More than 100 million sharks are now slaughtered annually to fuel the shark fin soup trade. The soup is non-nutritive, expensive, and doesn’t even taste particularly good (yes, I tried it in China in the 90′s). It is served mostly as a status symbol at Asian weddings, formal functions, and high-end restaurants.
How is this fine soup made?
Shark fins are cut-off the sharks in a process called “finning.” The practice is wasteful, unsustainable and ecologically unsound. Here’s how it works: sharks are caught on long-lines (miles of line floating in the oceans, affixed with hooks and bait), brought to the boat, and have their fins are hacked off. Next, since shark meat isn’t worth as much as shark fins, the mutilated but normally live animals are thrown back in to the water to sink and die.
Sharks cannot reproduce fast enough to keep up with mass-production shark finning. In the Atlantic ocean alone, shark populations in many species have decreased more than 90% percent in the last 15 years alone.
I wanted to be a marine biologist for nearly 15 years, and if there is two things to remember about sharks, here they are:
– Most sharks don’t attack humans and have no interest in us whatsoever. I’ve dived with hundreds of sharks without incident.
– If you destroy apex predators (predators at the top of the food chain), the rest of the food chain topples soon thereafter.
If the oceans go to hell, so do we.
1. Boycott and Publicly Shame Restaurants That Serve Shark Fin Soup
Below is a list of Canadian and US restaurants that still serve shark fin soup. Boycott them, write to them, and — corporations hate bad PR — publicly shame them for inhumanely slaughtering sharks, using blogs, tweets, Facebook, e-mail, or whatever you have.
Calgary
New Dynasty Restaurant, Crowfoot 150 Crowfoot Crescent N.W., Unit 201, Calgary AB
PH: 403-239-3300 FX: 403-239-3360
New Dynasty Restaurant, 28th Street 575 28th Street S.E., Bay 15, Calgary AB
PH: 403-248-0061 FX: 403-248-9133
New Dynasty Restaurant, Country Hills 388 Country Hills Blvd N.E., Unit 400, Calgary AB
PH: 403-226-5828 FX: 403-226-5305
US
http://www.awionline.org/ht/d/sp/i/22720/pid/22720
*This blog was written by Tim Ferris