Shark catching drives species to extinction

Last year six people were killed by sharks worldwide. Multiply that number by more than 12 million and you get close to the number of sharks killed for human consumption each year.

via CNN.com.

UN shark conservation plan has failed, says report

A headline-making UN scheme to preserve the world’s sharks has been a resounding failure, according to a report on Thursday that pins the blame on Indonesia, India, Spain and Taiwan and 16 other major catchers of the fish.

via AFP.

Don’t eat endangered animals this Chinese New Year

Originally posted on miyagi.sg

Give shark’s fin a miss – you’re really eating chicken stock and cartilage anyway. Don’t listen to people who say all those stories about fishermen cruelly slicing off fins and dumping the shark back in the sea are false. You tell me, what do they really do with the rest of the shark? (OK, fish and chips, fish fingers, cat food… yes, I looked it up. But still!?)

I’m not sure what else we eat during Chinese New Year that are on the protected list, but please pause and ponder, because even if we Chinese are not the only ethnic group that thinks along the lines of “the more endangered it is, the more prized the delicacy”, we certainly are the largest ethnic group on the planet.

There’s a Facebook Group called Project:FIN and it aims to stop the consumption of sharks’ fin by debunking and questioning the very reasons we consume it. E.g.:

It is questionable why we are paying so much for a “delicacy” that we don’t even know what it actually taste like. Simply because the fins are tasteless. What we are actually enjoying, is the taste of chicken / pork stock, alongside other ingredients that gives flavor to the dish. And to think that the insistence of buying tasteless food and paying for them at ridiculous prices, is a mockery on its own.

Join it, spread the word, and help finish the fin trade!