World Oceans Day 2020 | Supporting Sea Shepherd

World Ocean Day unites and rallies the world to protect and restore our shared ocean. The conservation action focus is the protection of 30% of the ocean by 2030.

To celebrate World Ocean Day we are launching our keep the coral floral charity tee. {This exclusive, limited edition tee will be available from 4pm Monday 8th of June 2020}

100% of the profits from the sale of the tee will be donated to Sea Shepherd, who play an important role in protecting and conserving our oceans.

With your contributions, together our donation will support the current active campaigns in Australia including:

Marine Debris

Operation Apex Harmon

Operation Jeedara.

Find out more below about the incredible and vital Sea Shepherd campaigns currently active in Australia to defend, conserve and protect our oceans.

MARINE DEBRIS CAMPAIGN

Australia's coastlines have never been more vulnerable. Our oceans are drowning from the tidal wave of plastic pollution. For marine life, this means the fight to survive each day is relentless.

In 2016, Sea Shepherd Australia started a nationwide campaign to clean-up Australia's waterways and beaches. Since then, passionate volunteers have removed over 3 million pieces of trash from polluting our oceans.

The debris collected in the clean-ups is sorted, counted and recorded. This data is then used to do source reduction. Where large numbers of one particular item are found Sea Shepherd go directly to the source, working with businesses and councils to stop further debris entering the environment.

The Marine Debris Campaign has also been driving community change through education and beach clean-ups, empowering people to realise that every piece counts.

Sea Shepherd is committed to promoting and facilitating family friendly coastal and river clean-up activities and inspiring the community, businesses, and industry to take action in support of the protection and conservation of local marine environments.

There are no clean-up events currently running due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Sea Shepherd are however in the planning stages for an upcoming remote beach clean and will resume weekly beach clean-up events across Australia as soon as it is safe.

If you are interested in participating in a clean-up you can email [email protected] for further information or follow the Sea Shepherd Australia Marine Debris campaign on Facebook

 

OPERATION JEEDARA

Operation Jeedara is Sea Shepherd’s campaign to protect the Great Australian Bight from Big Oil. The Great Australian Bight is one of the world’s most pristine and unique marine environments - home to one of the world's most significant nurseries for southern right whales.

Thanks to support from around Australia, Sea Shepherd was able to conduct two expeditions to the Bight aboard the mighty M/V Steve Irwin, working alongside the Traditional Custodians, the Mirning People, as well as Elder and whale song-man Uncle Bunna Lawrie to protect this beautiful area.

In February 2020, Sea Shepherd welcomed the decision by Norwegian oil giant Equinor to abandon its plans to conduct risky deep-sea oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight.

Whilst Sea Shepherd and supporters are celebrating this significant victory, Operation Jeedara will continue until Sea Shepherd helps to achieve permanent protection for the Great Australian Bight. This will involve lobbying the Government and other key players for heritage listing and continuing to shine a light on the importance of the Bight and what we stand to lose should we not afford its ongoing protection.

OPERATION APEX HARMONY

Apex Harmony’s mission is to defend, conserve and protect sharks in order to maintain healthy oceans.

Around the world, sharks are threatened by many human activities including finning, fishing bycatch, commercial fishing, habitat degradation, climate change and government-endorsed control and culling programs.

Off the coast of Africa, Sea Shepherd’s efforts in shark protection revolve around combatting the catch and kill of sharks by industrial fishing methods. In Australia, Sea Shepherd is campaigning against Queensland and New South Wales’ lethal shark bite mitigation programs.

In Australia the campaign actively monitors and reports on shark nets and drumlines in Queensland and New South Wales. By brining transparency to the destructive nature of these programs that have killed thousands of sharks and rays, hundreds of turtles as well as dolphins and whales they are bringing awareness to the public in local areas affected by government decisions and the broader community in each state. In NSW alone 20,000 marine animals have been caught by shark nets since they were introduced in 1937.

