Fritz Koller

Unfortunately, the oceans are more exploited today than ever before.
Practices such as trawling or longlining are absolute outrages, and there is no justification for the unnecessary bycatch.

The greatest perversion, however, is finning, where sharks are slaughtered simply for their fins, which then end up as soup ingredients in Chinese restaurants, completely tasteless and, what's more, harmful to the human organism.

Do you have any special skills, experience or expertise?

• Sharks are indispensable as top predators for a functioning ecosystem. However, they have far too small a lobby because most people still believe that sharks are man-eating beasts.
• My first encounter with a shark was during a dive in the Philippines in 1999, it was a beautiful thresher shark. This encounter fascinated me so much that immediately after this trip I started to learn more about these animals - and at the same time to get involved in the conservation of this species.
• The small whitetip reef shark on its hunt through the reef; the longimanus curiously getting up close and personal; a school of scalloped hammerheads obscuring the view up to the sea surface; plankton-sucking whale sharks standing upright in the water next to me; a swift-as-an-arrow mako snorkelling; watching several great white sharks from the cage; the elegant thresher shark an arm's length away from me ... I really can't say which encounter was the BEST - every single one was a real HAILIGHT!

And which is your favourite shark?

Sphyrna lewini (lat.)

Bogenstirn-Hammerhai (dt.)

Scalloped hammerhead (engl.)