Shark Fin Soup

Let’s hope that they see sense. The decimation of shark populations is an impending natural disaster that is going to seriously affect everyone, whether everyone cares about their plight or not.

All for money, they should be ashamed. Mankind at its worst.

Where to start?
Trade is fine, but…
being knowingly (we have told these people often, clearly, and loudly), repeat - knowingly! - complaisant with:
- overt, indisputable destruction of ecosystems (documented, not guesswork)
- an unsustainable fishery that we know will collapse (reproduction is far too slow)
- inhumane slaughter (watch them bleed to death)
- inefficient harvest (meat? what meat?)
- pandering to vanity (only the rich - or those who pretend)
- support of criminal activity (work it out guys - who controls the trade? Just take a walk around Sai Ying Poon)
- violation of territorial boundaries (instance: Costa Rica, there are many more)
- threat to life and limb of prevention agents and journalists (this is on film!)
- murder (documented)
- exploitation of the poor (why would they rape their own patch?)
- blatant profiteering (have you seen the price charged? the price paid?)
- violation of CITES (tell me how they can identify fins online)
- avoidance of customs and excise (this is laundering - have you seen the length they have to go to, transhipping fins on the high seas? )
- feigning ignorance of problems (why do they argue?)
- employing whitewash “PR” agency (and who defended “Big Tobacco”?)
- citing spurious cultural sensitivity (you what? this is a joke - official!)
- claim of irrelevance to business ethic (quite! who cares if we turn a buck, screw you!)
- 100,000,000 meaningless, tasteless (it’s the chicken soup and vinegar, idiot!) deaths a year (underestimate)
- read that again: one hundred million vanity-driven, profit-based, nutritionally-useless, wallet-lining, triad-supporting, public-poisoning, stuff the rest of you if you starve because your fishery has just collapsed deaths (quite. where is the point except the ostentatious expenditure to impress gullible sycophants; or the self-gratifying gosh, I don’t mind blowing this amount if it makes me look good and wealthy; or the pathetic appeal to improvement of virility!)
… and you wonder why we are not enthused about Yahoo! and Alibaba and anybody else that rushes to make a quick buck?  This is greed, nothing else.

People, do your homework. Just think. Invest in our own destruction (yours and mine and our children’s) if you must, but please - do not claim ignorance.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Kudos to mainstream media outlets such as CBS, ABC and BusinessWeek for running stories on shark fin peddlers Alibaba and their cohorts Yahoo.

Many other organizations and empassioned individuals have fought to raise this issue with the general public for quite some time now, and having the likes of CBS bring it into the public domain again must surely reaffirm the importance and severity of the campaign against the slaughter of sharks.

My hope is increased public awareness will lead to outrage against companies such as Alibaba and Yahoo, for their co-opting of conservation and sustainablility in the singleminded pursuit of $$$.

If anyone sees the CBS 60 Minutes report on YouTube, please provide the link. Thanks!

It is great to see such great awareness being creating for the perils faced by sharks worldwide.

Save Jaws!

I do not like Alibaba one bit!  It is the worst thing I have ever heard of!  I am totally against Alibab.  I have not heard about it until this year, and I am kind of glad I did.  It was easier to live thinking that this would not happen, didn’t happen, and isn’t happening but that’s all just a fairy tale and I knew (but never said anything) that I would find out about it sooner or later.  I am glad that I know about Alibaba because that way, I can join the fight to stop it!

SHARKS RULE!

The deeper Yahoo! get’s into this deal with Alibaba.com the more leverage ordinary citizens and consumer groups will have with them. They are after all a California based company and need to be seen as “green”.

Put this way-if Yahoo! was heavily invested in a similar Asian company that enabled sellers who hacked the fins off of live dolphins and or seals to make millions of dollars...Yahoo! would not be invested here.

Yahoo! has to be made to see that you are “painted with the brush your partner wields”.

In this case Alibaba.com has an ugly brush.

It’s good to see leaders of the attack on the biosphere being called to account for their actions.  Ali Baba is, at least, Chinese, but for Yahoo and others to join in the feeding frenzy is disgraceful. 

Of all the ways humans abuse nature, shark finning may be the most out-standing symbol of what is wrong with our species.  It involves cutting five percent off the shark while it still lives, then leaving it to die in agony.  It doesn’t feed the poor, but is perpetrated for a luxury dish, in just one of civilization’s many cultures.  And for this one, tiny detail of human life, sharks are being industriously pursued all over the planet to the point of their extinction.  The greed, the selfishness, the lack of caring for anything but personal profit, the universal assumption that any human endeavour, no matter what it is, is more important than anything else, is all there, magnified, in the practice of shark finning. 

