This guest column is brought to you by wildlife cameraman Matt Brierley, the Executive Producer of the upcoming feature film, Sharks: In Deep Water. Visit https://bit.ly/2U2np84 to learn how you can support the film.
We’re making a film to stop the Western shark extinction, a film with a huge capacity to change things. You can help by supporting our crowdfunder. We’re treading a fundraising path where Sharkwater once went, so we know we can make a huge difference and break new ground – with your help https://bit.ly/2U2np84.
There are some things we think our film can sort out pretty quickly. Right now anyone travelling to any EU country from outside Europe can legally bring 20kg of dried shark fins with them for personal consumption. Shark charity Bite-Back tell us it’s enough to make 705 bowls of shark fin soup and has a market value of around £3,600. There are two reasons we think we can stop this:
- USA is paving the way in outlawing shark fin nationally, so they’ll be legislation to copy
- Netflix – and their conservation-hungry global audience – exists!
So, what else can “Sharks: In Deep Water” achieve?
Well, we can ask big important questions – like why doesn’t a species in an IUCN red list “threatened with extinction” category have de facto protection? If you’re a shark scientist you’ll know all about the red list being advisory, and you’ll know it’s not legally binding. But the public didn’t get the memo. Most people think that an Endangered species can’t be killed, cooked and eaten legally. They presuppose some person else is taking care of nature, and some law is protecting it. A case in point – on March 21st 2019 Shortfin Mako shark was declared Endangered.It took our team just three minutes to find it legally for sale online in the UK. Until a powerful film reports the truth, things won’t change.
So… a bit of backstory… I was working for the BBC on programmes like Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II when I popped along to a meeting hosted by shark NGO Fin Fighters. I found myself watching a dead Great White for sale in a fish market in Tangier, Morocco. So, I looked into it. What shocked me the most wasn’t that it had happened. It was it had happened legally.
Great whites have more protection than a lot of sharks – they made the grade, they got put on a special list. They are CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species] Appendix II. Meaning? Well, if a Moroccan fisherman catches one and sells it in Morocco, that’s fine. Domestic trade is OK.
That felt wrong. This was something that, if changed, would protect not just sharks, but all animals threatened with extinction in their homelands.
So, with this thought, a team of us headed out to Morocco: activists, filmmakers, shark scientists.
I was uncertain where the journey would lead – I guess I thought at best we could get Morocco to sign up to the Convention on Migratory Species. I still think we can. The one place I didn’t think the film would take me was nine minutes from my front door, buying shark in Bristol, UK. Yet we learnt pretty quickly the Moroccan fishermen weren’t the baddies. The baddies were the EU fleet rinsing the NE Atlantic of its top predators and the Western consumers. We were the baddies!!
I had no idea shark was sold in UK chip shops under confusing names like ‘rock salmon’. I didn’t know you could buy baby sharks in jars in Florida. I didn’t know tropical sharks are legally imported into the UK for sale in London. I had always thought of shark conservation as being a problem involving the East. Here I was witnessing a Western shark extinction.
Ironically, fantastic legislation to protect sharks seems to have fuelled this. Since 2013 in the EU sharks can’t be finned at sea, and must be landed fins-naturally-attached. The trouble is, what happens to the meat? The meat that is typically toxic since sharks bioaccumulate heavy metals? Well, you can get it stir fried with chilli and ginger in a pretty swanky UK restaurant. Globally – according to the World Health Organisation – we’re eating more shark meat than ever before. It’s come into the ports for the first time and now people are eating it. Would they be eating it if they knew it was threatened with extinction? Or toxic? Or both?
With your help, we’re going to tell people all this in a film with plot twists and jeopardy, with happiness and humour, with sadness but with honesty. Like a Hollywood Blockbuster. Except better… because it’s real. And because, ultimately, you choose the ending. We all choose the ending.
You can support us here: https://bit.ly/2U2np84