我不吃鱼翅 (google image)

Shark fin soup symbolizes generosity and good fortune, which also has become an expected component of Chinese weddings. In fact, shark fins are tasteless and may contain high levels of toxic methtl-mercury, which can damage to human central nervous system and causes birth defects in infants.

Harvest of shark fins is the destruction of shark populations around the world and causing untold damage to the oceans. By removing large numbers of these top predators from our oceans, it destabilizes the whole ecosystem and has a detrimental effect on the marine environment and our fish stocks.

The high market demand for shark fin is currently the main driver of unsustainable fishing for sharks globally. No demand no supply! We can do our part by saying NO to shark fin soup during wedding banquets, and encouraging our friends or family who are getting married to exclude shark fin soup from the menu.

May all beings be happy.

The post Saying NO to shark fin soup on weddings appeared first on juesatta (CJ Photography).

Supporters of the Hong Kong Shark Foundation march along a street to raise awareness for sharks killed each year for their fins, in Hong Kong on September 25. (image by AFP/Getty Images)

HONG KONG — One of Asia’s most prestigious hotel chains said Monday it would stop selling shark fin from January, in a move hailed as a historic breakthrough by campaigners to protect the threatened predators.

The owner of the Peninsula Hotels group said the decision was made “in recognition of the threat facing the global shark population and in line with the company’s sustainability vision”.

“The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd., parent company of The Peninsula Hotels, today announced that it will stop serving shark fin at all its group operations, effective 1 January 2012,” the company said in a statement.

The company will honour banquet bookings involving shark fin products made prior to November 21, it added. Shark fin soup is an expensive staple at wedding parties and business banquets in the Hong Kong hotel.

Peninsula operates nine hotels including in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo and New York.

Chief executive officer Clement Kwok said: “By removing shark fin from our menus, we hope that our decision can contribute to preserving the marine ecosystem for the world’s future generations.

“As Asia’s oldest hotel company, we also hope that our decision will inspire other hospitality companies to do the same and that our industry will play a role in helping to preserve the biodiversity of our oceans.”

The ban was announced as the European Commission called for a full ban on shark finning at sea — the practice of slicing off the valuable fins and throwing the body overboard to drown.

Environmental activists have long campaigned for governments to ban or severely restrict the sale of shark fin, commonly used in soup which is regarded as a delicacy and health tonic across much of Asia, especially China.

WWF-Hong Kong says the consumption of shark fins is a driving factor behind the threat to shark populations, with more than 180 species considered threatened in 2010 compared with only 15 in 1996.

An individual serving of shark fin soup includes about 30 grams (one ounce) of fin, and a 12-person bowl sells for HK$1,080 (about $140).

A kilogram (two pounds) of premium dried fin can fetch up to HK$10,000 on the street in Hong Kong, or as little as HK$200 for fins of lesser quality.

The demand is such that Hong Kong is the global focus of the shark fin trade, with WWF estimating that around half of the world?s fin catch passes through the city.

“Hong Kong is the global shark fin capital,” WWF shark conservation programme officer Silvy Pun said, adding that this made Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels’ decision all the more important.

“We think that this is a very brave act and it can inspire others to follow,” she said.

Claire Nouvian, founder of the Bloom Association for marine conservation, said: “I view this as a historical tipping point in Hong Kong and sure hope it will spur change amongst other leading hotels in Hong Kong and its vicinity.”

About 73 million sharks are killed every year, with Hong Kong importing about 10,000 tonnes of fins annually for the past decade, WWF said.

Shark fin soup is regarded as an important status symbol for hosts wanting to demonstrate their wealth in Chinese banquets, and is believed to have various health benefits in traditional medicine.

A Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels spokeswoman would not comment on how much shark fin the chain sold in a normal month. She said commercial considerations were not central to the decision.

“Shark fin is only a small part of the food and beverage selection that we offer to our guests,” she told AFP, asking not to be named.

“Obviously the adoption of this policy will have some revenue implications but this is a challenge and we are happy to acknowledge that we are doing the best thing for the environment.”

November to January is seen as the peak season for shark fin consumption in Hong Kong, because of end-of-year office parties and a number of “lucky days” which are popular wedding dates.

The European Commission called Monday for all vessels fishing in EU waters and EU vessels fishing elsewhere “to land sharks with the fins still attached”, in a proposal that must be adopted by parliament and 27 member states in order to become law.

EU nations account for 14 percent of the world’s shark catches.

Shark fins are displayed at a dried sea food store on Hong Kong's Dried Seafood Street. (image by Saga McFarland/CNN)

Workers prepare shark fins for sale in Hong Kong on September 1, 2007. Almost 80% of Hong Kongers now consider it socially acceptable to leave shark fin soup off the menu. (image by AFP/Getty Images)

by Stephen Coates (AFP)
[source: AFP]

The post Hong Kong hotel group strikes shark fin off menu appeared first on juesatta (CJ Photography).

