Shark fin soup

story by Melanie Reese

Sharks are typically feared by humans as bloodcurdling monsters that will devour anything and everything in sight. Yet according to Shark Savers, a program of WildAid, sharks only bite humans when they are mistaken for fish and typically flee after realizing the fighting prey is in fact not on its food chain. Instead, sharks tend to feed on the overpopulated and weaker fish that won’t put up a fight. But don’t worry, it’s possible that the fear of sharks worldwide will soon dissipate if sharks became extinct.

In fact, Vice News proved that every hour 11,417 sharks are killed and left to decompose on the ocean floor- and the sharks that are dumped aren’t dying peacefully or quickly.

Typically, the sharks are caught using harpoons and major nets. The sharks are then held down as their fins are cut from their bodies. The fins are kept for shark fin soup- a Chinese luxury food that proves wealth and social status and has become increasingly popular all around the world. This has increased the demand for the famous fins but not the shark itself.

 To have room for more sharks on the boats, the fin-stripped sharks are tossed back into the ocean alive.  Not only do sharks use their fins to balance and steer, but the fins allow sharks to move which is needed to breathe. Most sharks breathe by swimming with their mouths open, which allows water to pass by their gills. Without fins, not only do the sharks fall like dead weight to the bottom, but they slowly suffocate as well. But suffocation isn’t the only way that most sharks are dying; starvation and blood loss slowly kills the animal as well.

Annually, 275 million sharks are killed around the globe for 1-5% of their total body weight while the rest of the body is tossed aside.

“I don’t think that’s a very humane way to process an animal,” said junior Weston Trefz. “I know when I hunt, I eat as much of the animal that I can and I never shoot anything that I am not going to eat.”

All of this for shark fin soup- a soup in which taste comes from chicken and meat cooked in the broth and not the actual fins themselves. Shark fins are tasteless.

“I’ve tried the soup,” said Chef Low. “The soup is good, but the fin doesn’t do a whole lot for it because all you taste is the meat. It’d be like eating chowder and adding clam to it and it suddenly becomes clam chowder.”

A bowl of shark fin soup can cost up to $400- a cost that comes because the texture of shark fins is desirable and traditional, but not the actual taste itself. The desire of the texture of shark fin is greatly contributing to the disruption of the entire oceanic ecosystem.

Sharks are considered to be a keystone species. Keystone species are defined by National Geographic as species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend. When a keystone species becomes extinct,  the ecosystem changes drastically.

“I think shark finning is terrible,” said sophomore Brayden Yoder-Mulkey. “To hunt all of the sharks will destroy the whole ecosystem. If one part messes up, it can collapse.”

Sharks are large creatures that reproduce very slowly; they typically have 2-100 ‘pups’ a year depending on species and only some survive to adulthood. The sharks feed on fish that reproduce quickly and help to balance the fish that could overpopulate. In simple terms, the extinction of a keystone species will cause an imbalance in which the medium sized fish will overpopulate due to their switch from prey to predator. Sharks also feed on sick animals and carcasses, preventing diseases from spreading around oceans.

Shark fin soup is popular in countries all around the world, but is served at restaurants as near to us as St. Louis.

Ten states have moved to ban the use and purchase of shark fins.

Though it is illegal to hunt for sharks in U.S. waters, in most states it is legal to import from other countries with the major distributors being Spain, France and Norway, according to Fish Angels, a United States based charity.

“I don’t feel like the United States does enough for our earth and environment and so I think the government should make it illegal to buy shark fins,” said Maggie Durkin, Sr. “Especially since they don’t have flavor and honestly when you eat it, all you’re doing is expressing how little you care about the environment by helping to wipe out a species that has survived five mass extinctions.”

To help make a change, find and sign petitions all around the internet to ban shark fins from America. Find some at: http://www.stopsharkfinning.net/stop-shark-finning-petitions/