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There is no limit to mans cruelty to animals, exploitation of natural resources, and total ignorance of the balance of nature - not to mention what we leave, or not, for the coming generations. The list of environmental crimes done by mankind is much to long to start on this web page, but as a dedicated scuba diver, I will focus on the survival of the aquatic life.
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Shark-fin soup
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You are not a gourmet if you order shark-fin soup on a fancy restaurant - you are actively participating in the slaughtering of tons of sharks, and the business is completely rotten! I'm well aware that some restaurants serve this course, and that there's not even a trace of real shark-fins in it... but you still support an industry hunting down sharks to extermination.
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Before you enjoy your soup, you should think about the fact that the sharks get their fins cut off, one by one. They're then thrown overboard, still alive, and disappears into the ocean without a chance for neither recovery nor survival. They will either bleed or starve to death, drown or be eaten by other sharks.
There are no numbers on how many millions of sharks that dies this way each year, but this cynical, nasty overfishing happens - fast, hidden and undocumented.
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Only a couple of countries has prohibited to fish sharks this brutal way - it's so much easier for fishermen wanting to earn easy money to just keep the fins and throw the body overboard.
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Most fins are being shipped to Hong Kong. Her they either end in the pots, or they are exported to exotic restaurants in other parts of the world - Shark-fin soup is a delicatesse in the worlds fashionable restaurants. Nowadays, warnings are given. The worlds appetite on this soup is treathening to eradicate several species of sharks. According to the UN organisation FAO, the yearly catch is in excess of 100 million individuals. In Europe, it's mainly
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Spanish fishermen catching sharks . In the period 1990-2000, the official Spanish catch was almost quadrupled, from 20 000 tons per year, to almost 80 000 ton/year.
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At the same time, the EU is the largest single exporter of shark-fins to Hong Kong, that by the way is only importer in the world that customs declare and thereby document how much they import. Hong Kong is, in this connection, a very good measure of scale. The South-Chinese port is estimated to handle between 50 and 80 percent of all shark-fins that are for put out for sale. It is disclosed that the figures Hong Kong states, is far higher than the figures stated by each exporting country. Scientists then asks themselves where all the extra shark comes from...
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Organizations like Shark Trust is putting pressure on the EU to make laws prohibiting cutting off the fins. They demand that all of the fish is brought ashore - today, 95 percent of the shark is wasted. EU's expertise is aware of the fact that several sharks are in danger of being totally exterminated. In the US, sharks have been protected from overfishing for years, especially one story got the nation on their feet:
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A participant in a fishing competition got a Tiger Shark on the hook, a Tiger Shark who's fins had been cut off and then thrown back into the sea. It was alive, but obviously totally helpless. The media headlines about the bleeding, suffering, animal got the American politicians to act immediately.
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20 years of mapping the catch of shark in the Northwestern parts of the Atlantic Ocean, from Newfoundland to the Northern parts of Brazil, reveals that seven of the eight species of shark watched, the stock had decreased by more than 50 percent. The exotic Hammerhead Shark was the most affected, the stock has been reduced by approx. 90 percent, but also the Great White, Tiger Shark and Reef Shark is in deep trouble.
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Of the eight types of sharks in the study, only the short-finned Maco has managed to mostly stay out of the soup industry, the number "only" decreased by 40 percent.
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An additional threat to the survival of sharks, is that they reproduce slowly. The Grey Shark, for instance, that can become more than 50 years old, can only survive as a specie if no more than 2-3 percent of the stock is killed each year.
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In the Mediterranean, an increasingly popular "swimming pool" for Norwegians on vacation, there are several types of sharks. 47 of the worlds approx. 500 types of sharks has been found there. Readers fearing
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to go in the water, there's no need to be afraid. Sharks are much more threatened by man through overfishing and pollution, than the other way around!
If you want to know more about sharks and man's threats to their further existence, have a look at www.sharktrust.org
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