Renowned chef Gordon Ramsay (image from british-chinese.blogspot.com)

In January 2011, while in Costa Rica, renowned chef Gordon Ramsay was doused in petrol and held at gunpoint as he tried to uncover the dark world of illegal shark fin trading for a new TV show. Ramsay stated:

They told me they’d shoot me. At one, I managed to shake off the people keeping us away, ran up some stairs to a rooftop and looked down to see thousands of fins, drying on rooftops for as far as the eye could see. When I got back downstairs, they tipped a barrel of petrol over me. Back at the wharf, there were people pointing rifles at us to stop us filming. A van pulled up and these seedy characters made us stand against a wall. The police came and advised us to leave the country…..

Let’s watch this short video of Gordon Ramsay’s investigation on shark finning shared by my friend, Fred. Ramsay witnessed shark finning process and sharks having fins cut off whilst alive and being thrown back into the sea.

Shark’s fin itself is virtually tasteless and not only are the claims of its ability to boost sexual potency unverifiable, it may cause sterility in men if consumed in large quantities, due to the mercury content.

Read also the previously posted article Jaws wide open, eyes wide shut by Perry Gan.

As long as demand of shark fin exists, supply would be made to satisfy demand. So please take our pledge, promising not to eat shark fin anymore.

May all beings be happy.

The post Gordon Ramsay eats shark fin soup for the first time! appeared first on juesatta (CJ Photography).

finned hammerhead shark (image from www.madmermaids.com)

Thanks to my friend, Perry Gan for writing this inspiring article about Sharks’ Conservation and the reason behind it. I am posting this article on behalf of Perry and hope that it inspires you as much as it did for me:

I have been meaning to write on the issue of Sharks’ Conservation for the longest time.  Why i believe in it and how important it is to us.  So here’s my take (it’s a little long so please bear with me. Please read it in its entirety, I would appreciate it tremendously as this means a lot to me. And nothing would please me more if you would offer your thoughts and feedbacks after reading this, i will write a Chinese version next week!) (ps: I might have sounded a tad emotional while writing this and i think it reflects in some paragraphs, i am not here to judge but to lay down the facts and share my thoughts.  I apologize to anyone who might feel offended or patronized after reading this. My conscience is clear):

Recently I was at a Wedding Banquet with a bunch of friends that I had not seen for sometimes.  The dinner had just started and we just had our 1st course.  Mid way through casual talks and wisecracks the waitress came with our 2nd dish – Shark Fin Soup. 

Shark Fin Soup: a Status food for wedding banquets.  Because of its scarcity and high price, some restaurants have resorted to mixing real Shark Fins with Mung Bean Vermicellies or Fake Shark Fins (made from fish glue) to bring down the costs.  For the host it was important to show that they had not intended to opt for this cheap trick.  Hence the fins had been prepared separately from the broth.  You could still see the translucent shreds of fins on the plate that almost took the shape of an entire fin. Nothing could be more dignified than letting the distinguished guests know that the fins are genuine.

I dutifully declined to take the soup, and explained that ever since I had become a diver I had stopped taking Shark Fin Soup and had been encouraging others to do the same.   For the ensuing hour or so I was bombarded with scores of questions by the uninformed/skeptics (sprinkled with some scorns, sneers and jeers I guess….):

“Come on, it’s such a waste, after all the soup has been prepared and there’s nothing you could do about it, not consuming it doesn’t mean you could save a shark right now, right?)

“If you pledge not to eat Shark Fin Soup out of considerations for animal cruelty, then why are you still eating meat? Isn’t it hypocritical?”

“Don’t be misguided by the Western cultures, the Whites are always teaching us what we should and should not do.  Shark Fins Soup is a delicacy passed down from generations, its part of our culinary culture. Why should we listen to a bunch of screwups who’d done so much in destroying our nature in the past 200 years?.  After all, they cut down the most trees, raised the level of Carbon Dioxides, wreaked the most havocs to the environments and we are forced to shoulder the mishaps.  Now they are pointing fingers at us? Enough is enough! How about a little respect (for our culture) please!”

“Why should we care? Sharks are such Monsters anyway!”

“What you are advocating may have huge implications and impacts to the fishermen and the restaurant owners, if nobody consumes Shark Fins, surely many people’s livelihoods will be affected.  Do you want to see that happen?”

A female mako shark being finned at a shark fishing camp, Santa Rosalia, Mexico. (Photograph: Brian Skerry/National Geographic/Getty Images)

I knew it for the fact that convincing people to believe in me and my cause would take a whole lot of efforts; the biggest plight that sharks face today is sadly still a lack of awareness from us.  Surely some may hold the skewed opinions that my so-called quest is nothing but a way to look cool and hip.  After all, Going Green is in vogue now! Yes, it may look cool to save species rather than destroying them. And conveniently posting and forwarding some “save the sharks” videos or articles in the Facebook may earn me a lot of friends, perhaps even some respects and popularities.

