The recent natural history shark series by the BBC, SHARK was beautiful, spectacular and inspiring. All three episodes were a fascinating entry into their underwater world. The sheer variety of species, including the incredible ‘master of disguise’ the tasselled wobbegong, were striking, majestic and curiously beautiful. It’s a breath-taking tour around the world of the shark and the stingray. These animals are closely related and it’s not entirely wrong to think of stingrays as flattened sharks. SEA LIFE exploits both species.

This stunning and marvellous film of their enormous oceanic habitats, contrasts so dreadfully with the shamefully small tanks that SEA LIFE insist are suitable homes to these 400 million year old fish. In many of these drab containers, sharks are held captive so the paying public can stare and marvel as they do at orcas, belugas, lions and tigers in other cages and tanks around the world. Yet what the BBC taught, what truly inspired throughout SHARK was what real education and conservation means.

Masking SEA LIFE’s exploitation of animals are these two words, education and conservation. These words are used to justify the trapping of all the beautiful creatures they hold captive. Yet it will never justify what SEA LIFE do to belugas, sharks, stingrays and the whole magnificent host of ocean life they deem their own.

So, please, take some time to watch SHARK: enjoy and learn and cherish the fact you’re not wasting your pounds on supplying profit for animal exploitation. Watch thousands of sharks and stingrays swimming unfettered in enormous oceans, free of edges, of glass, of limitation. Then take a few minutes to remember what we’re fighting here: edges, glass, limitation. This is SEA LIFE’s pathetic version of the ocean, in sunny Blackpool’s SEA LIFE centre (right by the sea ironically) where you can visit tanks full of sharks and stingrays, tanks that are apparently their “home”, tanks that are called “natural”…tanks that are tiny….Please help us end the SEA LIES!