The demand for shark fins is helping to fuel dramatic shark population declines and pushing some sharks toward extinction.
Most shark fins come from a process called “finning,” where the fins and tails are cut from living sharks, and the remainder of the fish, which is often still alive, is thrown back into the ocean. Mutilated and no longer able to swim, sharks thrown back overboard then sink to the bottom of the ocean, bleeding, drowning, and eaten by other species. This practice is ruthlessly efficient because it enables fishing crews to throw out low-value unmarketable shark carcasses and retain space for only the high-value marketable fins.
Sharks continue to be slaughtered for their fins even though the practice of finning is illegal in federal waters.
Driving this market for fins is shark fin soup, an often very expensive dish associated with affluence. Shark fin itself has neither taste nor nutritional value, but gives the soup a gelatinous texture. Unfortunately, the ingredient is very high in mercury and the FDA warns that it could be dangerous to consumers’ health.
Now scientists warn that shark populations cannot sustain these current slaughter rates driven by the demand for shark fin.
In the past 15 years there has been an 89% decline in hammerhead sharks in the Northwest Atlantic and a 99% decline of oceanic whitetip sharks in the Gulf of Mexico.
What makes matters worse is sharks cannot reproduce as quickly as other fish. Sharks reach reproductive maturity after ten or more years. This makes it even more difficult for sharks to recover from relentless overfishing.
For over 400 million years sharks, the ocean’s top predator, have kept populations of other fish healthy and in proper proportion for their ecosystem. Their depletion will tip this delicate balance and cause long-term damage to an ocean full of species that sustain local economies, provide jobs and feed billions of people. In fact, scientists have already begun to record ocean ecosystem health risks as a result of shark declines.
Unfortunately, current laws that ban the practice of shark finning are insufficient to save sharks. Federal law does not ban the shark fin trade and so sharks continue to be slaughtered for their fins.
Hawaii has banned the trade in its state, and other states like Oregon are in the process of banning the trade. Sharks, and ultimately the health of our ocean, will continue to be in peril until we enact laws to stop the trade.
California represents a significant market for shark fins in the United States, and this demand helps drive the practice of shark finning and declining shark populations.
According to a 2005 report to Congress by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), San Diego and Los Angeles are two of the top United States entry points for shark fin imports.
Shark Fin Is Toxic & Threatens Asian Pacific Islander Health. The director of Mote Marine Laboratory's Center for Shark Research in Sarasota, Robert Hueter, spent five years studying samples from a variety of shark species caught off the coasts of Florida, including the two most-popular commercially-caught species. He found that for the 124 sharks that they sampled, approximately one-third of them came in with mercury levels that were over the Food and Drug Administration's action level of one part per million.
Shark Fin As Medicine Is A Myth. The results of a study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, and led by Dr. Charles Lu of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology on June 2, 2007 in Chicago and found that cancer patients treated with extracts from shark cartilage had a shorter median lifespan than patients receiving a placebo.
Arguing That A Shark Fin Ban Discriminates Against Chinese Diminishes The Community’s Credibility On True Civil Rights Issues. Opposition claims that AB 376 is discriminatory are based solely on political convenience, not fact. The ban on shark fin is a necessary measure to remove the unique and immediate threat that shark finning poses to ocean health, NOT because shark fin soup is associated with a specific ethnic community or custom. APA organizations and community leaders with decades of work defending civil rights and fighting against racial discrimination are in support of AB 376.
Other Helpful Links:
The Monterey Bay Aquarium
The Kerolus Center
The Aquarium of the Bay
The California Academy of Sciences
The Humane Society International