That things have gone as far as they have with so few voices raised against it, speaks for the quality of our species.  Not in terms of good or bad, but in simple terms of our viability in the community of life on the only planet that we have.

Ila France Porcher
Shark ethologist
French Polynesia

Giving the illegal fisheries a market is as criminal as the illegal fishermen themselves.

This is brilliant that finally some kind of a spotlight is being put on this issue. Shark finning has to be the most heinous act on nature to date; its barbaric, wasteful and distasteful in every way....and utterly pointless (unless of course you’re trying to destroy the world’s oceans for profit). The fins are tasteless and have no values - which fits nicely with those who sell and consume them. Not only that, the connection shark finning has with crime is notorious; sharks are finned illegally and indiscriminately in and out of protected areas, protected species are finned, and the involvement of organised crime is rife. There is no way Alibaba can know if what they are selling is legal....surely that is a basic rule of trade?!! Alibaba as it is, is an online platform for rewarding crime and destruction.

How long can a household name like yahoo! hope to continue willfully supporting such an anti-environmental action as the wholesale of illegally acquired shark fins? They are obliged to uphold the wishes of their users, many of them children and teenagers who would not wish this to be happening. Yahoo! executives are fully aware of the dealings of alibaba and are turning a blind eye to fatten their corporate wallets whilst yet another ecosystem bites the dust. They are every bit as guilty of habitat loss as illegal loggers, oil exploitation and illegal trade in endangered animals. Someone with a large bank balance should be suing them.

get with it guys. were in meltdown. this should not be happening.

I’m glad I’ll be having a Google account (soon) instead of Yahoo.  I am 100% against shark fining.  Shark fining is terrible and should be stopped.  Even my friends who do not like sharks and/or are scared of them still agree with me that it is terrible and cruel.

Shark fining is the main resson that sharks are endangered.  I know that they are being over hunted for their jaws, teeth, and skin, as well as fins.  But fins are the main resson.

Once shark fining stops, I think that the shark population will increase dramatically.

(It is hard for the Great White to recover because it can only give birth to about two pups, and usally only one survives.)

Down with shark fining!  Down with Ali Nasser!  Down with Alibaba!

SHARKS RULE!

As the saying goes… Money means Power and once you have power you are above the law and become an untouchable. This is reality and this is the Yahoo and Alibaba story.

Yahoo owns a fair share of Alibaba.com
Alibaba supports and promotes the sale of shark fins.
Most of these shark fins are harvested illegally.
A large number of them are protected or endangered species.
No one can control what is caught and where!!
The fins are chopped off whilst the sharks are still alive.
Shark species have declined by 85% world wide.
Over 100 million are killed every year
200 sharks per minute non stop!!
Removing a top predator causes an imbalance in its habitat.
Damaged habitats means damaged oceans, thus effecting an entire planet.

Yahoo & Alibaba are guilty of illegal harvesting, killing protected species, killing endangered species,
and habitat destruction to name just a few. They do this above the law. They are untouchables. Why?

They have the money and the power.

Should we let them carry on with this?
NO… NO.....NO

They should be stopped.

I now have a Gmail!  Even before I read this I knew that Yahoo supports shark fining and Alibaba.  I was very shocked and disappointed at Yahoo.  Since I do not want to support anything that supports shark fining, I’ve moved on from Yahoo to Google.  Everyone deserves a second chance, even the sharks.  (I don’t know about the shark finners though.  They might just fin some more sharks.) I am ready to fight for what I believe in, and that is shark rights.  Sharks should be able to live and hunt, not be hunted!  Sharks are the apex predator of the ocean, have (and can) killed humans, yet we still manage to get them close to extinction.  It’s amazing (in the disturbing, inhumane way.)

SHARKS RULE!
-Aubrey

As bony fish (tuna, swordfish, ecc.) fisheries have been depleted, fishermen have compensated by increasing shark captures. Fishermen are reducing numerous shark populations more rapidly than those of most bony fish. A decline of captures of over 90% has been recorded for many species of sharks. In fact, sharks are more vulnerable to over fishing than bony fish. Since few species prey on them, sharks are highly vulnerable to over-exploitation especially since they have long sexual maturation times, low fecundity, long gestation periods and produce small numbers of young. Moreover, many shark species segregate by size and sex, such that exploitation of sharks in a nursery area can be particularly devastating. These fish are unable to withstand extended periods of over-exploitation which has long term effects and rebuilding shark populations takes many years.
Humans catch sharks in order to obtain meat, cartilage, skin, oil and other products.  Shark fins are used in Chinese cooking to prepare a famous shark fin soup. Recently, the demand for shark fins has increased dramatically. Shark fins are high priced and this has led to the practice of finning sharks at sea, where the fins are sliced off while the rest of the body is discarded overboard. Almost all large and medium-sized sharks are fished for their fins.
Industrial fishing vessels often operate in flagrant violation of fishing regulations. Moreover, many species are also caught by recreational anglers. A few species are now protected in some countries, but it is not enough. Effective conservation and management of shark fisheries are based on research in biology, ecology, distribution, abundance and exploitation of sharks and their prey. Important advances in our knowledge of sharks is needed, as biology and behavior of many sharks is still not well known. Despite being important parts of marine ecosystems, shark research is often neglected in favor of the more commercially important bony fish. It is also necessary to better manage fisheries in which sharks constitute a significant bycatch. The removal of sharks upsets the ecological balance that will lead to increases in some prey populations and consequently to declines in other prey species. Habitat health is dependent on all the animals that share it.