However, my pledge and my quest to conserve sharks really have nothing to do with getting my ego stroked.

Here is what I believe:  As a diver, I have had a chance to see underwater nature as both breathtakingly beautiful and relentlessly unforgiving.  In fact I find some of my most memorable dive experiences to be quite humbling and spiritual at the same time.  As I marveled at the diversity and colours underwater, I started seeing God’s best works in a different light. These moments washed away egos and prides and prepared me to act and defend for the oceans. 

As a diver, I have the vested interest in seeing the oceans thrive.  It’s not enough just to regale friends with how beautiful the underwater world is, or how interesting my last dive trip has been.  It’s also my responsibility to pass the words that the oceans are indeed at their limit (and in Deep trouble). I need to tell as many people as possible, that what we decide to eat today has a direct effect on how the ocean animals live tomorrow. Just as important, I can lead by example and make educated decisions about the food in my bowl.

shark fin soup (image from www.raptureofthedeep.org)

Why Shark Fin soup?

Simple:  We, the Chinese (and some Japanese) are the only ones that consume them!  If we resist so much as to letting others tell/teach us what to do, then we should work on this problem ourselves, from the inside (and I believe it works better too).  If it is about saving face to serve Shark Fin Soup in the big occasions, then how big a loss of face would it be if we were to be collectively labeled as the sharks killers by generations after us? At the rate sharks are taken out of the water, this is doomed to happen.

Just how serious is the case? 

73 to 100 million sharks are killed Every Year (that’s 280,000 every day). In average, 90% of sharks populations were lost in the past 15 years and 110 species of sharks (out of some 400) made the List of “Vulnerable/Endangered” by World Conservation Union.  With the increase of affluence among the burgeoning middle class Chinese, the problem can only aggravate.  But if there are enough of us puling in the opposite direction we can still slow it down and even stop it from growing. The key is to Act Now, one bowl of soup at a time, until it gains momentum that will result to big changes. It’s up to us!

So here is how I answered those fiery questions:

About being Wasteful not to consume and a little late since it has been turned into a bowl of soup:

I will tell you what is wasteful:  Shark fins (dorsal, pectoral and anal fins combined) constitute to an average of 5% to 9% of a shark’s body mass (depending on the shark species).  Since we do not consume shark meat, with each bowl that we consume, we literally waste about, in proportion, some 70% to 90% of the shark.  (Imagine culling a chicken just for its feet).  If I could stop the next bowl of shark fin soup from happening, how much of a waste would I prevent?

About Animal Cruelty:

Not much of an argument I presume (unless I turn vegan).  However, I still wish to highlight this:  With the farmed animals the abattoirs would normally have a set of prescribed techniques when it comes to culling the animals.  Some may develop painless and quick way of killing (eg. Stunting the animals to unconsciousness before killing them). 

I should not invite heated arguments or tradeoffs on the ground of which is more humane or which is the lesser evil. After all “a dead animal is a dead animal”.  However, let’s consider the practice of “Shark Finning”: 

Typically because Shark Meat has no value at all and the fishing vessels are normally small, in order to maximize their catches the fins are normally sliced off from the sharks alive and the bodies are disposed back into the sea. Hence the conveniently-chucked-away sharks are left to die a slow death, not from bleeding per se but due to drowning as they are unable to swim or circulate water through their gills, which enables them to breathe. The process may take 2 days or if the sharks are lucky, they would be eaten alive by other sharks or scavenger fish, to put them out of misery sooner.

On the argument that Sharks ‘campaign being a Western Movement with the aim to belittle us, or to tell us what to do, on respecting our culture:

A quarter of the known shark species are “Vulnerable” or “Endangered”. So Sharks are not “Just a Fish!” Shark fin soup is a culinary culture we cannot afford to “uphold”, or keep.  Shark Fin Soup came about during the Ming Dynasty, in a time where the cuisines fit for a King included:  Bears Palm, Monkey Brains, Elephant Trunks, Camel Humps and Deer Penis. (Don’t believe me, goggle The “Man and Han Banquet” “满汉全席”)  These are wild, endangered land dwelling animals that are illegal to consume nowadays.  So are Sharks! They are wild and endangered too!, the only different is that they live in the sea. So should it be “out of our consciousness, out of our care?”

Do we have any respect for people who consume Bears, Elephants or Monkeys, Camels?  So why the double standards here?  People hundreds of years from now aren’t going to have any respects for cultures that are fundamentally wrong.  Just as we don’t have any respect for the culture of Slavery, or Cannibalism. 

As for the conspiracy theory that the West using the “Stop the Shark Fin Movement” to control the East (don’t laugh! many still believe in this!), I can shrug or laugh it off but let’s be real, Science doesn’t lie.  Empirical Findings don’t lie.  To be deadlocked in these sentiments helps nothing!  The threats that the sharks face do not discriminate, and we are all in the same boat.  “Stop the Shark Fin Soup Campaign) needn’t be a “Western Movement” (and it shouldn’t be!).  It’s up to us to open our eyes and see what’s real and what’s conceived/concocted out of biasness, ignorance or fear. 

