{"id":862,"date":"2014-10-07T05:28:10","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T05:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/?p=862"},"modified":"2014-10-07T05:28:10","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T05:28:10","slug":"right-on-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/?p=862","title":{"rendered":"Right. ON!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>From Take Part:<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.takepart.com\/video\/2014\/10\/06\/catching-shark-finners-act?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2014-10-06\" target=\"_blank\">Catching Shark Finners Red-Handed<\/a><\/p>\n<p>How do you catch poachers in Costa Rica who cut the fins off sharks, throw the animals overboard to slowly die, and then sell the body parts to Asian restaurants that make shark fin soup?<\/p>\n<p>One way is to surreptitiously attach satellite tracking devices to suspected poachers\u2019 boats while they\u2019re docked in port. Then track the vessels to a protected marine preserve 500 miles offshore, and sneak up on the poachers under the cover of darkness to video them violating national law.<\/p>\n<p>This is precisely what happened on the final mission of The Operatives, the series that wrapped up its first season Sunday on Pivot TV, the television network owned by Participant Media, TakePart\u2019s parent company.<\/p>\n<p>Pete Bethune, the Operatives\u2019 leader, gives a wrap up of the mission to Costa Rica\u2019s Cocos Islands in his captain\u2019s vlog. (Check out the video above.) The ocean surrounding the Cocos, a national park, is home to one of the world\u2019s largest populations of hammerhead sharks, and that has attracted the shark finners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSharks are apex predators,\u201d said Bethune. \u201cThey take out the weak, old, and sick fish and help maintain the genetic strength of the species they predate upon. Remove all the sharks, and you take away a key element of the ecosystem that can lead to its collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Humans kill an estimated 63 million to 273 million sharks a year, according to a 2013 study.<\/p>\n<p>The GPS-tagged video the Operatives captured will be turned over to Costa Rican law enforcement authorities.  <\/p>\n<p>E. Fudd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Take Part: Catching Shark Finners Red-Handed How do you catch poachers in Costa Rica who cut the fins off sharks, throw the animals overboard to slowly die, and then sell the body parts to Asian restaurants that make shark fin soup? One way is to surreptitiously attach satellite tracking devices to suspected poachers\u2019 boats [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[190,23,42,189,28,59,8],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-costa-rica","tag-habitat-2","tag-ocean","tag-poachers","tag-science","tag-sharks","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenbelief.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}