Dear Governor Jerry Brown,
As a lifelong California resident, Chinese-American, and Marine Biologist, I urge you to sign AB 376 (The Shark Protection Act) into law. The shark fin ban has nothing to do with racism; it is solely an issue of sustainability. More than 73 million sharks a year are brutally slaughtered by having their fins cut off and the still alive shark is thrown back into the ocean to die a slow agonizing death. Shark finning is a wasteful practice that only fulfills the need for a perceived luxury item known as shark fin soup. Sharks are at the very top of the food chain and when they disappear, every organism down to the tiniest of plankton is affected-including all the seafood we eat. Sharks already face declining numbers due to being caught as bycatch from the often overzealous fishing industry, due to a reduced food supply because of overfishing, due to global warming and the ensuing ocean acidification, and due to pollution from garbage as well as chemicals. Let us cross off shark finning from that long list of threats. Thousands of sharks will be saved a year from this law, and as other states and nations follow California’s lead, eventually millions of sharks will be saved for future generations to respect and protect.
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
Cherilyn Chin Jose
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update: as of October 2011, California has banned the sale, purchase or possession shark fins, and restaurants have until January of 2013 to use up their existing stock
Hello, my name is Domino, and I am a Whale Shark. I think I should be the poster animal for the ending of shark finning. It might be hard to relate to other sharks that are (supposedly) so menacing, ruthless, and with a mouthful of razor sharp teeth, but look at me! I was named after the gentle giants of the sea, the whales. Whale sharks are every bit as magnificent as whales, yet most humans have not heard of us.
Are you a whale, or a shark?
Humans inevitably ask, are you a whale? Or are you a shark?I am unequivocally a shark. In fact, I am the world’s largest fish as well as the world’s largest shark. My mouth is full of teeth, but my teeth are only 1/12th of an inch (3 mm) long and I don’t even use them to eat! I only eat tiny, microscopic plankton that I filter from the water around me.
I’m unique!
I can grow to be more than 40 feet (12 meters) long and weigh more than 44,000 pounds (20,000 kg). I also have a unique pattern of spots interspersed with occasional stripes that is not found on any other animal! In fact no other whale shark shares my unique polka dot and stripe pattern. It’s my fingerprint, to put it into human terms.
My “Squished” Head
I have a unique body shape, as my head is dorsoventrally compressed. This means that my head is “squished” flat, almost like a pancake, with my 4 foot wide mouth in front. Most sharks have the distinctive sharp snout with a mouth underneath their head that you picture when you hear the name “shark.”
How I am like other sharks
I share some other characteristics with the “other” sharks, like I do not have any bones in my body. My body is made up of cartilage, which is found in human ears and noses. Like other sharks, my thick skin is made up of denticles, or very tiny teeth, which makes our skin rough like sandpaper. These denticles make us sharks very streamlined, and able to swim very swiftly and quietly through the water. My 4 inch (10.2 cm) skin is also the thickest of any animal on earth!
Shark Finning
One very important characteristic I share with all other sharks is the worldwide market for our fins. These are turned into a dish humans eat called shark fin soup. I was flattered–for all of a second–to find out that my fins are highly sought after because they are the largest of any shark. Well, the basking shark has larger fins, but less of it is edible. Whale shark fins are made into the most expensive bowls of shark fin soup. Our meat supposedly tastes and feels like tofu, but most of the time the fishing boats don’t have enough room for our large bodies.
Not only is shark finning barbaric (often only the fins are sliced off a shark and it is tossed back still alive into the ocean to die a slow death), but it is wasteful as the whole shark is not utilized in any way. It’s sad to swim by a once powerful shark that is now unable to swim without its fins.
The Food Chain
I get angry because removing such large numbers of top level predators from the food chain affects the availability of my food (the microscopic plants and animals at the bottom of the food chain). All the seafood humans harvest from the ocean is affected. Killing up to 100 million sharks a year is not sustainable! Although the food chain is very complex, there is an elegant order to it. It is like the food pyramid humans follow for eating. My food (the plankton) is at the base of the pyramid, and sharks are at the very top. The ocean could not sustain having as many sharks as sardines, so there are very few of us sharks to begin with.
I’m a shark but…
I lament being categorized with great white sharks and their menacing reputation. They have their very important place at the top of the food chain, but it is guilt by association. If humans only knew that shark finning included killing gentle and magnificent whale sharks such as myself, I think they could begin to understand our plight. Little by little I think humans are beginning to protect us by banning shark finning in some waters, creating shark sanctuaries, and banning the import, sale and distribution of shark fins. Even though all I share with the whales is my name, size, and the fact that some of us are plankton feeders, I think it is fortuitous. I hope someday humans will stop hunting us for our large fins, and start to revere us like whales. We are just as amazing, and just as gentle.
I am a Chinese-American and a marine biologist and I fully support California Assembly Bill (AB) 376 to ban the sale and distribution of shark fins in California. Hawaii has already banned the possession, sale or distribution of shark fins. I have eaten (and enjoyed) dozens of bowls of shark fin soup in my lifetime but I will no longer do that. My only regret so far in life is that I chose to serve shark fin soup (instead of melon or white fungus soup) at my wedding because of the strong symbolism behind serving it.
