Shark’s fin soup is a traditional Chinese delicacy that is popular at celebratory occasions such as the Chinese New Year, as well as a weddings. Available at many “high-class”, pricey Chinese restaurants – often as part of some 7/8-course set meal – it is considered a luxury dish and also a status symbol of sorts. If you can order shark’s fin at a meal with your friends, it shows everyone that you are rich enough to afford it. As the middle class of China expands, so has the demand for shark’s fin soup in China. The same is also happening in Singapore, which is one of the largest ports for shark’s fin trade in the world.
However, the production of shark’s fin soup is a gory, brutal story, and the subject of controversy all over the world. To get shark’s fin, sharks are trapped and caught by fishermen. Their dorsal fins are then cut off, and the still-living shark tossed back into the sea (so as not to take up valuable space on the boat).
A shark’s fin is like what arms are to humans. Without their in, they are unable to swim, and without their normal movement their gills are unable to take in oxygen. They then sink slowly to the bottom of the sea to die a slow death, or get attacked by other sea creatures.
If you go to Google Images and search “shark finning”, the photos that come up will simply break your heart. So much cruelty, death and pain, just so people can show off to their friends and family over dinner.
To make things worse, not only is shark finning animal abuse, sharks are being killed in such large numbers each year that it is having an adverse effect on the marine eco-system.
By itself, shark’s fin is tasteless. It is actually nothing much more than cartilage. The nutritional content of shark’s fin soup is not that much more than the nutritional content of a vegetable soup, and even so the nutritional value comes from the vegetables, not the fin.
Project: FIN is a Singapore-based non-profit organisation that is part of the Global Shark Initiative that hopes to increase awareness about shark finning, and to get more people to oppose the cruelty that is carried out on millions of sharks each year.
Some countries like the United States and New Zealand have put in regulations on shark finning. However, as far as I know, Singapore doesn’t have any such regulations, because we don’t really have shark finning in our seas – we are just a port for import/export. The best way, then, would be to educate the public, and make people aware of the horror of shark finning, and to get them to boycott shark’s fin soup.
Februar 17th, 2011
There is another petition started to ban shark finning & fishing in Thailand – Thailand is now ranked 10th as a country that catches and fins sharks!
