Friend of the Sea has launched a petition to ban shark finning, added anti-shark finning policies to its sustainable seafood standard and created a new whale shark watching standard for tourists.
The initiatives by the certification standard for products and services that respect and protect the marine environment is in honour of Shark Day on 14 July.
Paolo Bray, director of Friend of the Sea, said: “The petition and the changes to our standards for wild seafood and tourism are intended to help protect sharks from devastation.”
Active petition
The petition at Change.org urges Deliveroo, Just Eat and Menulog to remove restaurants that sell sharks fins from their online platforms. The petition also asks these firms to screen their offers and avoid proposing food from endangered species and companies with poor environmental and social accountability records. The goal is to direct business to restaurants providing more sustainable fare.
Wild Standard
Shark fins are banned in several countries. Onboard finning of sharks is banned in the EU, USA and several other countries. By-catch, shark finning and ghost net fishing are estimated to kill over 100m sharks every year. To tackle these problems, Friend of the Sea has updated its Wild Standard with new requirements of sustainability: not allowing shark finning; promoting the use circle hook and non-entangling FADs; and the recovery of floating fishing gear.
Expeditions
Friend of the Sea's new standard for whale shark watching expeditions prohibits touching the whale sharks, which can grow to up to 18m in length. Tourists must also maintain a minimum distance from the whale shark. Tour operators may not use single-use plastics.
