Marine Life & Conservation Blogs
New Zealand: Nicer to elves than sharks
New Zealand makes a spectacular film set, but it’s not much fun if you’re a shark. This small country at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is one of the strongholds of shark fishing and finning. Yes, I did say shark finning – that senseless, wasteful fishing method that most enlightened countries have abandoned… But not New Zealand*.
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New Zealand was exposed in a recent TRAFFIC report as being in the top ten countries for the slaughter and export of sharks. Many of those sharks are killed for their fins alone, and New Zealand is a major exporter of shark fins to Hong Kong and the biggest exporter of dried fins to the USA. The three main species of sharks finned in New Zealand – blue sharks, porbeagle sharks and short-finned mako sharks – are all listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Globally, 100 million sharks are killed by humans every year, many of them for their fins alone, and I’m ashamed to say New Zealand well and truly has blood on its hands.
Despite the growing list of countries and states around the world that have banned shark finning, the New Zealand Government still supports finning, and the New Zealand fishing industry is only too happy to make a bit of extra money from this gruesome practice as tuna stocks decline. This is allowed under the “National Plan of Action – Sharks” a document that was written in 2008 and makes only nods towards shark protection by requiring that sharks be killed before their fins are hacked off and their bodies dumped back into the sea. I am sure “thanks New Zealand for not torturing me first” is what those sharks are thinking from the sharky afterlife as their bodies slowly and silently sink to the ocean depths, killed for so little.
But there is hope. A few months ago, following a campaign calling on airlines to opt out of the shark fin trade, national airline Air New Zealand announced it would no longer transport sharks aboard its planes – something it admits it had done in the past. And in a month’s time, the New Zealand Government must make its five-yearly review of the National Plan of Action – Sharks. This is our chance to get shark finning banned once and for all in New Zealand waters. This opportunity only happens twice a decade, so we can’t afford to let this chance pass us by.
To succeed, Greenpeace and other NGOs have set up the New Zealand Shark Alliance to pressure the Government to adopt a shark finning ban through the recommended approach of requiring that any sharks caught be released back into the water, or landed with their fins naturally attached.
As a Pacific nation, New Zealand is woefully behind the times when it comes to shark conservation. Many small Pacific Island countries and territories have designated their waters as shark sanctuaries where no shark fishing or finning is allowed. For those countries the economic, cultural and ecological value of sharks far out weights the dollar value of their fins. If Nations like Palau, only 458 square kilometers in land area, can create a vast shark sanctuary of 621,600 square kilometers – you’d think the least New Zealand could do is ensure that Pacific sharks will not be at risk in their waters of being killed and hacked up for their fins alone.
Together, we can make sure this happens. Sign up here to register your support for a ban on shark finning, and we’ll send you a quick and easy submission form as soon as the Government announces its public consultation on shark laws.
* New Zealand: The country that loves to be liked, strives to keep its “clean, green” reputation, and advertises itself as 100% pure. It’s a valuable reputation founded on New Zealand’s stunning wilderness, diverse wildlife, and global nuclear free stance. In the eighties, it was all shiny and new – but now the rust has set in. As we know, rust comes from salt water. And New Zealand’s environmental reputation is being eaten away into rusty decay by what’s happening in our oceans. Whether it be opening up our coastline to risky deep sea oil drilling, handing out permission to suck up the seabed for iron sands or phosphate nodules, operating foreign-owned slave fishing ships, driving the world’s rarest dolphin ever-closer to extinction, or hacking the fins off sharks and dumping their bodies back in the sea – the way we are treating our oceans is more 100% plunder than 100% pure.
Karli Thomas is an Oceans Campaigner at Greenpeace New Zealand. www.greenpeace.org
Shells of the World: A Natural History by M.G. Harasewych
Shells of the world is a guide to the world of marine, shelled molluscs. And what a varied and interesting world it is. Some of my favourite things to find on a dive are detailed in this book, including disco clams (or Electric File Clams as they are correctly names), the cephalopods, giant clams and sea hares. There are also many on my wish list, top of which is the Nautilus.
Each chapter provides a detailed description of the species, along with beautiful images. You can dive deeper and discover where they live, both with global distribution and the habitat they prefer. Learn about their diet, reproduction and diversity.
