Hi, my name is Shark Stanley and I am a Hammerhead Shark. My friends, Reina the Manta Ray, Pierre the Porbeagle Shark, and Waqi the Oceanic Whitetip Shark, and I live on a coral reef. We are not only featured in a new (free!) children’s book called The Adventures of Shark Stanley and Friends, but we have been traveling all around the terrestrial world. People all around the world want to help keep all sorts of sharks safe from shark finning.

Shark finning is a brutal fishing practice that is very wasteful. Only the shark’s fin is hacked off, and most often the rest of the shark is thrown back into the ocean to die a slow and agonizing death. Shark meat needs to be treated and frozen right away, and most fishing boats don’t have that capability or are targeting other higher priced catches like tuna instead.

Humans around the world also would like to keep manta rays from being killed almost solely for their gill rakers. A specific part of a manta ray’s gill is used in a controversial new Traditional Chinese Medicine formula. Again, like finned sharks, most of the manta ray is not used after their gill rakers are cut off.

If you would like to help, print out a picture of me here (scroll down page) and take a picture with me anywhere in the world.

Shark Defenders would like to collect 5000 photos from all 177 CITES countries, and partner with at least 50 organizations or celebrities. CITES is the abbreviation for the “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora” and is an international treaty that regulates the trade of endangered wildlife around the world. There is a meeting of CITES scheduled for March of 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand.