>Saving Sharks
1 of 1 slides
>
>There's good news and bad news in the world of sharks.
>Sharks are increasingly scarce across the world's oceans due in large part to finning and the appetite for
shark fin
soup
. Up to 73 million sharks are killed each year for the fin trade and the
International Union for Conservation of
Nature
reports that 30 percent of shark and ray species assessed are threatened or near-threatened with extinction. That's the bad news, to put it lightly.
>The good news is there's a growing shark conservation trend being undertaken by governments across the globe to help these apex predators rebound from years of intense overfishing.
>In the United States, the
Shark Conservation
Act
was signed into law by President Obama in January 2011. Around the globe, Palau, Honduras, the Maldives and The Bahamas have all established shark sanctuaries in their national waters in just the past few years, making 926,645 square miles of the world's oceans free of shark fishing. And there may be even more good news in the months ahead.
>The Pew Environment Group, shark conservation advocates, created this interactive map complete with video and still images of sharks to track the progress made on shark conservation thus far. Check it out!
>
More Shark Coverage
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Attacks
>
Close Encounters of the Oceanic
Kind
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Cocos Islands
2010
>
Cooper River, South
Carolina
>
Conserving
Sharks
>
Diving in Behind the
Scenes
>
Extinct for
Soup?
>
Filming Great
Whites
>
Growing Up
Sharks
>
Man Meets
Shark
>
Myths and Truths About
Sharks
>
Shark Identification
Quiz
>
Sharks of the
Bahamas
>
Sharks of the Bahamas: The
Slideshow
>
Shooting Great
Whites
>
The Great White Shark
Experience
>
Toothy
Loiterers
>
Underwater Updates - Cape
Town
Water Planet
>
Diadema
, Caretaker of the Reefs
>Eutrophication
>The Enormous Din of the Sea
>Grassroots Marine Protected Areas
>Offshore Platforms
>Offshore Platforms Gallery
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