Sharktober 2023 News and Events

Sharktober is a celebration of white sharks to our Sanctuary offshore, and to educate and motivate the public to save endangered sharks and rays. Our first Sharktoberfest events were intended to drive support for the now successful California Shark Fin Ban introduced by Shark Stewards, and the USA shark fin trade ban passed in 2022.  Since that time we have used these events with our partners at the California Academy of Sciences, the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, the California Ocean Protection Council and other NGOS and agencies to reach over 100,000 public and youth directly in the Bay Area and beyond to celebrate and save sharks. Join us for our 15th year celebrating and saving sharks!

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International Whale Shark Day-respecting the ocean’s largest living fish.

According to the IUCN, the Indo-Pacific population of the whale shark is thought to have reduced 63 percent over the past 75 years. These magnificent sharks are now endangered globally. Join us for a live webinar tonight and learn how to observe, document and save sharks.

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How Jaws Influenced Shark Perception

Twenty-one years after publication, Peter Benchley, the author of the best selling novel from which the script was derived said, “I couldn’t write Jaws today. The extensive new knowledge of sharks would make it impossible for me to create, in good conscience, a villain of the magnitude and malignity of the original.”

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The Bay Canary? More Leopard Shark Deaths in San Francisco Bay

In the last two months, numerous reports of dead or dying sharks in the Bay have followed a another die-off in Aquatic Park Berkeley this year. Sharks are being reported struggling in the shallows or washed up dead by concerned citizens from Redwood City, to Point Richmond, to San Francisco and outside the coast north of Bolinas in Marin County in April and May.

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House Votes to Pass Shark Fin Trade Ban

A bill to end the USA shark fin trade reintroduced by Representatives Sablan and McCaul passed through the Congress with a strong bipartisan majority Thursday.

House lawmakers passed the measure that would ban buying and selling shark fins in the United States and help the country fight illegal fishing and overfishing sharks. As part of the huge National Defense Authorization Act HR 776, the “END Wildlife Trafficking Act” includes the shark fin sale provision.

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Trip Report: Devil’s Teeth and Ducking Whales

Humpback whales steam among the fish, spouts blowing in the wind as they forage in the waves. We find the whales often feeding in or close to the shipping lane. Each year as many as 200,000 ships enter and exit the Golden Gate, and according to the Point Blue Conservation Science as many as 83 humpback, blue and fin whales are killed by ships on the West Coast each year.

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Stop Overfishing Endangered Sharks in the Global Shark Fin Trade

Join our Friends at Only One Expressing your Support to List 3 Families of sharks and Rays
An upcoming vote at the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) at CoP19 November among over 180 nations could protect endangered sharks from the shark fin trade Please you add your name to this letter urging world leaders to end the shark fin trade driving the decline of many species of sharks.

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Sharktoberfest Team Zoom

Its time for our annual sharkober get together with team-members and new volunteers and shark enthusiasts with shark fun, facts, updates and activities.

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