For your chance to win a £25 PureFishing (Penn, Abu Garcia and Shakespeare products amongst others) tackle voucher follow the link below and tag yourself anywhere in the photo on the SSTP’s Facebook page!
A winner will be drawn at random on Friday 20th April 2012, good luck!
Click Here – SSTP Tag & Win Competition 2!

Remember to “Like” the SSTP’s Facebook page for up to date news and information about Scotland’s sharks! – http://www.facebook.com/scottishsharktaggingprogramme

The Manx Basking Shark Watch (MBSW) tagging project, which has successfully tagged and tracked 18 sharks since 2007, is under threat due to a lack of funding.
The project, which aims to gather data on the movements of the enigmatic ocean-going giants has so far uncovered important and previously unknown behavioural patterns that have helped shed new light onto the lives of the world’s second largest fish species.
When the data collected was studied it was found that of the 18 fish tagged, 17 stayed within Manx waters and the Irish and …

The Statutory Instrument (SI) to protect Scotland’s sharks that recently came into force has given common skate, tope and porbeagle the highest levels of protection in Scottish waters. Incredibly, it has taken 40 years to get successive governments and fisheries managers to recognise the impact of excessive commercial exploitation and act.
In our last SSTP newsletter we highlighted the fact that we intended ceasing new tagging of common skate in Loch Sunart, The Sound of Mull, The Firth of Lorne and The Sound of Jura later this year.
However as a result …

More than 2000kms away from where she was tagged during Sharkatag 2010 – tope number 3044 was recaptured off the coast of Portugal.
As we reported recently, tope have now joined common skate and porbeagle in having the highest levels of protection in Scottish waters; returns like this show it is time for the EU to step up to the mark and extend similar protection for them in all European waters.
Thanks to the guys down at the Instituto de Investigação das Pescas e do Mar (IPIMAR) – the governmental research organization …

Last summer the Manx Basking Shark Watch (MBSW) team on the research vessel Happy Jack deployed 3 satellite tags on basking sharks in Manx waters. These tags have all now popped off the sharks as planned and have streamed their data to the Argos satellite system.
Full analysis of the data will take a few months but the pop-off locations indicate that the sharks have been over-wintering in the same grounds as most of their other tagged basking sharks.
One however, crossed the Atlantic and went all the way to Canadian …

Consultation Start: 27 March 2012 – Consultation End: 18 June 2012
This is a joint consultation between Defra, the Northern Ireland Executive, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government and on the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).
The Directive requires Member States to take measures to achieve or maintain Good Environmental Status (GES) for their seas by 2020.  GES involves protecting the marine environment, preventing its deterioration and restoring it where practical, while using marine resources sustainably.  The Directive is very wide-ranging and sets out eleven descriptors of GES …

Why Shout for Sharks this April?
Highly sought for their fins, meat, oil, teeth and cartilage, sharks have a high price on their heads.
Demand for shark fins, inadequate fishery management and virtually non-existing regulations for almost all shark trade are pushing many shark species to the brink of extinction – nearly one out of five shark species is classified by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) as Threatened with extinction.
That doesn’t even include hundreds of species (almost half of all sharks) whose population status cannot be assessed …

This week the European Union endorsed tighter shark fishing rules to ensure fishermen respect a ban on slicing off the fins of their catches and throwing the live body overboard to drown.
The EU has prohibited shark finning since 2003, but an exemption allows fishermen with special permits to remove the fins from their carcass out at sea and bring back the remainders together or land them in different ports.
EU fisheries ministers meeting in Brussels endorsed a European Commission proposal that would force fishermen to bring sharks to port intact. The …

The demand for shark fin soup in Asia is probably the major cause of the alarming decline of blue sharks off the British coast and much of the Atlantic, the authors of a new study claim this week.
Scientists from the UK and Portugal have tracked the ocean predators to busy fishing grounds, where they believe they are being deliberately targeted by fishermen with "walls of death" from long-line fishing that can stretch as long as 100km.
Blue sharks are thought to be the most frequently caught shark species, with population declines …

This year we have a specific focus on expanding our educational outreach programme.
We are looking to take advantage of the vast knowledge base which has been accumulated by our community in order to create a wave of respect for the marine environment amongst others. To do this we need to train volunteers to deliver our material in a safe and enjoyable manner.
We are offering you the opportunity to become a Dreamstore Level 2 Coach.
It’s free – The cost of the course is covered.
We have secured a number of places …