About Sharks being a nuisance, man-eaters.

Think again! How much do we know about sharks? Mindless vengeful monsters that terrorize the coasts and “bite the crap out of you”?  Google to find out how sharks have 2 more senses than us human (the sensory pores to detect magnetic fields and the lateral lines to detect movements), and google to find out how sharks have both short term and long term memories.  And while doing that, verify these statistics! Get them right!: 

Sharks kill approximately 5 people each year, Elephant and Tiger: 100, Crocodiles: 200, Executions and Capital Punishments: 2400, Flies; 10,000,  Illegal Drugs: 22,000, Road Accidents: 1.2 millions, Mosquitoes: 1.5 millions, Starvations: 8 millions. And to add more into the equations:  Vending Machines kill 13 people each year, Defective Toaster: 800, let’s not get into Hair Dryers and Wine Bottles shall we….

Don’t get me wrong, Sharks are wild animals and they do bite. But so are Tigers or Lions!  Would you run along a pride of Lions or venture into the African Savannas armed only with a bathing suit, a tube of sunscreen and a pair of sun-glasses? But that’s exactly what we do (in the millions) when we enter shark’s territories.

Nassau of Bahamas attracts tons of divers every year to witness a swarm of reef sharks in a feeding frenzy (image from http://aquaviews.net/)

About the economics, how a lot of people will be put out of businesses if none of us consume Shark Fin Soup:

Again, this is an existential quandary!  And given the fact that sharks have been largely decimated around the world it is already happening:  When supply dwindles the price of Shark Fins skyrockets, a cycle known as “Boom and Bust” begins.  The fishermen, The Restaurant Owners, the Middlemen can either pack up the family businesses (often that has lasted for generations), and face an uncertain future OR follow the demands, fish out the diminishing supply, feed their families first, and wait until the collapse in “Shark Stock” happens.   “Who cares? Catch now and worry later!”  

As consumers, the similar mentalities are prevalent too:  “Since we are not going to have much left, Better eat them while we can, and while they are still relatively inexpensive!” These attitudes, would only pronounce an even earlier demise to all the sharks and for that matter, the businesses that thrive on them.  

If we really have to bring in the pictures of the livelihoods of those who are involved in Shark Fin Trades, then what kind of financial future do these people have? Sure you can feed your family now but for how long? Needless to say the collapse of the entire Sharks population is not just an eventuality but inevitability!  So the question we should ask ourselves should be:  Are we really going to condone instant financial gratifications? Sure some people will lose their jobs, but compare how long it would take for these people to finding new jobs to how resilient shark stock will replenish itself (sharks takes over 20 years to mature), The answer is obvious!

“Sure there are other fishes to catch, So when sharks are gone we could go catch something else!”

I heard that rebut before, but does it hold its ground? Consider these facts (all happened in either 2009 or this year): 

In Australia, it’s been reported that low numbers of sharks have led to an increase in the number of octopuses, who without the predators to keep them at bay, devour the entire lobster population. So the Lobsters fisheries collapsed and people lost their jobs. 

At around the same time, with fewer sharks along the US Atlantic Coast, Cownose Rays have increased so much that they’ve wiped out bay Scallops by feeding on them. So the Scallops folks wrapped up and screamed and cried in front of TVs. 

Recently, Spain’s Ministry of the Environment said the decline of natural marine predators was likely the cause of jellyfish blooms that led to the closure of several beaches along the Costa Blanca. So the Hoteliers and Cold Drinks vendors by the beach closed down and became disillusioned. 

The scenarios are coming in at staggering rates, who are we to blame? So does it mean that we have to start eating Octopus, Cownose Rays (which I heard taste nothing like our beloved “Ikan Pari”) and Jellyfish? If yes, subsequently after we eat these animals to extinction, what’s next?

One gruesome fact about consuming Shark Fin Soup has eluded many of us so far: 

A wildlife group “WildAid” in Thailand recently presented a new study to back its claim that shark fin contains mercury poison (an allegation that provoked a $2.6 million lawsuit by the sellers of the Chinese delicacy and hence made the headlines). The samples that were tested had mercury concentrations from four to seven times above the FDA limit. 

Mercury is a dangerous poison to humans that enters the oceans from pollutions. Fish absorb mercury and it accumulates in their bodies. Fish we consume have relatively low Mercury content because they have a short life span, and not much of the Mercury could be accumulated in that short time.  As fish eat other fish, the mercury accumulates and concentrates further up the food chain. Sharks have more mercury than any other fish because they are at the top of the food chain, can live for 50 years or more, eat many fish during that lifetime, and continue to store mercury in their bodies during that time.

