Are you FINatical about Sharks?

The clock is ticking for vanishing shark species. You can join the race to protect them.

Shark fishing is largely unregulated around the world. Overfishing, bycatch and finning – the slicing of sharks fins and throwing away the body at sea - kills thousands of sharks every day.

Project AWARE helped close loopholes in the EU finning ban and secure international trade protections for eight of the world’s most vulnerable sharks and rays. But, to ensure the survival of sharks, stricter, enforceable controls are needed for more species at national, regional and global levels.

What is the Finathon?

Finathon is a swimming challenge for divers and non-divers to raise funds and awareness to protect vulnerable shark and ray species. My Finathon will be laps and a relay of Wraysbury Dive Centre. Put your fins on for sharks and get swimming to fundraise for their protection.

The first global Finathon launched in 2013 presented by Project AWARE, a non-profit organisation dedicated to protecting our ocean planet. My Finathon will help Project AWARE:

• Fight to stop shark finning

• Insist on full protections for critically endangered sharks and rays

• Negotiate stronger policies to ensure a brighter future for all sharks and rays

You can help Project AWARE

While there are many worthy charities to support, we want to encourage our diving community to support Project AWARE. While fundraising is an important part of the solution, encouraging sensible habits and behaviour are equally important to us – so even if you are not able to take part in our Finathon, helping us spread the conservation message is invaluable.

My Finathon Event

My local dive team of Instructors & Divemasters are leading the way in ocean conservation for others by taking part in the Finathon. My dive team members will promote our event and team fundraising page with their friends and family.

The event will be held at Wraysbury Dive Centre on Saturday, August 29th 2015 when the surface water temperature will be a comfortable 20 to 22 degrees. After diver training, we will change into wetsuits and with fins, mask & snorkel, we will swim in teams across the length of the lake. We will swim in groups of two or more and are aiming for an hour of continuous swimming. We run relay teams to share the swimming effort and the total distance covered will then be tallied for the whole team.

The event is not a race and you do not have to use fins. Our aim is to raise awareness, so being in the water and Swimming to End Finning is the key!

There is no cost for taking part, but we encourage you to do some fundraising or spreading of awareness about the event. Those taking part will be asked to sign a liability release available in the resources below.

Finathon Resources

• Team Fundraising & Registration Page. Please feel free to create your own fundraising page and share it with your friends and family. All members of the team can have their own fundraising page and these will count towards my team total. http://finathon.org/team/scubazone

• My personal Fundrainsing Page. http://finathon.org/vasproud

• Finathon Action Kit http://www.projectaware.org/resource/finathon-action-kit

• Finathon Liability Release for all in water participants http://www.projectaware.org/sites/default/files/Finathon%20AWARE%20Liability%20Release%202013.pdf