Today Brantford Makes History For Sharks

If you have been following the shark world the last couple of years there has been huge positive changes. People are waking up and I do not mean simply individuals but cities, states, and countries. Today marks a great day for Canadian History when a small city of 90,000 people becomes the first city to Ban Shark Fin Products.

I have organized a Support The Ban Rally in Brantford today at 4:45pm till about 5:45pm when we will enter the Council Chambers to wait for the Vote To Make it a By-Law Ordinance. This day is extremely important and the ball will start when the vote passes!

You can watch LIVE at 6pm here:
http://www.brantford.ca/govt/council/Pages/LiveMeetingCoverage.aspx

The event information is here:
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=226282937386464

I will keep you updated from my twitter account:
http://twitter.com/activistartist

Also Phil Gillies a member of Wildaid and Dave Neuman a former mayor of Brantford are the two men that got the bill pushed for vote and will be in attendance today to speak to us.

On another note California yesterday passed the vote to ban shark fin products in the assembly so the next step is to the senate to be voted on to pass a state law.

Other related articles and positive action for sharks:


Hawaii is the first state to ban Shark Fin Soup
June 30 - 2010
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2010/2010-06-30-093.html

Oregon Passes Shark Ban
April 30th - 2011
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=157806

Washington State
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015040424_apwaxgrsharkfinban.html

Guam
http://www.sharkdiver.com/blog/45-industry-blog/6311-shark-fin-ban-guam-shark-feeding-ban-as-well

Fiji wants ban
May 2nd - 2011
http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2011/May/05-03-10.htm

California still in discussion
http://news.change.org/stories/californias-proposed-shark-fin-ban-gets-political

Palau makes its water a Shark Sanctuary
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090925-sharks-sanctuary-palau.html

_____________________________

Bob Timmons

Artist For The Ocean
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Toronto Regional Coordinator for Sea Shepherd
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http://twitter.com/SSCSToronto

Ocean Activists United Founder
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Baby Blues - Fins - Juveniles

Today once again a quick stop into the fishing docks to see the latest catch and it is different everyday!

A friend of mine who was just here in Katsuura for the Taiji action did some research on the Katsuura Fishing Industry and this is what he sent me:

"Katsuura is a base port of coastal and offshore tuna longline fisheries and these fisheries sometimes target sharks. The major landed species are pelagic.

Blue shark is the  dominant species among pelagic fisheries and comprises more than 70% of sharks caught in the tuna longline fishery industry.

The major pelagic shark species caught by the tuna longline fishery are blue shark, bigeye thresher shark , oceanic whitetip shark , silky shark and shortfin mako shark.

There is no particular management objective on shark. However, the Fisheries Agency of Japan instructed the tuna longline fishermen to bring back both fins and carcass together when they land shark fins.

(Here's an interesting statement - I take "biological regulations" to mean the size of the sharks taken) :

Generally, there are no particular biological regulations in fisheries for sharks. However, the Japan Fisheries Agency instructs large distant tuna fishing boats to record shark bycatch and to bring back carcass as far as possible."


I seen a lot more sharks scattered in piles today and could not tell you how many exactly but I would say a lot more young ones then large ones.