The long term effects of environmental industrial mercury poisoning on the local population in Minamata, Japan. Taken on the Japanese Island of Kyushu, we see an outwardly healthy mother bathing her fetal-poisoned 16 year old daughter, Tomoko Uemura, grotesquely deformed, physically crippled and blind since birth due to environmental industial mercury poisoning in the local water supply. (photo by W. Eugene Smith)

Mercury will not dissolve in cooking so when we eat shark fin soup, a lifetime’s accumulation of mercury is absorbed into our bodies.  Shark Fin Soup is incorrectly believed to increase virility, but its mercury content has been shown to do the very opposite: it lowers sperm count or can even cause sterility in men.

Many health organizations also warn pregnant women not to eat sharks while pregnant or if they plan to become pregnant. Babies could be born prematurely, become autistic or have low IQs (so much for the term “Shark Babes”!) The problem is even worse with dried shark fin than with fresh shark meat because when you dry the fin, you’re actually concentrating the mercury to even greater amounts (and guess what? 90% of the fins we consumed are dried fins).

And if these news fail to trigger your inner alarm, recent youtubes’ circulations bore some newer and gloomier facts:  Short clips containing footages of an underground shark fin processing factory in Guangzhou confirmed that industrial grade Hydrogen Peroxide and Ammonia are widely used to bleach fins (thanks Ivan for bringing this to my knowledge!) so my advice for those who adamantly want to continue to consume Shark Fin Soup (and regard how living in the laps of luxury means “using shark fin soup as a mouth wash”- “鱼翅漱口”) : buy a large “Critical Illnesses” Insurance Plan from me.

I have always advised my friends that the single most important reason why we should not consume Shark Fin Soup is this:  We cannot afford to disturb or meddle with the Ocean Food Chain.  And yet against all of nature’s odds, we are doing it (from top down), at a rate that many suspect will soon tilt the ocean ecosystem’s equilibrium to a point of no return! Let’s face it: we still don’t even know how bad it is, because it’s not visible on the surface.

Sounds farfetched? Heresy? Too academic? Vague? or hard to grapple with?  Well it is simple actually:

The sea (basically the life support system for planet earth), much like all life, has a finely tuned balance that has evolved over millions of years.  As any system in balance, it can be totally whacked out of joint if you take out one component (Nature will adapt to small changes, but can’t withstand a major disruption). The balance of the ecosystem is extremely important because all organisms belonging to the ecosystem depend upon each other to maintain this balance.

Sharks (which have been around for over 400 million years), as apex predators, have been keeping this balance. All animals evolved in the oceans have either been shaped directly or indirectly by sharks.  Sharks eat big and small fish, take out those which are weak, sick and dead and in doing so maintaining a healthy ocean ecosystem, enabling the fittest to survive and controlling the populations below them.

Phytoplankton is the foundation of the oceanic food chain (image credit: NOAA MESA Project)

Let’s view this now from the other end of the equation-the bottom of the food chain: Phytoplankton, tiny aquatic plants that consume 70% of earth’s Carbon Dioxide and convert them into Oxygen.  Out of every 10 breath we take on land, 7 of them were generated from the sea. Without sharks to prey on them, plankton feeders below sharks could grow out of control, consuming the Phytoplankton we depend upon for survival.

It’s not rocket science really.  By virtue of the big fish eat small fish’s analogy; we can formulate a simple equation that looks like this: 

Apex Predators (eg. Sharks) eat Large Fish (eg. Mackerels),

which in turn eat Small Bait Fish (eg. Silversides),

which in turn eat Zooplanktons (eg. Shrimps),

which in turn eat Phytoplanktons (eg. Algea).

Obviously this is a oversimplified model, and some large fish (even sharks) do eat zooplanktons or small fish instead of big fish, but we leave those out for simplicity.

Now consider this:  Cut Sharks out from the equation, then numbers of Big Fish will rise, then numbers of small fish will drop, then the numbers of Zooplanton will rise, and lastly zoom in on Phytoplanton, which numbers will drop. 

What does it say on the Oxygen we breathe, what about the effect on Global Warming? or on Climate (El Nino, La Nina, ring a bell?)

Are you still with me?

Now throw in some “Mathematical Constants” to make the equations more realistic:

Supposed if it takes 100,000 tons of Phytoplankton to feed 10,000 tons of Shrimps, and these Shrimps feed 1,000 tons of Silversides, and these Silversides feed 100 tons of Mackerels, and these Mackerels feed only 10 tons of Sharks at the end of the food chain (It’s not hard to see here that organisms higher up the food ladder tend to be larger in size and fewer in number than those at lower levels).  So if we are killing Shark in the numbers of close to 100 million a year, how many tons of Phytoplankton and Zooplantons we are affecting directly each year?

So eventually what we do here is not just about saving sharks, but about saving ourselves.

To begin with, I do not proclaim myself to be a shark-lover (only by default and with the love for the oceans, I became one); never fancy their serrated teeth or their lifeless, menacing black eyes.  Furthermore some of the accounts/pictures of shark “attacks” are grotesque enough to make me cringe and look away.  But, it’s not their faults if they look like some gruesome monsters that follow some trails of blood.  Sharks are just wild animals, and all ugly animals (think hyenas) deserve some hard love from us human, who have the ability to wipe out any life forms and decide which live at will.

