Darren Kindleysides - AMCS Director

Australia's endangered and threatened sharks continue to be relentlessly killed for their fins, including in our World Heritage Great Barrier Reef. As life on earth heavily depends on the health and stability of our oceans, damaging the fabric of our ocean ecology by removing the top predators is a threat to us all.

I call on you to make an urgent donation today to help protect the remaining 10% of our shark populations. With our oceans already under threat from climate change, we cannot afford to lose our sharks which keep the balance in our seas. Unless people like you are committed to solving these problems with us, nothing will change.

In some areas of the Great Barrier Reef our World Heritage shark populations are at extremely dangerous levels, with some species now as low as 3%.

Disturbingly, sharks such as the much loved and iconic hammerhead are still finned alive after being beaten over the head to stun them, then left to suffocate as they bleed out, piled on top of each other.

Worse still, tens of thousands of sharks are killed as a result of long line fishing and by-catch every year. Even the protected and critically endangered grey nurse shark does not escape being caught! Clearly, allowing such unsustainable fishing practices makes a mockery of the protected status for our few remaining endangered shark species.

You can make this a thing of the past. Together we can demand an end to shark fin exports. Your donation will support AMCS to dramatically increase our pressure on the Federal Government to ban all targeted shark fishing and stop servicing the shameful global shark fin trade.

Thanks to your support of our campaign so far State and Federal Governments have already agreed to meet with myself and our Marine Campaigner, Ben Birt this month. This is a good start but we still have a long way to go to protect our sharks and I can't do it without your continued support. Now is the time when your action will be most effective.

Together we stopped the incredibly inhumane practice of throwing the live shark, with its fins cut off, overboard. Public pressure resulted in a moratorium on whaling. Together, you and I can achieve the same result for sharks. Please make an urgent donation today. Thank you for any support you can give at this critical time, no matter how large or small.