Using baited drum lines and mesh nets, shark control programs aim to reduce local populations of large sharks and therefore reduce the number of human and shark incidents along our coastline. Nets and baited drumlines have, however, been proven to be an outdated and ineffective method of protection for ocean-goers. A study conducted by Deakin University in 2016 showed that there is no change in the risk of a shark incident between beaches with or without nets. These programs also have significant impacts on the broader marine environment with many non-targeted species including sea birds, whales, sea turtles and dolphins becoming trapped and killed in these devices.

There are however non-lethal alternative solutions, these include SMART Drumlines, Ariel drones, Eco shark barriers, education and outreach, personal protection devices and shark spotters.

SMART Drumlines send an alert when a shark has been captured on the line through a satellite-linked GPS communications unit attached to a baited hook and are designed to be non-lethal. SMART drumlines may, however, still result in the death of marine animals if the response time is not fast enough or a susceptible species such as hammerhead is caught.

Shark nets do not provide an enclosure for swimmers. In addition to proving deadly to sharks, one of the main issues with shark nets is their non-selectivity as, in the process of catching targeted sharks, they also catch other animals including turtles, rays, sea birds, dolphins, whales, and harmless sharks and fish.
Shark nets in New South Wales are 150 metres long and suspended below the surface 500 metres offshore. Shark nets in Queensland are a bit different: they include a surface set of buoys, are 4-6m deep in 12m water and are 186m long. Nets in New South Wales and Queensland nets have killed tens of thousands of sharks, including sharks that are otherwise protected by our own Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and international agreements, such as grey nurse sharks and white sharks.

Aerial drones can serve as an important tool for reducing the risk of shark bites on our beaches. Flying autonomously or piloted, drones can monitor beaches by scanning for sharks with image recognition software. Shark-detecting drones are already being trialled on New South Wales beaches as part of that state's shark management strategy, allowing for real-time monitoring of popular coastal areas. Where wave energy is low and drones may not be utilised, barrier technology such as the Eco Shark Barrier, a proven Western Australian development, may be used to form a complete enclosure, from seabed to surface and protect swimmers. The unique design of the Eco Shark Barrier creates a safe swimming area that blends into its surrounding environment – causing zero impact on wildlife.

Education and outreach about shark behaviour are fundamental means of helping to protect swimmers and ought to be part of any mitigation methods. By knowing that sharks are more active in certain places, like river mouths, and at dawn and dusk, the potential for encountering a shark can be minimised - helping to keep our beaches safer as well as protecting sharks. Sea Shepherd recommends signage programs in order to educate the public on shark behaviour and the low risk of shark-human interactions. Understanding the different risks associated with different species and conditions is key to this.

Personal protection devices such as the those that employ an electromagnetic field may be used to deter sharks in specific circumstances. Many new technologies are expensive to produce, test, and trial under scientific conditions. Therefore, Government has a role to assist in at least the scientific testing and trialling phases. Subsidies go a long way to helping reduce unit costs as the technologies become affordable on a wide scale. This has been done for a broad range of products that benefit people and industry and should be extended to these devices. This approach can greatly benefit local developers, businesses and of course end-users.

New technologies are emerging and should be explored as a means to an effective shark bite mitigation system. Shark Spotters is one such successful program. “Shark Spotters” is a network of human spotters who spend time surveying and monitoring the ocean for shark movements. This program has great benefits for the community both in the water and ashore. Sea Shepherd, with the assistance of local politicians and the team from South Africa’s Shark Spotters conducted a successful trial off Byron Bay’s Wategos Beach in 2016.

Read our interview with Sea Shepherd Apex Harmony Co-ordinator Jonathan Clark here.

“Unless we stop the degradation of our oceans, marine ecological systems will begin collapsing and when enough of them fail, the oceans will die. And if the oceans die, then civilization collapses and we all die.” - Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Founder.

Our globetrottersiraconlineusa X Sea Shepherd Charity Tee
Launches 9am AEST, Monday 08th June 2020
With 100% of Profits Donated to Sea Shepherd Australia