Whether we like it or not, Shark Fin Soup as a culinary tradition will end.  The question is will it end before there is any shark left?

Unless enough people are prepared to stop consuming the Shark Fin Soup and influence others to collectively do the same, nothing’s really going to change. We are at a juncture that merely making a conscientious decision not to consume Shark Fin Soup will not be enough.  Like what has been argued before: “It’s a little late when it has been turned into a bowl of soup”.  And Time is really running out! 

There is no hope to rely on the governments, or policy makers to do something radicals to put an end to this practice. Think of the heavy lobbies and possible suits from those involve in the Shark Fin Trades.  If we look at history, all social changes came from the passionate interventions of individuals (not from some political parties). Sadly, resistance is the only way that is viable for now; hence we need a HUGE resistant movement to cause a dent in the Demand curve. And when the voices get loud, then the politicians might listen and take heed.

So if you hear that someone’s getting married and readily include Shark Fin Soup as a 2nd course, talk to them, try and change their point of views.  Help them persuade their parents.  The Statistic and Facts are overwhelming, and with the right kind of attitude I believe many would buy the idea! After all, we have so many other types of soup that would taste equally great! Have faith in Chinese Cuisines.

How difficult is it to persuade someone to say no to a bowl of Shark Fin Soup? 

Really……

Seriously…….

WWF - no to shark fin (image by Pucky)

The post Jaws wide open, eyes wide shut appeared first on juesatta (CJ Photography).

Japan's Shark Fin Capital, Kesen-numa City. This is the picture that sparked a global outcry. (by Alex Hofford)

KESEN-NUMA CITY, JAPAN – It’s 5am on the the north eastern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, and 75 tons of dead shark is being meticulously arranged into a neat grid of tidy piles, of twenty sharks per pile.

If you thought shark finning was exclusively a Chinese problem, think again. Welcome to Kesen-numa City, Japan’s shark fin capital.

Here, six days a week, small teams of Japanese workers go about the hushed business of industrial shark-finning.

By 6.30am, with piles arranged, the sharks are disemboweled first. Hearts are ripped efficiently from bodies by men wearing brightly coloured rubber boots and aprons. At 7am, shark corpses are cleaned of their blood by workers wielding water hoses. And by 8am, small teams are silently moving up and down aisles and rows like robots in a Japanese car factory, quickly slicing off every dorsal, pectoral and tail fin from the lifeless, grey lumps. Big hungry black crows squawk in the shadows, looking for bloody morsels. And shark fins plop with regularity into small yellow plastic baskets. The baskets fill up fast, are then weighed, and finally carried to a nearby truck, where a man with a notepad strikes a deal. At 9.30am, it’s all over for another day. Fork lift trucks scoop up tons of limbless carcasses, then dump them into a high-sided truck. The process is a brutal sight to behold, and not for the faint-hearted.

Cutting the fins (Alex Hofford)

The fishing port of Kesen-numa City is located in Miyagi Prefecture in North East Japan, and is the country’s only port dedicated to catching sharks.

Over two days in early July this year, I saw 119 tons of blue shark (Prionace glaucaof), ten tons of salmon shark (Lamna ditropis), and three tons of short fin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus)  landed on the dock at Kesen-numa. Not to mention several tons of endangered bluefin tuna, (Thunnus thynnus), but that’s a whole other story. Taking government transparency to another level, landed shark tonnage numbers are provided daily by the port of Kesen-numa’s Japanese only website, which is publicly, (and apparently unashamedly), available.

About half of the shark fin that is processed in Kesen-numa City is destined for China, mainly Hong Kong and Shanghai. For wealthy Chinese, shark fin from Kesen-numa is seen as a premium, or luxury, brand. Mr Hatakeyama, 45, a shark fin processor from Kesen-numa, said, “Quite a bit of shark fin is sent to Shanghai from here as there are many rich people there. Our shark fin here can command higher prices than Chinese shark fin sourced from elsewhere in Asia, the Middle East or Africa. Even though the Chinese have their own shark fin, they prefer Japanese brands”.

Given the delicacy’s roots, this is hardly surprising, but what is more unexpected is that a considerable portion of the shark fin processed in Kesen-numa is bound for domestic consumption. Like in China, shark fin soup is common place at weddings, company banquets and all sorts of other special occasions where the paying host wants to show off their wealth. And much of the shark fin produced at small food factories dotted around the city ends up bound for Chinese restaurants in Japan, of which there are many. The rest is sold to hotels to include on their menus for newly weds and for corporate banquets.

In olden times, shark fin was sometimes used as a substitute for gold when Japanese merchants traded with China. Understandably, and for this same reason, the exact location for fin drying in Japan remains a closely guarded secret. And a significant amount is shipped to China for sun-drying, although the exact drying location in China is an even bigger secret.

