I am happy to announce that we are FINALLY completing our shark documentary called “Extinction Soup”.
We are in the final stretch and I am reaching out to everyone I know to help me spread the word and to raise funds.
We have created an Indiegogo campaign.Please check it out and forward the link to all your friends. Post it, "like" it, blog it or shout it from the roof top… whatever you are inspired to do, it will help us a great deal. (and if you feel inclined to donate we would appreciate even the smallest amount)
A little background info to the story:
The film is about the trade of shark fins, the horrendous effects it has on shark populations around the globe and the struggle of activists to put an end to shark fin soup.
The film is also a personal story.It shows us why Jimmy Hall inspired so many people to care for sharks and how his enthusiasm for life affected everyone around him, and it follows my own personal journey into politics when I became involved in the campaign for the ban on shark fins in Hawaii – a legislative success that sparked a wave of similar action across the Pacific and the United States.
The story is told by Phil Waller, who was inspired by Jimmy and by learning about the plight of sharks. He has been the driving force behind our three-year effort to put this film together.
We have been able to get this far with very limited resources.Our own money, our own time and random skills and LOTS of help from friends that contributed footage and agreed to be interviewed for the film.
Our goal has been to keep the integrity of the story and to tell it without succumbing to the pressure of production companies to sensationalize sharks for the sake of ratings.
The general advice I have been getting is that shark films will only sell if they bank on the fear of sharks. I think that view is outdated and that networks are not giving the audience enough credit.Most people are not that ignorant. At least I hope so.
My feeling is - Lets prove them wrong!
Hope for big Tigers like our Scarface!
Finally protected - unbelievable pic by Jimmy, you simply must click for detail!
BNT officials and Earl Deveaux with a Shark poster By Guy Harvey
Stellar pic by Timbo!
UNITED NATIONS — The tiny Pacific nation of Palau is creating the world's first shark sanctuary, a biological hotspot to protect great hammerheads, leopard sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean.
But with only one boat to patrol 240,000 square miles (621,600 square kilometers) of Palau's newly protected waters — including its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, that extends 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its coastline — enforcement of the new measure could be almost like swimming against the tide.
Palau's president, who is to announce the news to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, acknowledges the difficulty of patrolling ocean waters nearly the size of Texas or France with a single boat. But he hopes others will respect Palauan territorial waters — and that the shark haven inspires more such conservation efforts globally.
"Palau will declare its territorial waters and extended economic zone to be the first officially recognized sanctuary for sharks," Palauan President Johnson Toribiong told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday.
Shark fishing has grown rapidly since the mid-1980s, driven by a rising demand — mainly in China — for shark fin soup, a highly prized symbol of wealth. Because of their long life spans and low fertility rates, sharks are vulnerable to overfishing.
Within its EEZ, a nation may regulate fisheries and scientific research and develop other economic efforts. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates more than half of highly migratory sharks are overexploited or depleted.
Toribiong said a recent flyover by Australian aircraft showed more than 70 vessels fishing Palau's waters, many of them illegally.
"We'll do the very best we can, given our resources," he said. "The purpose of this is to call attention to the world to the killing of sharks for commercial purposes, including to get the fins to make shark fin soups, and then they throw the bodies in the water."
Tourists go to Palau for its spectacular diving in the tropical waters, dramatic coral and rich marine life. The remote Pacific nation recently made global headlines when it agreed to President Barack Obama's request to take a group of Uighurs — Turkic Muslims from China's far western Xinjiang region — as part of plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Palau is one of the world's smallest countries, with some 20,000 people scattered over 190-square mile (490-square kilometer) archipelago of lush tropical landscapes in the Western Pacific.
Its shark sanctuary will shelter more than 135 Western Pacific species of sharks and rays considered endangered or vulnerable, or for which there is not enough data to determine how the species is faring.
"Palau has basically raised the bar for the rest of the world for shark conservation," said Matt Rand, director for global shark conservation for Washington-based Pew Environment Group, an advocacy organization.
Elsewhere, Europe is trying to crack down on shark fishing in its waters.
In February, the European Commission proposed its first-ever shark conservation rules for European waters. EU countries account for a third of shark meat exports globally, and shark steaks are increasingly served in restaurants, replacing pricier swordfish steaks, and shark products are also finding their way into lotions and leather sports shoes.
Toribiong said he also will call for a global moratorium on "shark finning" — the practice of hacking off shark fins and throwing the body back into the sea — and an end to unregulated and destructive bottom trawling on the high seas.
Palau is among 20 seafaring nations that already have voluntary agreed to end bottom trawling, which involves fishing boats that drag giant nets along the sea floor.
Enormously effective at catching fish, the nets from bottom trawling also wipe out almost everything in their path, smash coral and stir clouds of sediment that smother sea life, marine experts say.
The U.N. has called bottom trawling a danger to unique and unexplored ecological systems and said slightly more than half the underwater mountain and coral ecosystems in the world can be found beyond the protection of national boundaries.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Crack open the Champagne!!!
