Today is Fintastic Friday: Giving Sharks, Skates, and Rays a Voice! Celebrate with us. Tell your friends. Post a Shark Conservation Zone sign and more!
Flat Stanley helps WhaleTimes and DEEPEND scientists celebrate Fintastic Friday. You can, too!
WhaleTimes announces this year’s summer camp, SHARKS VS PEOPLE. Great whites make headlines. Hammerheads send chills down the spine. Even the prehistoric (and extinct) Megaladon shark has attained legendary status as a monster. The truth is, you’re more likely to become a professional football player, injure yourself fixing the toilet, or get a spider bite than attacked by a shark. More than 500 sharks roam the seas (and some rivers). Some are longer than a school bus. Others swim faster than a killer whale. Some sharks can change color. Many glow in the dark! Sharks’ undeserved fearsome reputation overshadows the real story. The most dangerous animal in the sea is people, not sharks. Many shark species are threatened or endangered. They need our help to save them. Find out how in this fun and exciting class.
WhaleTimes’ Sharks vs People Summer Camp introduces kids to shark adaptations and species. Throughout this program, special guest Ruth A. Musgrave, author of MISSION SHARK RESCUE (National Geographic Children’s Books) and EVERYTHING SHARKS (National Geographic Children’s Books), shares her love of sharks, introduces amazing sharks, the scientists who study them, and empowers kids to help save sharks.
This program offered through museums and science centers throughout the country.
WhaleTimes created Fintastic Friday: Giving Sharks, Skates, and Rays a Voice to help raise awareness and encourage advocacy to protect elasmobranchs. 
This special annual holiday is celebrated worldwide.
Humans are not doing their job to protect sharks. Movies, books, and news outlets have created and perpetuated a false, but stereotypical view of sharks. This misguided hatred has caused a lack of compassion or understanding about sharks’ significant role in the health of the ocean. People hear even less about skates and rays.
On average, only 10 people are killed by sharks a year — in the entire world. BUT people kill more than 11,000 sharks EVERY HOUR of every day. Can you imagine people remaining mum if that number were whales? Dolphins? Penguins? Or some other popular species? Never.
We’ll say it again, People are not doing their best to protect sharks.
WhaleTimes believes kids are the future of sharks. No one is louder and more enthusiastic than a kid who cares. Kids love sharks. They haven’t seen the movies or heard the skewed, sensationalized, and poorly researched news clips. We want kids from all over the world cheering, SAVE THE SHARKS on this special holiday and every day.
Congratulations to our very own Ruth A. Musgrave for her efforts in shark and ocean conservation, her new book MISSION: SHARK RESCUE (National Geographic Children’s Books March 2016) and for being highlighted by Oregon Coast Aquarium’s Oceanscape Network as part of their S.T.E.A.M. Powered: Profiles in Science, Creativity and Exploration.
This multi-part series features five women who are at the tops of their fields in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. Over the 2015-16 school year, one week will be dedicated to each person, highlighting their education, careers and innovative contributions to their various disciplines — including the discovery of new species, the 
exploration of hostile ecosystems and the conservation of marine species.
This week, schools are encouraged to submit students’ questions to Ruth via the Oceanscape Network.
Ruth is also sharing her shark conservation message with students throughout Oregon as part of a community service effort with Barnes and Noble (Tualatin) and throughout the world through Skype interviews.
Go Ruth. And thank you for helping raise awareness of sharks.
We sure have a lot to celebrate this year for Fintastic Friday: Giving Sharks, Skates, and Rays a Voice. Don’t forget to celebrate with us on May 13.