Having dipped in and out of this lovely book over the past few weeks, it has inspired me to learn more about this group of animals that we see on most divers, wherever we are in the world. Some of the shells are incredibly intricate and beautiful. I have always agreed with never collecting, or touching, marine life. The description of a certain set of cone shells should be a warning to those that are happy to pick up marine life! One of the cone shells has a local name called the cigarette snail. Why? Because once the venom is in your system from this animal, you only have time to smoke one cigarette before the affects of the venom are fatal!
What the publisher says:
Mollusks are invertebrate animals with a remarkable natural history and a rich fossil record, and their shells are prized for their breathtaking variety and exquisite beauty. Shells of the World provides a wide-ranging look at the incredible diversity of marine mollusks. An informative introduction outlines the lineages covered, followed by a directory section, split into classes, that profiles a broad selection of different taxa to give a sense of their sheer numbers and variety.
- Features hundreds of beautiful color photos, depicting both the live animals and their shells
- Discusses mollusk evolution, anatomy, life cycles, behavior, and ecology
- Describes unique characteristics, distribution, habitat, and size
- Provides valuable insights into the conservation of the world’s marine mollusks
- Ideal for malacologists and shell collectors everywhere
About the Author:
M. G. Harasewych is research zoologist emeritus and former curator in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is the author (with Fabio Moretzsohn) of The Book of Shells: A Life-Size Guide to Identifying and Classifying Six Hundred Seashells.
Book Details
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Hardcover
Price: £25
ISBN: 9780691248271
Published: 9th April, 2024
The Ocean Cleanup, the global non-profit project, has removed a verified all-time total of ten million kilograms (22 million lbs.) of trash from oceans and rivers around the world – approximately the same weight as the Eiffel Tower.
To complete its mission of ridding the oceans of plastic, The Ocean Cleanup uses a dual strategy: cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) to remove the plastic already afloat in the oceans, while stopping the flow of plastic from the world’s most polluting rivers.
Through cleaning operations in the GPGP and in rivers in eight countries, the cumulative total of trash removed has now surpassed ten million kilograms. This milestone demonstrates the acceleration of The Ocean Cleanup’s impact, while underlining the astonishing scale of the plastic pollution problem and the need for continued support and action.
While encouraging for the mission, this milestone is only a staging point: millions more tons of plastic still pollute our oceans and The Ocean Cleanup intends to continue learning, improving and innovating to solve this global catastrophe.
This announcement comes as governments from around the world meet to continue negotiations to develop a new legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution at INC4 in Ottawa, Canada. Representatives of The Ocean Cleanup will be in attendance and the organization will be urging decision-makers to collaborate towards a comprehensive and ambitious global treaty which addresses plastic at all stages of its life cycle and in all marine environments worldwide, including in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
It is encouraging to see that the need for remediation is reflected in the various options for potential treaty provisions. It is essential that the final treaty contains clear targets for the remediation of legacy plastic pollution, and reduction of riverine plastic emissions.
Tackling plastic pollution requires innovative and impactful solutions. The treaty should therefore incentivize the innovation ecosystem by fostering innovations that make maximal use of data, technology and scientific knowledge – such as those designed and deployed by The Ocean Cleanup.
‘After many tough years of trial and error, it’s amazing to see our work is starting to pay off – and I am proud of the team who has brought us to this point.’ said Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. ‘While we still have a long way to go, our recent successes fill us with renewed confidence that the oceans can be cleaned.’
The Ocean Cleanup was founded in 2013 and captured its first plastic in 2019, with the first confirmed catch in the GPGP coming soon after the deployment of Interceptor 001 in Jakarta, Indonesia. After surpassing one million kilograms of trash removed in early 2022, the non-profit project has since progressed to the third iteration of its GPGP cleaning solution, known as System 03, and a network of Interceptors currently covering rivers in eight countries, with more deployments set for 2024.
About The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup is an international non-profit organization that develops and scales technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. They aim to achieve this goal through a dual strategy: stemming the inflow via rivers and cleaning up the legacy plastic that has already accumulated in the ocean. For the latter, The Ocean Cleanup develops large-scale systems to efficiently concentrate the plastic for periodic removal. This plastic is tracked and traced through DNV’s chain of custody model to certify claims of origin when recycling it into new products. To curb the tide via rivers, The Ocean Cleanup has developed Interceptor™ solutions to halt and extract riverine plastic before it reaches the ocean. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup now employs a broadly multi-disciplined team of approximately 140. The foundation is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
For more information, visit: theoceancleanup.com and follow @theoceancleanup on social media.
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