Project AWARE celebrates the recent shark finning ban for Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama waters and also but also on all vessels that fly their flags.

 
Recently, I delivered the AWARE Shark Conservation Diver course to a group of divers from Dive Centre Manly. For our dives we headed to Magic Point in south Sydney, a recognised grey nurse shark aggregation.

After seven years of unlimited dedication and leadership, Jenny Miller Garmendia, current Executive Director of Project AWARE Foundation, is leaving her position to resume her research and work in marine policy.
For the past seven years, Jenny led the Foundation through major growth and restructuring. Her accomplishments include the launching of the new Project AWARE in 2011 and a major initiative to engage the global tribe of divers in protecting the ocean planet.

Asked to imagine paradise many divers think of clear, tropical waters teeming with marine life. Throw in some big sharks to get the adrenaline going and we are in diver heaven.
Well there is no need to dream: divers can find their dive paradise in Australia’s Coral Sea, one of the last remaining places where large marine life is still found in abundance.
So it is extraordinary that a proposed new marine park fails to protect over half of the Coral Sea and leaves 90 percent of its coral reefs open to some form of fishing.  

Overfishing. Finning. Endangered. These are all words that we should not have to associate with global shark species.
“Accumulating science tells us that sharks are critical components to healthy and thriving marine ecosystems,” says Roger McManus, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Project AWARE board member.

Everyday divers can be ocean heroes too. The next time you complete a PADI certification course (or replace a lost certification card) you can become an ocean hero in one simple step: make a small donation to select the Project AWARE version of your card.
What happens next? You get a cool picture card to show off your support and 100 percent of your donation supports Project AWARE ocean initiatives to protect the places you love to dive.

For the past few months, we’ve observed how the new Dive Against Debris program is fairing with you, our fearless AWARE divers. We’ve been asking questions about the underwater data you reported and surveying divers to ultimately improve the program.

Auckland-born marine scientist Stephen Lyon is an unlikely candidate for the job of creating the world's largest shark sanctuary - he has had a crippling fear of sharks since age 5.

A researcher’s perspective by Christine Ward-Paige
As a scuba diver and marine biologist, my research uses scuba divers observations from around the world as a non-destructive way of gathering information on shark and ray populations (www.eShark.org). Recently, we assessed the value of such observations for analyzing trends in shark abundance and distribution.

Project AWARE is thrilled that Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) reached agreement last week in Bergen, Norway to list the globally threatened giant manta ray under CMS Appendix I and II.
The listing obligates CMS member countries to provide strict national protections for giant manta rays and their key habitats, and encourages concerted global and regional action among all Range States to conserve the iconic species.
The manta ray listing was proposed by Ecuador.