There Are Better Ways to Save Sharks—Here’s How | National Geographic

my name is Jess Graham and I am a shark
researcher and responsible marine
lots of hammerhead sharks frisky seals
me shark huge yellowfin tuna massive
snapper I’ve never seen anything like it
I’m studying the effectiveness of marine
reserves on wide-ranging animals and the
first thing I did was I dived into the
policies I wanted to look at the laws
that were actually outlined to do this
so I quote unquote protection but
unfortunately one of the very very first
things I uncovered is that while we
think there are you know all these
protected areas and all these places in
fact a lot of these don’t have any laws
at all
they were never written we really need
to follow through and we really need to
make sure that these laws not only exist
but they exist to the effect that they
are protecting both the species and
think about the people that utilize that
area because they need to be enforceable
and if they’re not enforceable then they
don’t work then what’s the point to me
what’s key about creating impactful
policies and ocean conservation is
actually first understanding why you’re
creating the policy are we creating it
for a political win or are we creating
it because a species or area actually
needs protection I like to refer to that
as a responsible conservation so I feel
like as conservationists we need to be
more responsible about the policies that
we do create but then on top of that
that responsibility doesn’t stop once
the announcement is made it means that
we continue to show up and ensure that
the locals actually buy in then they
will then keep the gas on their
politicians to ensure that those are
actually upheld it’s awesome when we go
out and we make these commitments to
save a species but if there’s no
backbone there then it’s really kind of
useless right and that backbone mattered
to me and whether or not you know the
numbers of sharks or the numbers of fish
that we said we were protecting if they
weren’t being protected then then I felt
like a fraud and it doesn’t sound
glamorous but to me it’s really exciting
and fun it feels like exploration in a
way because you’re trying to look at
things through the lens of someone who’s
trying to break that law and you look
for loopholes and you look for for ways
that they can be improved so that you
can improve the lives of the animal
that need it and for the people who are relying on those resources