Petitions

Last month, I signed a petition to ban shark products on the U.S. Today, I signed 10 petitions for sharks all over the world including Europe, India, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. Some were to ban finning and other were to ban shark products, but it is all the same concept really. I put personal comments on all of them. On one for Australia, I put "Shark finning must stop everywhere, one country at a time". Sadly, most of the petitions I went to were nowhere near the goal (most had a goal anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 but only had a few hundred signatures), but they were closed. One had a goal of 10,000 but only had like 100 signatures, and it was closed. That upset me. There was one to ban shark finning worldwide with a goal of 20,000 and I was the first person to sign it. I couldn't believe that it had zero signatures! But I was proud to be the first to sign it. I signed one with a goal of 50,000 to ban finning in European waters, but I'm sure it will never reach it's goal sadly. But I am very happy and proud to have signed 11 petitions to ban the fin trade cycle as well as 1 to end the Japanese dolphin hunt in Taiji. I know that this has nothing to do with my blog, but I as a huge dog lover, also signed a petition to end the mistreatment of dogs in Bali whether it's being beaten, neglected, starved, stolen, or poisoned for meat.

Shark Finning Awareness in School

In 7th grade, we have seven periods. I have English first, and for some reason our teacher always makes us watch CNN Student News. Usually, we pick a topic from it and write about it but today, we just watched it for fun. Surprisingly, it talked about shark finning near the end of the video. It talked about how so many species were endangered and how important they are to us. It showed somebody handling dried shark fins and people in my class were like "Eww!" and one person even said "Poor sharks". The video showed some people getting the water with reef sharks and somebody in my class yelled out "Stupid!". One of my friends beside me said "What if it thought you were fish and tried to eat you?". "They usually won't bite anything bigger than themselves" I said nicely. After the video the same person who yelled 'stupid' said "We eat sharks, sharks eat us. So what?". I didn't say anything but I wanted to say "Look, sharks kill only like 5 people a year and we kill 100 million of them a year. That is so not cool." but I thought it was better to keep my mouth shut because she was kind of a rude person anyway and I didn't want to make her mad. I thought that it was very good that we saw that today in school though. I was just thinking a few weeks ago, "Wouldn't it be neat if the student news talked about threats to the ocean?". I was really excited to see it on there, not for me but so other people could see it. But of course, it didn't go into a lot of detail so most people probably won't think anything about it. But at least it's a start.

Video Post for both of my Animal Cruelety Awareness Blogs

I know that I give links to videos both my blogs, 'They Need A Voice' and 'Sharks Need Help!!!'. I understand that some people would prefer to avoid them, but you it is hard to make a difference when you don't know what's happening. Videos make me terribly sad, but the footage from The Cove was the first thing that I'd ever seen relating to my blogs, and it changed my life. Now, I'm an activist for my ocean friends that I've always loved. If you don't want to watch a video that I put a link to, please really try to gain the courage to do so. I didn't want to watch The Cove because I was worried about it depressing me, but my parents thought is would be inspirational for me. I never thought that it would change me, but it truly did. It made me cry, but sadness it sometimes what it takes to inspire people. I can still not stand to watch those Humane Society and ASPCA commercials, but those animals are getting tons and tons of help.

If you do choose to watch my video links, they will make definitely make you sad if you have a heart unlike all those scums that murder animals. And if they bother you a lot, don't just try to pretend that it's fake (something that I do sometimes) because sadly it is all too real.

This post is also visible on my blog, They Need A Voice (theyneedavoice.blogspot.com)