Europe is home to some of the largest fishing fleets in the world and their policies are a big influence in the international fishing restrictions in many regions of the planet.

This group is a nonprofit coalition of over 60 nongovernmental organizations dedicated to restoring and conserving shark populations by improving fisheries legislation in Europe.

Shark Alliance has the following main objectives:

• Cover the legal loopholes that exist in European regulations regarding the wasteful and unsustainable practice of shark finning.
• Ensure responsible, science-based limits to shark fishing in order to achieve long-term sustainability and ecosystem balance.

Shark Alliance Campaigns:

Defending the sharks

Defending the sharks: Help us to stop overfishing! You too can make a difference.

10 key factors on sharks and their conservation:

1. Sharks have evolved over 400 million years, appearing about 200 million years before dinosaurs.
2. Most of the sharks are particularly vulnerable to overfishing. Their populations take a long time to recover as subjects grow slowly, mature late in their life cycle and have low reproductive rates.
3. Scientists estimate that every year between 26 and 73 millions of sharks die because of international trade in shark fins.
4. Most European shark fisheries have reduced their own fishing resources. Despite this, there is a tremendous lack of regulation for shark fishing in Europe, at a time when the demand for meat and shark fins is rising.
5. One third of European populations of sharks and rays are classified by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) as threatened with extinction according to the criterion of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Vulnerable, Endangered or Endangered Critic); another 20% are at risk of entering this group.
6. The best way to end the practice of finning is to ban the removal of shark fins at sea, so that sharks will always be landed with fins attached to their bodies.
7. The EU has banned the practice of finning to all vessels but uses a fin-body ratio (ratio between the weight of the animal's fins and body weight) too complicated and excessive for action. This fact, together with the legal possibility of the boats to land shark fins and bodies in separate ports, makes the European finning banning laws the weakest in the world.
8. The European Union, lead by Spain, is a major exporter of shark fins to China and Hong Kong.
9. Shark fins are among the most expensive food product in the world, and it is valued at 500 euros per kilogram.
10. The EU agreed to develop a plan of action for shark protection in 1999, but only started to develop it in 2006.

European Week of the Shark 2008

The second edition of The European Week of the Shark took place from the 11th to the 19th of October 2008, and it hosted several events under the slogan "Protect our sharks. Now you can".

This initiative is promoted by the Shark Alliance and its members and represents a great opportunity for everyone to show their support for shark conservation, from scientists and the overall society to conservation organizations. During the European Week of the Shark 2007, organizations throughout Europe collected more than 20,000 signatures for a strong Plan of Action of the European Community for the conservation of sharks.

In Europe, most populations of sharks and rays are threatened by overfishing, and in fact, one third of these species are threatened with extinction. Nevertheless, much of European fisheries for sharks and rays are still not regulated and the practice of finning (removing fins from sharks and returning the body to the sea) finds in Europe the loosest banning laws in the world.

The CRAM Foundation was actively involved in spreading this message and collecting signatures for the petition of adoption and implementation of measures for the conservation of sharks at the European level. Throughout the week visiting schools and individuals in our Recovery Center received specific information on sharks, with special attention to the species of sharks and rays in the Mediterranean region and the main causes of decline that threaten the continuity of their populations