I remember in primary school, one of my textbooks had a drawing of a shark underneath which was written "Eats fish, sometimes people". It was love at first sight; staring at that "monster" thinking it could swallow me in one bit gave me goosebumps of fascination. Popular media did not help at all: who has not shivered while watching the movie Jaws when, all of a sudden, a fin appears out of nowhere, drags a swimmer underwater, and the sea just turns red amidst screams and yells? I have come to realise though, over the years, that all of this is just mainstream sensationalism. Only about 50 to 70 human attacks, of which 5 to 15 are fatal, are recorded every year around the world, and most of them are cases of mistaken identity. By cruel irony, I learned that there were no man eating sharks, but shark eating men.
Every year, some 73 million sharks are killed for their fins. These are the principal ingredient for a Chinese broth, also flavoured with chicken or some other stock. Shark fin soup, a delicacy costing over $ 100 the bowl, is served on special occasions like weddings and banquets. With the growth of the Chinese economy, the soup has become more affordable, as more and more people are shifting from poor to middle class. Sharks are being massively slaughtered in the most gruesome ways to satisfy the demands of the fin market. They are simply pulled out of the water, their fins cut off, and the body thrown back at sea to avoid losing precious cargo space. Unable to swim but still alive, they drown and die or are eaten by other fishes. The situation is so dramatic that many species of sharks, especially the Hammerhead, are now under serious threat of extinction. In some, the population has dropped as much as 80% these last 50 years.
Most sharks are the apex predators- the ones lying at the top of the food chain- of their ecosystems. If they were to disappear, ecological disasters would certainly ensue. But this argument is an old one and statistics clearly demonstrate it does not ring in the ears of people. However, more importantly, a study performed by the US Food and Drug Administration found that mercury levels in shark fins were among the highest in commercial fish and shellfish. They were found to contain an average of 0.988 PPM (Parts per Million) of Mercury, about 1000 times higher than the average in Hakes (0.014 PPM). Mercury poisoning manifests itself in the form of sensory impairment, disturbed sensation, and lack of coordination. In an era where health hazards are more and more numerous, this should be a matter of concern.
Part of the irony of shark finning also lies in the fact that it is bad business. Unlike more common fish like tuna, sharks are not prized for their body meat; only the fins are consumed. Given that fishing sharks does require quite a bit of investment (because most of them are caught in open water), the fins have to be sold at very high prices for healthy profit margins. It is like travelling to the African Savannah and putting yourself through all the trouble of killing a lion in order to cut its tail off and sell it. Meanwhile your clever neighbour with better business acumen just went to the nearby forest, hunted out a boar and sold all of its meat! Another issue is that the market demand for shark fin is not that high since consumers are mainly from Asian countries. So yeah, good luck finding someone willing to spend a fortune on that lion tail!
But this begs a more important question: why do people consume an expensive piece of meat with high levels of mercury that has no taste?
Mainstream propaganda has often been quoted saying all kinds of nonsense about shark fin: medicine that can cure cancer, other therapeutic properties, an aphrodisiac... you name it. However, all of that is utter nonsense. Shark fin has very little flavour of its own. It only adds texture to the soup and the fins are often treated with Hydrogen Peroxide for that purpose. The only real reason why people eat shark fin soup is, to me, more subtle. The one characteristic feature of sharks that has given them this fallacious image of terrors of the oceans is their dorsal fins. People are eating the sensation, not the meat. Never-mind our oceans being plundered....
Fortunately, consciousness about shark finning is raising. Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming has pledged to stop eating it at a news conference in 2006. Finning is banned in the Eastern Pacific. In South Africa, known for its seas infested with Great White Sharks, shark fishing is banned. Moreover, South Africa has been able to conciliate ends by proposing a new activity: shark cage diving. People are placed in a cage underwater while a Great White is lured nearby with meat balls. Shark cage diving offers real sensation-that of being with a 6m long shark in open water-as opposed to shark fin soup. It is not the ideal ecological solution, but it is a good compromise between preservation and economy. This year, Hawaii became the first state in the US to pass a law that banned the possession, sale, and distribution (but curiously enough not fishing) of shark fins. Hopefully more countries will follow.
Sharks have patrolled our oceans even before dinosaurs walked on our continents. By contrast, it has only been about ten years since I read that one sentence which made me fall in love with them. They are an amazing species with fascinating adaptations, capable of detecting micro-currents only the most sophisticated lab equipment in my Physics laboratories at school could detect. However, today they are in great danger of becoming extinct because of us humans. I now realise that what I read ten years ago was wrong. What my textbook should have had was the picture of a man/woman underneath which should have been written "Eats junk, sometimes sharks".
