http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/1...ref=mpstoryview

Shark fin soup alters an ecosystem



By Lisa Ling
Special to CNN


KAOSHIUNG, Taiwan (CNN) -- There is no animal on earth more vilified than the shark. Pop culture references and annual, over-hyped reports of attacks on swimmers or surfers have put sharks on the top of the list of the world's most feared living things.
Shark fins

Nearly 100 million sharks are killed every year due to the enormous demand for shark fins to make shark fin soup.

There is however, a creature far more predacious than the shark: Humans.

Sharks existed before there were dinosaurs and they pre-date humans by millions of years. Yet, in a relatively short period of time, humans and their technological arsenal have driven most shark populations to the verge of extinction.

This is bad news for the world's oceans. Sharks are the top predator in the ocean and are vital to its ecosystem. The rapid reduction of sharks is disrupting the ocean's equilibrium, according to Peter Knights, director of WildAid International.

"These are ecosystems that have evolved over millions and millions of years," said Knights. "As soon as you start to take out an important part of it, it's like a brick wall, you take out bricks [and] eventually it's going to collapse."

When sharks attack humans, it inevitably makes news - it is a sexy story. What is rarely reported is that worldwide, sharks kill an average of 10 people every year. It's usually when people venture into a shark's habitat and not the other way around. By contrast, humans kill around 100 million sharks every year - a number that has ballooned in recent years because of the enormous demand for shark fins to make shark fin soup. Video Lisa Ling visits 'ground zero' in battle to protect sharks »

Shark fin soup is a delicacy reserved for the wealthy on special occasions and it has been part of Chinese culture for centuries. For years, only rich Chinese mostly in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore consumed it, so the impact on the overall shark population was negligible.

Over the last decade, the exploding middle class in China has changed the fate of the shark. With an unprecedented number of people making more money than ever, the demand for all things that signal an improvement in status is gargantuan. The ability to serve and consume shark fin soup is among the most revered of activities, because it signifies that one has made it.
'Battle Lines'
CNN's award-winning "Planet in Peril" series returns with a worldwide investigation. Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Lisa Ling take you to the frontlines of the battle over our natural resources.

Shark fin soup can be expensive. A bowl of imperial shark fin soup can cost upwards of $100. These days, shark fin soup is so fashionable that it's becoming commonplace. Buffets serve versions of it for as low as $10 a bowl. The irony is that shark fin is flavorless -- its cartilage has a chewy consistency. Tens of thousands of sharks are being killed for a gelatinous thing in a soup.

To satiate the appetites of upwardly mobile Chinese, fishermen traverse all corners of the Earth's oceans in search of sharks or, more specifically, their fins. Because space is limited on fishing vessels and shark bodies are bulky and not considered as valuable, fishermen often catch the sharks, saw off their fins and toss the sharks back into the water. Without their fins, sharks cannot swim and they sink to the ocean floor, where they're picked at by other fish and left to die. Photo See photos of Taiwan's shark finning trade »

The "Planet in Peril" crew traveled with Knights to Taiwan's southern port city of Kaohsiung, which is considered one of the world's main hubs for shark fins. We watched as the fishermen unloaded their catch. Thousands of fins were thrown from one of the ships that had spent months fishing the international waters of the Pacific.

Because of the sensitivity over this issue, few people were willing to talk to us.

Shark finning is not illegal. Taiwan has no law against fins taken from international waters coming into its ports. However, Taiwan does have what it calls a "plan of action" that requires the bodies of the sharks the fins came from to be accounted for and not dumped into the sea.

But at this port, we see more fins than bodies as a forklift scoops up large piles of fins and dumps them into a truck. There are no signs of anyone monitoring the weight ratio or making sure there's no illegal fishing of the five shark species protected under international treaty.

