This Soup Kills 73 Million Sharks A Year - Recipe For Extinction
- 5 years ago
Shark Fin Soup Destroys Shark Populations. All shark species most commonly found in shark fin soup are at risk of extinction. Demand for shark fin soup is so great that within a few short decades sharks have been dangerously over fished. Each year, tens of millions of sharks are killed with their fins destined for the shark fin trade. It is the demand for fins—much more than the meat—that is driving this unsustainable depletion of sharks. The value of fins is as much as 20 to 250 times that of the meat.
Sharks targeted the most by the shark fin trade are in danger of extinction
Based on reports of the highly respected International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the only international scientific body that assesses extinction risk for plant and animal species:
1/3 of all shark species are threatened with extinction.
80% of open ocean shark species frequently targeted in high seas fisheries are threatened or near threatened with extinction.
All 14 species of shark most prevalent in the shark fin trade are Threatened or Near Threatened with extinction.
Shark populations have dramatically declined.
Hammerhead, Silky, Oceanic, Sandbar, Shortfin Mako, Bull and Tiger sharks, all predominant in the shark fin trade, have experienced population declines of 90-99% in several areas where they were naturally plentiful.
Low reproductive ability makes sharks very vulnerable to overfishing
Most of the shark species that are regularly targeted for their fins are slow to mature, reproduce infrequently and only have a few pups at a time7. This makes it very difficult for sharks to recover from relentless overfishing.
The low reproductive ability of sharks is in stark contrast to most other fish that have evolved with higher reproductive abilities in order for their populations to survive predators. Sharks, on the other hand, had few predators for hundreds of millions of years until humans began to aggressively target them about 30 years ago.
Sharks have been feared hunters ever since people first observed them swimming in the vast ocean. Yet today, sharks are declining rapidly on a global scale because humans have replaced them as the ocean's top predators. One way that humans hunt sharks is by using a practice called shark finning. This is the process of slicing off a shark’s fin and discarding the rest of the still-living body, often by dumping it back into the ocean.
Many fishermen prefer to practice shark finning instead of bringing whole sharks to the market because the fins are far more valuable than the rest of the body, sometimes selling for as much as $500 a pound ($1,100 a kilogram). Instead, fishermen choose to keep just the shark fins—only one to five percent of a shark’s weight—and throw the rest of the shark away rather than have the less valuable parts take up space on the boat. The finned sharks are often thrown back into the ocean alive, where they do not die peacefully: unable to swim properly and bleeding profusely.
Sharks targeted the most by the shark fin trade are in danger of extinction
Based on reports of the highly respected International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the only international scientific body that assesses extinction risk for plant and animal species:
1/3 of all shark species are threatened with extinction.
80% of open ocean shark species frequently targeted in high seas fisheries are threatened or near threatened with extinction.
All 14 species of shark most prevalent in the shark fin trade are Threatened or Near Threatened with extinction.
Shark populations have dramatically declined.
Hammerhead, Silky, Oceanic, Sandbar, Shortfin Mako, Bull and Tiger sharks, all predominant in the shark fin trade, have experienced population declines of 90-99% in several areas where they were naturally plentiful.
Low reproductive ability makes sharks very vulnerable to overfishing
Most of the shark species that are regularly targeted for their fins are slow to mature, reproduce infrequently and only have a few pups at a time7. This makes it very difficult for sharks to recover from relentless overfishing.
The low reproductive ability of sharks is in stark contrast to most other fish that have evolved with higher reproductive abilities in order for their populations to survive predators. Sharks, on the other hand, had few predators for hundreds of millions of years until humans began to aggressively target them about 30 years ago.
Sharks have been feared hunters ever since people first observed them swimming in the vast ocean. Yet today, sharks are declining rapidly on a global scale because humans have replaced them as the ocean's top predators. One way that humans hunt sharks is by using a practice called shark finning. This is the process of slicing off a shark’s fin and discarding the rest of the still-living body, often by dumping it back into the ocean.
Many fishermen prefer to practice shark finning instead of bringing whole sharks to the market because the fins are far more valuable than the rest of the body, sometimes selling for as much as $500 a pound ($1,100 a kilogram). Instead, fishermen choose to keep just the shark fins—only one to five percent of a shark’s weight—and throw the rest of the shark away rather than have the less valuable parts take up space on the boat. The finned sharks are often thrown back into the ocean alive, where they do not die peacefully: unable to swim properly and bleeding profusely.