Recent Events

Brett Homme here again. I know it's been a while since I last made a blog post, but the reason why is because No Fins No Future and myself have been busy. So today I'm going to cover everything that's happened within the past three weeks or so. First off, on December 20, the lead instructor of the Zoo Academy and overseer of this group, Pat Purkhiser, myself, and the girl who handles most of the social media, Bailey Kustka (if you got to this post from Facebook or Twitter, she's the reason), gave a presentation to a handful of senators from Nebraska. The legislative resolution we wrote last year to ban the sale, trade, and possession of shark fins and shark fin products is set to go before committee soon, so we used that day to talk to the senators and try to convince them that passing our legislative resolution is a course of action our state needs to take. Overall, I think the presentation went really well. I believe that the pictures and videos that we showed them were really powerful, and that we made the senators (as well as the others in the auditorium) really feel the effect of this atrocity that takes place. I think we helped convince them that, although Nebraska is a land-locked state, the effects of the ocean ecosystem becoming unbalanced will be felt everywhere, not just in coastal states, and that every little bit we do to prevent that from happening helps.

This first link is a link to the the website of the news station where they showed this on TV: http://www.ketv.com/page/search/htv-oma/news/local-news/students-fight-to-ban-shark-fin-products/-/9674510/23594012/-/lbnsqh/-/index.html

This second link is a link to the newspaper article that was published in the Omaha World Herald: http://www.omaha.com/article/20131220/NEWS/131229834


The next thing that happened was winter break for schools. I don't believe there was any important news regarding shark fins or shark fin bins that happened. However, we came back from break on Thursday, and this past Saturday, January 4, myself and several other students and past students from Zoo Academy attended a presentation held by Dr. Alex Antoniou, the founder of the organization Fins Attached. Dr. Antoniou has been working with sharks for over 17 years, and once he started Fins Attached a couple of years ago with a few others, he has been travelling down mainly to the Cocos, Guadalupe, and Socorro Islands west of Central and South America to tag as many sharks as they can to research where and how the sharks travel at various times of the year. From Dr. Antoniou, I learned about the equipment that is needed to help gather that information, as well as the actual action of tagging for different species of sharks.

This first link is to Fins Attached's website: finsattached.org

This second link is to a website that Dr. Antoniou showed to us where people can register and pay online for a course to become a shark expert: studysharks.org


The other important thing that happened recently was the legislative resolution that we wrote and sent to committee at the beginning of 2013 has been written as a bill and should be put before committee in the near future. If we're lucky, it will be passed this year and become a law.

Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/No-Fins-No-Future/284128625056139
Follow us on Twitter @NoFinning

If you wish to contact us directly, you can email us at zooacademy@yahoo.com