"The laws are weak and when you take the fins off, identifying these species is almost impossible," Knights said. "You can see they all look almost identical and yet they're makos and threshers and blue sharks; there [are] all kinds of species there, but identifying them and monitoring them and having a regulated fishery is virtually impossible."
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Taiwan is not alone. Shark finning thrives off weak regulations around the world and only a few countries demand that sharks arrive in port with fins attached.

Knights says it comes down to economics.

"The fin is one of the most expensive pound-for-pound item from the sea. And the beauty about the fin is that it's very compact ... it doesn't take up your hull and you can make a lot of money from it," said Knights.

Fins can sell for $500 per pound, according to WildAid, which is campaigning for a global ban on shark finning.

In recent years, Cocos Island has become another battleground in the fight to save the shark.

Located 300 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, the only way to get to this uninhabited islet in the eastern Pacific is by boat. Cocos Island, recently declared a national park, is a nearly pristine and richly preserved ecosystem where thousands of sharks have roamed for centuries. Scientists think there are more sharks there than any other place on Earth.

Fishermen come from all over the world to catch the sharks that swim around the island. It is illegal for fishing boats to get within three miles of the island, but the law is routinely ignored. On any given day, one can see numerous fishing boats no more than a mile away from the island.
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The fate of the shark is grim. Increasing public awareness of the shark's role in the marine ecosystem and the rapid rate of extinction because of the demand for shark fin soup may be the best hope for the shark, which has inhabited the planet for 400 million years.

"Can you imagine if it was Yellowstone Park and people were shooting up grizzlies? No one would ever get away with it. But this ocean, because it's out of sight, out of mind, [shark finning] carries on," said Knights

barb

There is however, a creature far more predacious than the shark: Humans.

that is bulllllllllllllll shitttttttttttttttttt

a shark compared to a human a shark will kill many many time more animals .

Hello Mr Admiral Sir. Thing is poor Barb thinks sharks eat turnips & carrots. She doesn't know a big assed shark only eats meat that requires hunting to effectively feed itself. Then again, she usually does leave a streaming pile of B.S in her wake.

watched Cnn's Planet in Peril last evening, the destruction and degradation of the planet is beyond sobering, children being born and raised in toxic environments their bodies filled with high concentrations of chemical pollutants affecting their nervous system and brain development, wholesale slaughter and carnage of other species, the shark fin industry is the most rapacious and revolting, sharks trapped on miles and miles hooked lines having their fins cut off and their bodies thrown back in the ocean alive, they can't swim so they drown and die, they showed the bottom of the ocean floor littered with shark carcasses, an entire animal obliterated for some small piece of cartiledge in their fin causing devastating waste, possible extinction and a eco-disaster for the oceans.

the day will come when nature has had enough of the human species and sets in motion forces to rid the planet of its scourge.

Humans are one of the mainstays of this planet. Funny how easy it is to use up the environment for your household and condemn the rest of humanity for their place in nature. The planet could care less about how it manages as it continues to undergo changes such as ice ages and loss of species. In fact 95 % of the animal species that do not exist today died off without any interference from man. It could even be that nature has as good a use for us and our changing manipulation of nature as a cooling ice age or a sweltering inferno.

We're never happy until we've used something up completely.

Or, until we get down damn near nothing and then its PULL OUT ALL THE STOPS to try to save a species.

We don't even care much for our own species.

We can't stay at the top forever unless we get a lot smarter.

Well, we've made boo-boo's in the past and probably some currently, but we're improving, bit by bit.

You prove you don't care for your own species every time you hate monger a Biolab Scientist using rats for Medical Research, Barb. To add to your hypocrisy you kill rats to feed to big birds yourself. Not a cognizant brain cell floating around in that brain of yours. You are like a major poster child for HYPOCRISY .

So you're saying we should be conservative in our killing of sharks for their fins?

Well at least cut the fins off them before you fire them at Big Bird. Makes it easier for him to pin the sucker to the beech.

BEIJING - Humans are stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and will need two planets' worth of natural resources every year by 2050 on current trends, the WWF conservation group said on Tuesday.