Dr. Alessandro De Maddalena

President of the Italian Ichthyological Society
Curator of the Italian Great White Shark Data Bank
Member of the Mediterranean Shark Research Group

Just forgot to say that I agree with Sharkman.  He is 100% right.  Yahoo and Alibaba have the power, the money, ability to slip under the law’s nose, but this should stop!  It sickens me to know that there are people out there who really have the guts, and are greedy enough to kill off an entire species for money; to disorder the ocean’s food chain; to disorder the balance of the whole planet, for money.  The sadest parts are that some know what the effect of this will be in the future, but still don’t care, while others don’t even know.  It’s the inconvient truth of the sea.  It’s something that will soon, like global warming, be irreverseable.

If you don’t believe me, see SharkWater.  It took 5 years to make the movie, and the people were being shot at by machine guns and had to put barbed wire around their boat (so no one would jump on board to hurt them).

SHARKS RULE!
-Aubrey

P.S.  Just give the sharks a second chance!  They need it now more than ever.  Give all those who care for sharks a chance to show you how wrong those people are!  (By those people, I mean shark finners and anyone who hunts sharks for “fun.” That’s inhumane.)

Its time people started to pay attention to the disappearance of sharks from the ocean just so some people can celebrate with shark fin soup.  It tastes bad and is bad for you anyway, full of mercury.  Anyone with any sense gave it up a generation ago.

Talk about stinking.  Shark finning and the people who support it are stinking to high heaven.

Prince X.

Of all of the beliefs I truely hold dear is the belief that it is mankind’s job to take care of the earth.  That would include the animals on land and in our waters.  It truly is disgraceful to see how we are treating a beautiful species.  Yes I am talking about the shark.  Finning is one if not the worst crime against Mother nature.  Murdering sharks for profit is an all time low for mankind.  Ruining nature in my opinion will eventually be mankind’s ruination.

Yahoo!
Get a grip of yourselves.
You know full well your behaviour and lack of conscience cannot be hidden and will drive your customers away in droves.
Google might not be perfect but whilst you’re supporting the killing of sharks they’re making greater use of solar technology.
You are bright enough to figure out which approach is going to win more business…

ALIBABA AND YAHOO MURDER SHARKS FOR PROFIT
I wanted to pass on some information about Alibaba and Yahoo they don’t want you to know. Although they are profiting here, they are in part, profiting at the expense of a species. Alibaba is the largest distributor and offender of shark fin products in the world. When Yahoo invested in this Asia company (knowing its history) the blatantly disregarded a huge environmental issue in return for profit.

100 millions sharks are murdered a year to feed the Asia shark fin industry to provide shark fin soup and shark cartilage (believed to have healing powers because there is a misconception that sharks don’t get sick or get cancer. False.) and by ingesting these product people believe (placebo) they won’t get sick.

Sharks are caught at sea (illegally) brought aboard (longlining) to have their fins hacked off and are then throw back into the ocean to bleed to death and die. This barbaric practice has to stop…and here’s why…if affects all of us…You and I…right now…sitting at our computers.

Sharks are apex predators, without them entire ecosystems are thrown out of balance…sharks keep other populations under control. Without sharks many fish feed on other species below them…and this goes on down the line until we reach Phytoplankton that absorbs carbon dioxide (global warming gas) on earth turning it into oxygen, providing us with 70% of the air we breathe. Can you imagine if sharks were not here…how would we breathe? Take a deep breath right now…feels good doesn’t it? Everything in life has consequences…if this is allowed to continue; eventually we won’t be able to live with this one.

Sharks have existed for over 400 million years. In as little as 1 generation (ours) we have driven some species of shark to 90% extinction.

This is what our generation will be remembered for. Not money, not power, not position. For eliminated our final breath. Because we decided not to act… your move.

www.sharkmurder.com
www.sharkwater.com
www.seashepherd.org