These days, the port of Kesen-numa feels like a town down on it’s luck. Once thriving, today there is a sense of decay in the air. Overgrown and rusty. Similarly, attitudes have yet to move with the times. As public sentiment slowly turns against shark fin soup in Hong Kong, what was once an ancient tradition in this forgotten corner of Japan, is, according to conservationists, wreaking havoc on shark populations worldwide. Small fishing boats used catch sharks as part of the city’s ancient tradition.

But this tradition, coupled with modern fishing methods like the advent of strong  and long fishing lines, and boats that can go further and stay out of port for longer, is a recipe for disaster for the sharks. According to the Japan Fisheries Agency, the nation’s national shark fin catch nearly halved since the late 1960’s. In 1969, the total number of sharks caught and landed in Japan was around 65,000 tons. Last year’s total was around 35,000 tons, and Kesen-numa accounts for around 90% of all sharks caught nationally.

Whether the global marine ecosystems can suffer such an onslaught is debatable. The arguments against shark-finning are, by now, well known in Hong Kong. It is said that sharks take decades to reach adulthood, and by ripping them out of the oceans at such an unprecedented rate, we are depriving them of them of the chance to reproduce, and thus repopulate their decimated numbers. Cruelty may be the issue at stake for those who see the wasteful practice of slicing the fins off the shark at sea and tossing them back over the side of the boat, but in Kesen-numa the whole shark is landed. It is said that every part of every shark landed at Kesen-numa is processed there and then consumed. Even it’s heart. For the people of Kesen-numa are seen as a little strange by ordinary Japanese. Locals can ill afford the shark fin soup available at many of the town’s small side street restaurants, but the locals have developed a peculiar, if bloodthirsty, fondness for raw salmon shark heart sashimi. An exotic ‘delicacy’, which, according to local people, is consumed nowhere else in Japan. It is left up to the tourists who visit Kesen-numa to order the city’s famous speciality, shark fin soup.

And tourists do come. Some are attracted to the splendid hiking along Miyagi Prefecture’s rugged coastline, whilst others are seafood aficionados, looking for their next hit of sublime ultra-fresh exotic seafood. Early risers among them will inevitably make their way to the dock, where they are confronted with one of the most bloody spectacles they are likely ever to witness in their lives – Kesen-numa’s very own industrial shark-finning show.

A quick walk around the town, reveals a parallel universe, where even the most basic concepts of marine conservation do not exist. Just a stone’s throw from the dock, is the ‘Kesen-numa Rias Shark Museum’,  which visitors enter through a giant set of shark jaws. Once inside, tourists are first confronted by real copies of faded front pages of tabloid newspapers from around the world that sensationalize shark attacks on swimmers. Make no mistake, sharks are bad, evil, a threat to humanity and they should be erdaicated from the face of the earth, the headlines, and so it seems the museum’s message screams at us. This despite the fact that humans are statistically far more likely to die from crossing the road, than from an attack by a shark. After passing exhibits relating to the natural history of sharks at the half way mark, visitors leaving the museum pass a glass display box filled with all kinds of products one can make from shark; shark fin soup in a can, shark cartillage pills which are supposedly good for joint pain, and hand-crafted handbags made from shark leather. But not a word about conservation and the critical situation facing global shark stocks due to over-fishing.

Could a new battle between marine conservationists battling to save the sharks and the Japanese fishing lobby be on the horizon? First there was the annual showdown in the Southern Ocean between the Japanese whaling fleet and the environmental groups Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd to save the whale. Then there was the runaway success of the Oscar-winning documentary ‘The Cove’ which exposed the brutal Japanese trade in captive dolphins. One would think the tide is slowly turning.

Isn’t it time Kesen-numa City, Japan’s dirty little shark secret, was shut down too?

Alex Hofford: Hong Kong China Kesennuma Japan shark fin photographer
[source: http://www.alexhoffordphotography.com/node/2333]

The post Japan’s Shark Fin Capital, Kesen-numa City appeared first on juesatta (CJ Photography).

人类真的需要吃鱼翅吗？这次是我第二次亲眼见到鲸鲨，但今次是极度不开心又心痛，眼睁睁见鲸鲨宝宝所有鱼鯕都被切掉，慢慢在极度残忍，痛苦中流鲜血等死（求生不得、求死不能），自己感受到好羞耻，决定以后再也不吃鱼翅！- by Dicky Ho

这是每位潜水员最不想见到的场面。

新年假期有一班香港潜水员到菲律宾Philippines潜水时于浅水海面发现有条年幼鲸鲨(就是郑依健帮WWF拍宣扬海洋保育那种鱼，它是海洋最大种鱼类，成年可长12米，重二十吨。但品性惇良，大嘴无牙，专吃浮游生物，绝不袭击人)，其后将它救起，竟发现它的鱼鳍全部被割走(等同将它的手手脚脚全部割断)，其后它就慢慢流血离开了海洋。

鱼鳍就是华人认为最珍贵的鱼翅，但其实鱼翅本身没有味道，全靠高汤的鲜味。现在全球每年捕杀一亿条鲨鱼，鲨鱼繁殖缓慢。如果继续大量捕杀下去，衹会使鲨鱼绝种，破坏海洋生态链。而且鲨鱼身处海洋生物链顶层，生平吃了很多其他鱼类，体内积聚不少水银和重金属，故鱼翅含水银，不宜多吃。

消费剌激生产，只要减少市场对鱼翅的需求，就能令渔民少杀鲨鱼，为海洋保育。

This is what most divers would not wish to experience.

