In being humans, we like to eat and, unfortunately, we don’t settle for the everyday catfish or tilapia. No, we have to eat weird dishes like shark fin soup. “It is estimated that 100 to 200 million sharks annually are killed for their fins alone. This practice is mainly for supplying shark fins for the so-called delicacy known as shark fin soup (www.sharkfriends.com).” To put this information in a way you can relate to, think of it like this. You and your entire country of one hundred million people have special flesh that an alien nation loves to eat. Well, the alien nation kills off your entire country to make the certain delicacy they enjoy so much. Do you think they were right in killing your species off for food they really didn’t need? Of course not! Let me ask you this now, should we be killing 11,416 sharks an hour and a rough number of 100,000,000 a year to make shark fin soup? “On the IUCN's Red List of endangered species, 50 shark species are listed as being at high risk of extinction (either Critically Endangered, Endangered, or Vulnerable) and 63 additional endangered shark species are approaching threatened status. Another 199 species of sharks are considered 'data deficient', many of which may well be endangered, but there is insufficient data to determine their status. There is also regional information available to indicate that sharks are functionally extinct in large parts of the …show more content…
In fact, some countries are already petitioning to ban the delicacy since they have seen what the after effects of killing a number of sharks equivalent to one-third of the population of the United States a year. I believe we can accelerate this process by posting graphs and stats onto social media to spread the word about finning. We can also appeal to our state government and plead for them to make a motion to pass a law banning, or at least limiting, the finning of sharks. All you would need to do is to send a letter to our governor. If that doesn’t work, start a petition. If one hundred people petitioned and each got fifty people, five thousand people would already be on the petition. Charities, such as sharkangels.org and www.sharktrust.org/, whose function is to stop finning are also available. With a few clicks of your mouse, you could donate money to support the efforts to get rid of finning. Finning is a major cause of the absence of sharks; therefore, if we stop or limit finning, then the ocean’s apex predator will be able to thrive once again. “You can and should make a difference before there aren’t sharks left. In fact a recent IUCN report has identified over 1/3 of all shark species (more than 500 in total) are facing extinction – some in our lifetimes. Destroying sharks and the oceans isn't a legacy we want to leave for future