What you can do in the Red Sea

The first step is to arm yourself with knowledge. There are many threats, both global and regional, facing sharks and so it is essential that you remain informed on these issues and their consequences in order to best approach their solution.

Good places to start are the Shark Trust (www.sharktrust.org) and Shark Alliance (www.sharkalliance.org)  websites. Each one is bursting with information on sharks and their threats and details of international measures protecting sharks.

To get a more local understanding of what is happening talk to the folks at your dive centre, they should have a good idea of the regional or country-wide laws protecting sharks. Local government officials will also be able to provide you with details of further legislative and management measures (at least on paper) in place to preserve sharks.

As a diver you are in a prime position to record what you see in the water and to report changes in your marine environment. Recording your sightings is the perfect place to start and over time will provide a vast amount of data about the sharks seen, and not seen, in your local waters.

If you are out for the season, recording other information such as seasonal presence/absence of sharks, important juvenile areas or any other interesting behavioural observations can all feed into Marine Protected Area designation and other management and conservation measures. Don’t forget, a picture can often be a more powerful tool than words. Take pictures of the effects of overfishing, finning, habitat destruction or just to demonstrate the beauty of sharks – these will always come in handy when making your case.

Once you have a clear picture, educating and informing others is a vital route for shark conservation.  Whether talking to your fellow divers or contacting government bodies to express your concern for the future of sharks and indicating the problems they are facing it is important that you don’t remain quiet.

5 Minute Actions!

• Don’t buy shark fin soup – the trade in shark’s fin is one of the most detrimental problems affecting sharks populations worldwide.
• Add your voice to the latest Shark Trust petition: www.sharktrust.org/petition
• Be aware of the provenance of shark curios – if you want to buy teeth or jaws ask a few questions as to where they came from –  it is quite unlikely that they came from a sustainable source. Fossil teeth are less of a problem however there are some rogue traders out there, investigate their credentials before buying.
• Always dive with companies that have respectful and conservation minded codes of practice for sharks – companies that don’t feed, antagonise or encourage touching of sharks are a good start.
• Email your local government official and ask them what they are doing to support shark conservation.
• Record your sightings at www.sharktrust.org/sd

By Shark Trust director Ali Hood
First published in BLUE magazine august 2009