The Cruel Shark Finning Industry
Details about this 'delicacy' that is killing the sharks of the world.
Every year, about 100 million sharks get killed, after the fishermen catch them just to cut off their fins and then while these sharks are still alive, and they are tossed back to the sea to have a slow and agonizing dead. We are not counting here the hundreds of thousands of sharks that also get caught an incidental catch or by catch.
Why is this brutal and senseless killing of sharks happening? The reason is because several Asian countries, especially Hong Kong, have an insatiable appetite for shark fin soup.
Shark fins are used to make the "delicacy" soup. The reason is not the taste, but this is traditionally served in weddings and special ceremonies by wealthy people, so this shark fin soup is more seen as a "status" representation for the people that can afford it. One bowl of shark fin soup can cost easily 50 Euros, so this is not something than the average people can afford to consume.
Shark meat is not valuable and only the meat from very few shark species is taken by the fishermen, discarding all others. This is cruel and unsustainable, and the demand for shark fins is destroying all the shark fin populations worldwide.
No shark species gets exonerated from this brutality, and even the whale sharks which are the gentle giants of the sea, get killed for their fins. Many countries in the world are killing sharks at this very moment to supply enough shark fins to be consumed.
What CATCA-ACWF is doing to protect the sharks?
Our president has been lobbying since 2007 to get several species of shark's uplisted in the CITES Appendices along with her international shark colleagues, for the sharks to gain more protection and not be over hunted to extinction, but so far, China and some Asian countries allied by the powerful and wealthy Japan, quite often manage to win. What Japan does is corruption at the highest level, but unfortunately, CITES is not the first nor the last international conservation convention or organization that gets affected or dysfunctional because of the Japanese intervention, and their well known anti-animal conservation work. For years we didn't succeed to protect the sharks, until 2013.
At the CITES CoP16 in March 2013 our president alone secured a third of the votes to protect not one, but 6 shark species and the Manta rays with the heads of delegations on day 3rd! These shark species were: The Carcharhinus longimanus (oceanic whitetip shark), the Sphyrna lewini (scalloped hammerhead shark) with an annotation to delay the entry into effect by 18 months, with S. mokarran (great hammerhead shark) and S. zygaena (smooth hammerhead shark), the Lamna nasus (porbeagle shark) are now on Appendix II, and the Pristis microdon (freshwater sawfish) was transfered from Appendix II to Appendix I. The Manta spp (Manta rays) were included in Appx II.
Our President has also collaborated with Fin Donelly to ban the import trade of shark fins in Canada and help to achieve some local bans in B.C.
We have to stop this atrocity by creating awareness in our cities, regions, provinces, states and countries, to create effective bans on shark fin products, to reach an end of this shark massacre.
Here is a PDF report on this issue that CATCA made
last year (2012) to get more information on this
issue:
http://www.catcahelpanimals.org/94.html