Populations of many species, from fish to mammals, had fallen by about a third from 1970 to 2003 largely because of human threats such as pollution, clearing of forests and overfishing, the group also said in a two-yearly report.

"For more than 20 years we have exceeded the earth's ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path," WWF Director-General James Leape said, launching the WWF's 2006 Living Planet Report.

"If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us," Leape, an American, said in Beijing.

People in the United Arab Emirates were placing most stress per capita on the planet ahead of those in the United States, Finland and Canada, the report said.

Australia was also living well beyond its means.

The average Australian used 6.6 "global" hectares to support their developed lifestyle, ranking behind the United States and Canada, but ahead of the United Kingdom, Russia, China and Japan. "If the rest of the world led the kind of lifestyles we do here in Australia, we would require three-and-a-half planets to provide the resources we use and to absorb the waste," said Greg Bourne, WWF-Australia chief executive officer.

Everyone would have to change lifestyles -- cutting use of fossil fuels and improving management of everything from farming to fisheries.

"As countries work to improve the well-being of their people, they risk bypassing the goal of sustainability," said Leape, speaking in an energy-efficient building at Beijing's prestigous TsinghuaUniversity.

"It is inevitable that this disconnect will eventually limit the abilities of poor countries to develop and rich countries to maintain their prosperity," he added.

The report said humans' "ecological footprint" -- the demand people place on the natural world -- was 25 percent greater than the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste in 2003.

In the previous report, the 2001 overshoot was 21 percent.

"On current projections humanity, will be using two planets' worth of natural resources by 2050 -- if those resources have not run out by then," the latest report said.

"People are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources."

RISING POPULATION

"Humanity's footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003," it said. Consumption has outpaced a surge in the world's population, to 6.5 billion from 3 billion in 1960. U.N. projections show a surge to 9 billion people around 2050.

It said that the footprint from use of fossil fuels, whose heat-trapping emissions are widely blamed for pushing up world temperatures, was the fastest-growing cause of strain.

Leape said China, home to a fifth of the world's population and whose economy is booming, was making the right move in pledging to reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five years.

"Much will depend on the decisions made by China, India and other rapidly developing countries," he added.

The WWF report also said that an index tracking 1,300 vetebrate species -- birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals -- showed that populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of factors including a loss of habitats to farms.

Among species most under pressure included the swordfish and the South African Cape vulture. Those bucking the trend included rising populations of the Javan rhinoceros and the northern hairy-nosed wombat in Australia.

Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Helsinki

© Copyright 2006 Reuters Ltd

http://www.countercurrents.org/en-blanchard251006.htm

Don't think of it as "destruction"... think of it as "strengthening the gene pool(s)".

You're right but is it enough? Is it too late?
I don't know.
I think the planet can heal from much of our stupidity but we won't stop until there's nothing left. It just seems to be our nature.

Sometimes the hardest thing to change in people is how they view things. Eyes can't be open till minds are.

You contradict yourself then, when you said "I don't know."

But your problem is that you are assuming the premise that has any human impact categorized as destructive. In line with what Dave said, how can you objectively consider it to be destruction?

Thank you for another in your continuing series of non-commital bromides.


Well I'm standing by a river
But the water doesn't flow
It boils with every poison
You can think of........

This ain't no technological breakdown
Oh no- this is the Road to Hell

Bromide, that's a good one. I called it "hot dog filler", yours is better.


Typically, the scientific view has been that the impact of alien invaders is by and large negative. (To the best of my knowledge anyway) Research is starting to reexamine that notion. This situation is seemingly a case in point.

I posted an article about that very thing this summer, BTW.
http://www.ethicdiscussion.com/discuss/ind...showtopic=12504

Bitching about invasive species is just personal prejudice shining through.

It's been a long and winding path getting there, but I’m starting to draw a similar conclusion. What is my own existence if not a foreign invasion? And it’s certainly not benign either. I’m trying to keep that fact in mind now.

