Last Tuesday (June 8) was World Oceans Day. Started in 2009, World Oceans Day was created by the United Nations as an opportunity to celebrate the ocean and the value it provides in the form of seafood, trade routes, and sport (in case you missed it, scuba fits in this category).

As a bit of activism on World Oceans Day, Project AWARE launched a petition to give sharks a fighting chance.

Sharks did not fair well at this year’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Eight threatened shark species were not awarded protection by the convention’s vote. Shark finning was at the top of the target list, but in general the desire is to limit catches based on scientific advice.

This petition was created to give the ordinary folks an avenue to express outrage and frustration at the convention’s shortsightedness. Personally, I am not a strong believer in petitions. I think their greatest strength is also their weakness—they require too little out of the signees. This lets one easily amass a large collection of signatures, but those signatures are relatively worthless.

Nevertheless, I signed it. If you care about the issue, you should sign it too. Even if it can’t help, it certainly can’t hurt. At worst it provides a small line in a future draft of legislature (“A recent petition collected over 100,000 signatures…”).

You can find the petition here: give sharks a chance.

The votes required 2/3 majority to pass. I’m curious if there was debate, and if so, what the other side had to say in defense of knowingly following a path of extinction for certain species of shark.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 6:30 am and is filed under Conservation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.