Dear ino,

When we told you that the Vermont Country Store was selling a cosmetic product known as "squalane"obtained from shark liver oil, thousands of you contacted the store. Thanks to you, they stopped selling the product. But WaveMakers didn't just flood the inbox of the Vermont Country Store, many of you also wrote to us -- furious about beauty care supplier Dr. Susan Lark and her enthusiastic promotion of products containing squalane from sharks. Well, you spoke up and we listened! We asked her nicely and made little progress. Now it's time to get Dr. Lark to change her ways.

On her website, Dr. Lark touts squalane for its ability to help skin "maintain its moisture and elasticity." She goes on to say that "the very best source comes from deep-sea Centrophorus sharks that live in the clean, non-polluted waters of Tasmania."

If Dr. Lark is such a fan of squalane - she can find it in a much more abundant source: olives. I'm willing to bet that her customers would prefer using moisturizers from olives instead of sharks.

Dr. Lark will tell you this product is okay because these sharks are caught incidentally in fisheries trying to catch other species but what she fails to note is that sale of this product supports the economic viability of very damaging, deep sea trawl fisheries and that these deep-sea sharks are some of the most vulnerable sharks in the world. They typically grow slowly, mature late in life and have only a few young during their long lives. As a result, deep sea shark populations are at extreme risk from exploitation and recover very slowly.

It's clear that Dr. Lark does not understand what it means to be selling this shark product, and she needs to hear from you. If she is worried about krill, way down at the bottom of the food chain, shouldn't she show the same respect for its counterparts at the top? Tell Dr. Lark she ought to leave deep-sea sharks alone. The health - and beauty - of our oceans depends on it.

For the oceans,
Elizabeth Griffin
Marine Wildlife Scientist