I had this discussion at the other board with someone who was completely prejudiced against carp. He didn't seem to understand that the carp and their supporters have a POV too.

People seldom refer to the great number of pets and livestock prancing around the homestead as the invasive species that they are. Which lend a lot of credence your assertion that the use of the term is the result of bias.

Which isn’t to say that I’m exactly always head over heels about turning whatever loose wherever. But I’m willing to recognize that my objection quite probably a selfish one.

Good idea, oh Lord!

Course it's a good idea!

I thought my statement was warm and fuzzy. But there's no accounting for taste....least of all mine.

Yes, it was fuzzy. Our point.

Well, it least it was warm.

So is an accidental defecation.

And sometimes they're fuzzy, too.

Then you should quit licking your cat. He can do that for himself.

It all works back to cats eventually.

You licking your cat and consequently dumping warm fuzzies in your drawers hardly means the primary context here is "Cats".

geeze louise, doomsday must be coming! i gotta side with barb - put shrimp on the barbie - on this one. i think the practice of finning (catching a shark, cutting its fins off and them dumping the still live shark into the water to drown) and the overharvesting of sharks because the chinese are all of a sudden flush with cash is dispicable. taking out a top predator is stupid and is stupid for the ecosystem. besides reducing a magnificent animal, weakens the prey species. the past usa policy on wolves for example WAS SHEER STUPIDITY.

instead of eating shark fin soup, couldn't the chinese just eat melamine soup? if it's good enough for their babies of the poor chinese, i'm sure the wealthy chinese should be more then content to get their "protein" from melamine rather than shark fin.

What policy was that?

You know RF & XXMag, you 2 are like long lost soul mates. I sometimes haven't a clue what you go on about half the time but you boys sure are in tune like Liberace's piano.

Kinda like Barb and Bubba.

How come the obvious conclusion hasn't been made?

Now I'm just talking to myself.

You're the same person?

Seriously, what obvious conclusion? You're married?

See? XXMag got it.

Weird, ain't it?

How many times has "XXMag" complimented me on my stunning abilities and how many times have I complimented him?

Trifle suspicious I think. I recall how Barb's alter-egos used to praise one another.

So I guess the only question left is whether I am RF or RF is me.

Edit: So I guess the only question left is whether I am RF XXMag or RF XXMag is me RF.

Thank goodness there’s only one of me. If I had a doppelganger I’d probably get arrested for beating myself up.

Two androgynous turkey killers with a mutual interest in public waste disposal and civil war battlefields show up on the same sparsely populated forum.

What're the chances?

All my other personalities are in jail right now. The only one left on the street is me and I is still looking for the dirty rat that shot my Paw. Haven't walked right since.

Well I have to go get some tires put on my *ahem* wife's car. Since I am going to be absent, any XXMag posts...or absence of XXMag posts...will constitute proof.

Right?

You forgot one similiarity. Wordsmiths. Oh and I think you both call your old ladies old ladies.
Calling yours a wife just now...nice try.

Wordsmith is a bit lofty a description for me. I like to use obscure vocabulary words for sure (at this point mostly because I know it aggravates you). But stringing those words together in any profound or even sensible way? Not so much.

I can really torture you. Every year my wife gets me a desk calendar for Christmas. This year it’s arcane and forgotten vocabulary words. I could use words that aren’t in the dictionary and so esoteric as to seem like gibberish (more so than usual). That sounds like fun for everyone involved. Today’s word is Tissick: a faint tickling cough.

I got it just didn't buy it.

Go ahead. Torture me. I love learning new words. Just wish I could learn to remember them.

Named after the tissick bug which lodges itself on the tonsils and spins its wee liddle legs & feet up and down ones tonsils in an effort to escape a trip down the abyss known as the human stomach slide where it would surely die of drowning. .

XXMag wrote:

So now you still can't be sure.

You guys are tryin to trip me up. PM much?