The Man Eating Shark
Written by
Sean Yap
Raffles Institution (Sec 4 2008)
Shark-fin soup, a much sought after delicacy in East Asia , and an important part of the Chinese culture. But how much are we willing to sacrifice in order to preserve such “culture”, a culture that harms both the sharks, and the people who consume them?
The history of shark's fin soup has always had it as a symbol of prestige and power. Shark-fin soup was just a regional delicacy in Canton , South China , until the late 1980s. The Beijing government had derided shark-fin soup as a symbol of elitism, but it ended this stance in 1987. Increased East Asian affluence quickly made shark-fin soup popular at wedding banquets, birthdays, feasts and business dinners, as a way of honoring guests. The demand has escalated astronomically in the last 15 years, and now it's a standard dish.
Hong Kong has roughly 50 percent of the global trade in shark fins. Entire streets there are sometimes lined with shark-fin shops; huge burlap bags brimming with shark fins are stacked into warehouses. There have even been evidence of illegal black market operations being based there, their actions extending to Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands .
The demand and reputation of shark-fin products mainly stems from the perception people have of sharks being the rulers of the sea, the top of the food chain, and thus, especially to superstitious people, should have many empowering properties when consumed. In certain parts of China , they even come in the forms of pills that supposedly prevent cancer. This is so as it is widely believed in China that since sharks do not get cancer, consuming them would pass this immunity on to you. The truth is, unfortunately, that sharks do contract cancer, and that the consumption of shark's fin actually brings much more harm to our bodies.
As a kind of food, shark's fin is actually tasteless. It's cooked for a very long time until the shark fin separates into needles of cartilage that look like clear noodles. The fin itself has no taste, but it's served with a broth of chicken, ham and shiitake that it absorbs. The only function of the fins is for texture. Shark-fin soup is traditionally regarded in Chinese medicine as a tonic. It is believed to be good at strengthening the waist, supplementing vital energy, nourishing blood, invigorating kidney and lung and improving digestion. Modern nutritionists find it rich in protein, and the large amount of gelatin contained can help the growth of cartilage.
But scientifically speaking, shark fin has little nutritional value--and, in fact, it may even be harmful to health over the long term, as shark fins have been found to contain high levels of mercury, some studies even showing examples of sharks having accumulated up to 20 to 30 years of mercury, being at the top of the food chain, and thus consuming many generations of fish that have each absorbed various amounts of mercury. This may lead to sterility, and possible birth defects in a fetus when consumed by pregnant women.
So now that we know what it shark's fin can do to people, what dangers does it pose for the shark population? There are about 400 species of shark, and many are used for their fins. Blue, hammerhead and silky sharks are the most highly traded in Hong Kong . Mako and thresher are also very popular, and great white is also used. All these species are found off the California coast.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization states that over 100 million sharks, skates and rays are killed every year. However, naturalists, environmentalists and marine biologists widely believe that is just half the total, because another half is unreported. This total threatens sharks because they reproduce slowly, more like mammals than fish. Some sharks only have 1-2 pups every other year, and they may take nine or more years to mature. As such, shark populations are quickly declining for example the dusky-shark population in the U.S. Atlantic has declined 90 percent.
Despite all this, shark fishing should not be made illegal as sharks are an important source of protein in certain parts of the world such as India and West Africa . The finning of sharks, however, should be banned. It's primarily the huge value for fins that endangers sharks - it's like a global gold rush. "Finning" refers to the practice of cutting off only the shark fins and discarding the body. Sometimes, sharks are dead when they're pulled into the boats, but often, they're still alive as their four fins are cut off with a knife. When they're thrown back into the ocean the sharks either bleed to death, are attacked by other predators as they are now helpless, or they drown, as sharks, unlike other fish, lack a swim bladder, and require constant swimming to keep oxygen passing through their gills. There have been many cases of divers discovering hundreds of dead finned sharks at the bottom of the ocean in huge shark graveyards.
Fifty percent of sharks are bycatch, meaning they're accidentally caught by boats that are looking for tuna, swordfish or other fish. Many of the boats don't want to keep the entire shark, so they just fin them. This greatly increases the amount of sharks killed, because fishing boats can hold enormous amounts of fins.
Despite the increasing demand for shark's fin, many young couples nowadays who are more environmentally aware are saying no to sharks-fin soup at their weddings. This is a positive and encouraging trend. However much more has to be done to further slow down the rate of finning, as the shark populations in the ocean are declining at alarmingly fast rates. In places such as Costa Rica where divers used to visit in order to view the schools of hammerhead sharks numbering to the hundreds, only about five are usually seen now, this big change only happening over a period of two years.
What is hindering the environmental message that many organizations are trying to send out? The main problems arise from traditional culture, due to the reasons mentioned above, and pop culture. Movies such as Jaws and Deep Blue Sea portray sharks as mindless killing machines. Cases of shark attacks are also heavily sensationalized. 2001 was dubbed the summer of the shark, when in reality only 5 people were killed in shark attacks that year. An average of 3 people are killed each year by sharks, over a hundred thousand in road accidents, and about 8 million by starvation. In fact a person is more likely to die from a lightning strike or by swarming bees than by a shark attack. The truth is, most species of sharks are very shy creatures which are more afraid of us than us of them. In most cases, shark attacks rarely stem from the shark wanting to eat a person, but rather due to a curious, exploratory bite. In the few cases of shark attacks that actually involve the eating of a person, it is because when viewed from below, our silhouettes very resemble that of one of the sharks' main sources of food – seals. Since seals are extremely agile, sharks tend to go for injured seals as they are a more “worth it” catch. Coincidentally, the splashing and movements of an injured seal near the surface, resemble very much those of a human swimming. As such mistaking the person to be a seal, the shark may attack and try to eat the person.
Overall, the declination of shark populations is a very worrying trend, and having nothing done soon and quickly could see the demise of a species that has remained largely unchanged over thousands of years, and a key player in the web of life in the ocean. The wiping out of sharks, one of the top predators at the top of the food chain, could bring about chaos in the ocean ecosystem that could in time even affect the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. The main source of food for sharks are smaller, plankton consuming fish. Without the sharks to control their numbers, they could reproduce out of control, greatly reducing the amount of plankton in the sea, whose photosynthesis contribute much to the amount of oxygen in the air. People now have to think rationally, and decide whether the preservation of a harmful culture made up by humans, or the preservation of a species whose loss could potentially damage the ecosystem permanently, is more important. People have to get past the nasty image that sharks have in the media; they are largely shy, misunderstood creatures, that even experienced divers have trouble getting close to. Sharks are no longer the predator. They are the prey.
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