Dicky Ho and friends went for a diving trip in Philippines during the last New Year holiday. It was at Anliao then they found a baby whale shark on the swallow water of the beach and tried to save it. However it was found that the baby whale shark was finless; the fins were cut and stolen. The baby whale shark was bleeding andthe ocean current tugged it down to the shore.

Whale sharks are the largest sharks of their kind, but despite their size they are completely harmless. Their behavior is characterized by slow swimming movements in their search for food (plankton and small fish) on the water’s surface. Unfortunately, exactly this behaviour has been the sharks’ undoing over the past years for it made them susceptible to easy slaughtering in great numbers for their fins.

Shark fin has been a popular item of Chinese cuisine since the Ming Dynasty, usually served at special occasions such as weddings and banquets, or as a luxury item in Chinese culture. Although many people say they like the taste, shark fin in fact has completely no taste at all. The irony is the taste comes from the chicken, ham, shiitake, etc. used in cooking the fin that it absorbs from.

Currently hundred million of sharks killed each year. They are being caught and killed faster than they can reproduce, thus they are facing extinction. The depletion or removal of sharks from the ocean may lead to increases or declines in other species, with unpredictable consequences for ecosystems.

Moreover, sharks are at the top of the food chain, and absorb the mercury contamination from the smaller fish they consume. Mercury is a neurotoxin which destroys healthy cells and can disrupt the nervous system. The extremely high levels of mercury in shark fin can leave a man infertile, cause health problem to pregnant women and children.

The fate of the sharks is grim. Once again massive demand of shark fin and repulsive finning are among the reasons these animals have to die. We, as the part of world could save our ecosystems by saying “no” to shark fin. The less popular the shark fins are, the less demand they are and the more worthless they become; the fewer fishermen kill sharks, and the sharks will be saved.

* * * * * * * * * *

Dicky Ho 的鲸鲨遇难记：
The encounter of Dicky Ho with a dying baby whale shark:

当时同行之友在浅滩发现它后一心以为只是走失母鲸之小鲸。 (Cute baby whale shark found swimming in the shallow water...)

及后发现大部份＂手脚＂给人盗走了! 一刻间全世界静下了. 每个人心情......... (And later found to be barely surviving ...)

突然...它看着我,它看着每一个人，好像用最后既记忆把凶手面孔记实。当时真感到自己就是那个凶手。人，万物之灵....... (because she was swimming fin-less...)

经过检查后发觉，尾部尚有部份未被切除，相信凶手在行凶时有船只行径，凶手迅速离开现场..... (wounds all over her body ...exposing her bones...)

在场的每个人并没多说话，可能大家心情己找不到合适形容词。小小的生命(5m-6m长)等待着大海把它带走；可能要待上几天， 上天才伸出怜悯之手，把它带往天国。 (tail fin was still intact, maybe the shark-finners left in a hurry ...escaping?...)

不能等了，我们做了杀鲸凶手....... (They could only do what they could ... put her to death...)

看见它在岸上，头部动了几次.....十分钟后再动......十多分钟后再动........二十分钟后再动....血水在伤囗慢慢流出，这景像一世永印在我们心中。 (twitch after twitch ...they watch the baby shark taking her last breath ...)

四十分钟后，它再没游动......一切回复平静，可能它尚有一点气息，可能真的解脱还需要更长时间，只是它再也没有力气了....... (Rest In Pace ... baby shark ... Don't be a shark in the next life...)

人类真的需要吃鱼翅吗？这次是我第二次亲眼见到鲸鲨，但今次是极度不开心又心痛，眼睁睁见鲸鲨宝宝所有鱼鯕都被切掉，慢慢在极度残忍，痛苦中流鲜血等死（求生不得、求死不能），自己感受到好羞耻，决定以后再也不吃鱼翅！

Do we really need to have shark fins? This was my second encounter with whale shark, yet the saddest and most distressing experience. Looking at the baby whale shark without it fins, bleeding in pain to death, I felt ashamed with myself as a human being. I have made a pledge that I will never consume any shark fin!

[资料来源/source from: Dicky Ho Wai Keung’s facebook]

The post 鲸鲨遇难记 Encounter with a dying baby whale shark appeared first on juesatta (CJ Photography).