You might be thinking that since I’m a marine biologist *of course* she’ll be on the side of the sharks or any other creature of the oceans. But while I respect sharks and their role in the ocean food chain, they are not among my favorite animals of the ocean. I think that Peter Benchley, the author of the book and movie “Jaws,” really made me realize how important sharks are to humans alive. Although he is responsible for the way most of us fear and vilify sharks, he was also one of their strongest proponents. He wrote a book called “Shark Trouble” in 2002. In it he wrote a fictional tale of what would happen to a self sustaining seaside village if sharks were taken from their coral reefs. In this tale, foreign fishing vessels removed the sharks from a coral reef community in a matter of days. But the devastating effects lasted much longer as the entire economy of this fictional village collapsed, and the native fishermen did not even start the downward spiral of their economy! But soon fiction may turn into non-fiction. It has been observed that octopus populations increase once shark populations decrease, and the octopuses end up eating lots of lobsters or crabs from fishermen’s traps! One real life study concluded that the decline of big sharks leads to an increase of small elasmobranchs (sharks and their relatives like rays and skates) that feast on the shellfish that humans eat, like scallops and oysters.
It is estimated 70 million sharks are killed each year for their fins. Many sharks do not reach sexual maturity until they are 7 years old, and some large sharks do not reach sexual maturity until their 20’s. Even then the females only have a few surviving pups. Even in utero (in the womb) fetal sharks will eat their own brothers and sisters!
Illegal shark fin sales around the world number at least 1 billion dollars and is (supposedly) second only to drugs like marijuana in illegal trafficking. Those numbers can certainly be disputed as it is impossible to really track illegal sales, but the point is that in many developing countries, a single shark fin can feed a fisherman’s family for months. These poor fishermen are not aware that 39 species of sharks are listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a threatened (one step away from being endangered) species and that the killing of one shark today means no more sharks tomorrow. They rarely just kill one, and the whole shark is rarely fully utilized because of the limited space on the fishing vessels. The sharks are targeted specifically when possible because of the amount of money the fins are worth. Even the gentle, slow moving Whale Shark, that eats only microscopic plankton, is targeted! But the consumers of shark fin soup are not living in poverty and can understand that killing the top level predators of any ecosystem cannot last forever. When was the last time you ate a bear, lion or bald eagle? These are top level predators on land and humans know that eating them would not be sustainable. But because the oceans seem so vast and with an endless amount of fish, humans outside the ocean conservation community have yet to grasp that the wildlife supply of the oceans is not endless. Over 90% of the large fish populations, including sharks, tuna, marlin, swordfish, halibut, and cod are gone (see Scientific American article). Gone forever. While the supermarket freezer cases are full of fresh fish and you can still order tuna sushi at your local Japanese restaurant, there does not seem any urgency to conserving any fish species.
Some countries around the world (United States included) ban shark finning in their waters. Palau even created a shark sanctuary in which it is illegal to catch any sharks. But all nations only have jurisdiction on the 200 nautical mile Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ) from their shores. The rest is international waters. Often large fleets from foreign countries will swoop in on a developing countries’ waters and take all the fish (including sharks) and then leave. Some developed countries will pay less developed countries money to let them fish in their waters, but this happens less often then you might hope.
There is much more to this discussion and I know there are always two sides to every story. I hope that reading my side of the story will at least help you understand why someone would want to stop eating shark fin soup, let alone live in a state like California that wants to ban the sale and distribution of shark fins. Respect the facts, the opinions of others and follow your own heart.
Hello, I’m a Great White Shark. My ancestors and I have been roaming the oceans since before there were dinosaurs on earth. We have been the kings and queens of the sea…until now. Humans have made the oceans unsafe for me and my fellow sharks. Not only is the water we swim in dirty with garbage and chemical pollutants, but we are being fished and killed nearly to extinction because of shark finning.
And unlike most fish that are fully utilized, just our fins are cut off. This is because our fins are used in Asia for a delicacy called shark fin soup. To add insult to injury, finned sharks are most often thrown back in to ocean alive to die a slow, agonizing death. What hurts another shark hurts me too, as it is almost unbearable to see a fellow shark alive for days on end, and unable to swim due to missing fins.
Recently, I went on an exciting adventure. I was accidentally caught in a fishing net and taken on board a fishing boat. I was sure I was going to die like many of my friends before me. But I was lucky, and I was taken alive! I first went to a very large outdoor ocean pen where I could swim freely. I was fed fish off a stick. It was quite a treat to not have to catch my own food! How long will this luxury last, I kept wondering to myself.
I was later transported in a large tanker truck to the Monterey Bay Aquarium where I was put into the Open Sea tank. While the fat tuna in the tank looked tantalizing enough to eat, I enjoyed being fed salmon by a pole. I would have preferred to catch my own meals, but it was fun being lazy! I saw many people each day through the aquarium window. I loved the transfixed looks of awe on their faces when I swam past. The flashes were annoying, but luckily they didn’t happen very often (thank you docents!).
I felt myself growing larger each day. One day I sensed one of the yellowfin tuna getting weaker from sickness. Once I smell blood in the water, my primitive instincts kick in and chomp! I bit hard into that tuna. That got many of the marine biologists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium worried that I was getting too big for my britches, as well as too large for the tank.
Before I knew it, I was in a stretcher on my way back to the tanker transport truck. They stuck a satellite tag onto my back so they could track where I traveled in the ocean. The tag eventually popped off and sent information back to the marine biologists that told of my travels. But before the tag popped off, each time I felt the tag as I swam through the open ocean I remembered my great adventure to and from the Monterey Bay Aquarium!
