Richard Branson teamed up with WildAid and swam with about three hundred sharks off of Cancun, Mexico to raise awareness about the horrors of the shark finning industry.
Three hundred may sound like a big scary number, but Branson wasn’t exactly swimming with Jaws. He took a dip with the whale shark, a species that can grow to be over forty feet long and is considered to be a gentle giant.
Branson said in a video about the issue, “Believe it or not, some people cut the fin off these beautiful, beautiful creatures to eat and throw the rest of the whale shark back into the water to die. It’s too sad for words.”
It’s estimated that over seventy million sharks are killed in this manner each year for their fins. Many species are facing extinction due to overfishing. Currently the whale shark is listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.