Sinful Scoop

Shark finned. A gargantuan amount of sharks that were killed for their fins and thrown back to sea. Photo Credit: Tree hugger

 A must-have dish in Chinese weddings and an all-time favorite dish among Singaporeans, it is the shark fin soup. Not only in Singapore but in china and Hong Kong, shark-fin soup is regarded as a delicacy and status symbol.

It is very sad that while enjoying every spoon of this soup, sharks are finned and thrown back in the sea where they die miserably and even worst extinct from their own kind. It is such a pity to let them suffer alive. Fishermen catch them to get their fins and leave those sharks to die in pain in the ocean. It is not fair to let them suffer as they are animals and they do feel pain just like us, human beings.





Seventh Generation is a campaign against shark finning and they aim to protect and conserve the shark species. In an interview with Stefanie Brendl, a shark diver, adventurer and conservationist said,

“Shark finning is a horrendous, cruel and wasteful practice that is squandering a resource. Sharks are caught on hooks. They are then pulled out of the water, their fins are hacked off and the bodies thrown overboard. Alive! The shark then sinks to the bottom and basically suffocates or gets attacked by other animals and eaten. Sharks do not grow back their fins. Finning is a death sentence. Up to a hundred million sharks a year are killed for finning! Think of this number consisting of large sharks, giant animals. That resource is completely wasted. Big fleets are sweeping through an area and take out whole populations of sharks. They often take a whole generation, and if they take out a generation of breeding animals, that group of sharks will not recover for decades. They do not reproduce, like tunas, by the millions, they have a litter of maybe six to ten pups every year and a half. It is an ecological disaster on a huge scale, but people are not aware of it because it is going on underneath the ocean and furthermore, people don’t seem to care all that much. Shark finning is pursued all over the world where there are sharks, even in the most pristine areas.”

Dead. Sharks left to die and drown without their fins. Photo Credit: Blue Life Conservation

Shark protection is a vitally important cause if we wish to maintain a healthy balance in the world's oceans. Thanks to shark diver Stefanie Brendl, the Anti-Shark Finning law in Hawaii, has inspired similar legislation in other US states, as well as Malaysia, Hong Kong, Guam and several other Pacific Island Nations.

Apart from that, sharks are very important to maintain a healthy balance in the worlds' ocean. A healthy and abundant ocean depends on predators like sharks keeping ecosystems balance. 

I think that we should all keep this in our mind and stop eating shark fin soup. We should influence people around us to stop consuming shark fin soup. After knowing how the sharks are left to suffer I played my part and stop eating shark fin soup, what about you?

Photo Credits: Hyper Vocal

For more information and how you can help, visit Seventh Generation or Blue Life Conservation .