Learn. Understand. Share.

Now I have explained why sharks need help and are important, the next thing I wanted to bring to the table is our current main objective. With regards to conservation topics it is well known that ‘education is key’. No word of a lie. It really is! If people don’t know about the issue, then it will continue to go un-noticed, and that probably means that it will worsen or created bigger issues. We try to educate through different means, as often as possible. Our social media sites keep supporters up to date with the latest shark news and research, whilst inspiring debate, and sharing thought provoking images. Of course these are our main source of advertisement for our personal events, projects and campaigns. Which brings me to my next three points..

We have attended & plan to attend all kinds of events. Bearing in mind most of these are funded out of our own pockets, and therefore we are limited somewhat. But when we run an event, we like to target the general public where we have a chance to introduce new facts which we can only hope stick in their minds and spread by word of mouth. I’ve personally only done a couple but its great interacting with the public and actually witnessing the learning process take place. It’s amazing! And for them to then want to shake your hand or ask to get involved gives you a sense that you have made a little bit of a difference! And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?.. You can stay aware of our up and coming events on Facebook, Twitter & our website.

One of our educational projects, we wish to continue & expand upon (Photo credit: 'So What?')

Now, projects! We plan to do many, but this is a case study we are particularly proud of. If you haven’t heard of ‘So What?’ you should have! Currently based in Manchester (wanting to spread further!), they run after school clubs about conservation topics- sharks included! Recently, we got in contact with them to see about helping each other out! We have a series of fact sheets on our downloads page on our website, and they happily used these in one of their clubs and the kids made the fantastic posters seen above! One pupil even went home and made a sculpture of a shark based on our anatomy fact sheet! See our Facebook album for more examples. Neither of us are teachers, and so being unable to teach ourselves, we are more than grateful to Matthew Payne for allowing us to contribute to his educational programme, and we plan to continue to support ‘So What?’ in any future projects concerning sharks. A real pleasure! Please take a few moments to visit the ‘So What?’ website, Facebook and Twitter and see what other fantastic things they do!

So we started out with a petition to campaign against the sale and harvest of shark fins in the UK & EU, which if you haven’t, please sign it here! Sharks and the oceans need a lot more of this kind of attention and we have various campaigns coming up. We don’t like to give away too much, but we will make you aware in due course. Again, please keep an eye out on our social media sites, and I will be posting on here too!

We hope to do as much 'educating' as we can, as we know the impact it can have, especially when concerning the next generation, as with ‘So What?’! The wonderful thing is (and this is where my inner geek comes out to play!) we never really stop learning, unless we want to. There are always new things to discover and share, and I hope this blog will be another means to do just that. 

I’m going to finish with a quote I picked up in a paper I used for my final project, which I believe to be very apt for the occasion and is a personal favorite  "..for in the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught"- Baba Dioum, Senegalese conservationist and poet.