is still found in abundance.

So it is extraordinary that a proposed new marine park fails to protect over half of the Coral Sea and leaves 90 percent of its coral reefs open to some form of fishing.