Happy Fintastic Friday: Giving Sharks, Skates and Rays a Voice!
Nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) Courtesy NOAA
Fintastic Friday celebrates sharks and encourages everyone to find ways to change public opinion about from hatred to love and fear to appreciation. Think of it as Earth Day for sharks!
Gray reef (Carcharinus amblyrhynchos) Courtesy NOAA Photo credit David Burdick
Why a day for sharks? Shark, ray, and skate populations throughout the world are in peril, some threatened and others critically endangered. All of them need more people to care.
We know people and scientists can encourage governments to save sharks the same way they pushed for protection of whales so long ago. In fact, there are many countries stepping up to protect sharks by creating sanctuaries for sharks, but more need to be part of the solution.
To celebrate we want you to meet just a few scientists and organizations working to protect sharks, skates, and rays throughout the world. We suggest you send them all a big sharky thank you! (see the Big as Life Thank You idea on our Fintastic Friday page)
- George Burgess, Florida Museum of Natural History
- Dave Ebert, Pacific Shark Research Center, Moss Landing
- Dean Grubbs, Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory
- Rachel Graham, MarAlliance
- Samuel Gruber, Bimini Sharklab
- Alison Kock, Shark Spotters
- Johann Mourier, Shark Biologist
- Mahmood Shivji, Nova Southeastern University
- Generous organizations like Save our Seas Foundation for supporting research throughout the world and the tireless work of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group raising awareness and adding to our knowledge of sharks.
- and the pocket shark for being one more reason to protect the oceans because there’s just a lot of weird and cool critters out there we need to discover and protect (not necessarily in that order)!
This year’s Fintastic Friday dedicated to Eugenie Clark, an inspiration to all of us to protect our oceans. Thank you.
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