Tuesday, December 4, 2012

When the Buying Stops the Killing Can Too



Shark are been fished all over the world and this in now a big issue. As they are been fished, the fishermen capture them, rip their fins off and throw them back in the ocean to die. Most the time the shark is still alive and not only do they kill them but they torture them by putting them back in the water to bleed to death or to be eaten by other sharks. This all happens for one little bowl, one bowl that contains the life of a beautiful animal that does nothing but help keep our ocean in balance, this bowl is a bowl of shark fin soup. Shark fin soup is a delicacy in many asian countries.  Killing sharks for their fins needs to be stopped because sharks are an important part of the ocean ecosystem, shark’s slow reproduction rate makes it harder for them to reproduce even without being killed off, and shark fins don’t contain any nutritional value.

Sharks are an important part of the ocean ecosystem and killing them off would affect all ocean life forever.Sharks have been swimming in our oceans for thousands of years and it would be very sad to see them become extinct. “Sharks have shaped evolution in the ocean, the fact that fish are camouflage, their speed,  their behavior has all been influenced by the shark so you remove the shark and you can cause some serious problems with diversity in the oceans.”(Shark Finning Videos)This problem will make the seas that we swim in and the oceans that we dive in  overcrowded  with fish and a bunch of other things, things that may be life threatening to us.“ There's nothing extra in nature we can't just take something out and think that everything is going to be okay, its not all about the sharks it's about the delicate balance of the ocean ... We are destroying our oceans, and if our oceans die, we die, we don't live on this planet with a dead ocean. … We need sharks on this planet.“ (Sea Shepherds) If we continue to think that it will all be okay  ‘ its just a shark’ we will have a dead sea. A dead sea can cause many bad things like not being able to go swimming in the ocean or not to be able to scuba dive. These things are not only fun but they are important tools that we can use to learn about our oceans. Our Ocean covers more 70% of our planet, and if that 70% dies the human race will be in trouble.

When a fisherman kills a shark, it may be killing a  shark that has never had a chance to reproduce. Sharks have  a very slow reproductive rate and for the amount that humans kill, in just a few decades there will be no more sharks. People once said that it was just one shark that the ocean has plenty, that they won't go extinct and if they do it will be in a few hundred years, but now it may  in just a few years. “Sharks are extremely vulnerable to overfishing because they have very late onset of reproduction, sometimes 25 years for some if they  are larger sharks .”
(Shark Finning Videos)Sharks are a lot like humans in that respect, they have a few amount of pupps for the amount of sharks we kill. Sharks don't have that ability that fish do., they can't lay millions of eggs and have a high chance of success. “(Shark Finning Videos)They have few young, so if you're killing a shark you may be killing a shark that has never had a chance to reproduce or you may be killing a shark that can only have maybe 20 -25 pupps  in its entire lifetime”This means that just one fisherman can wipe out an entire population in an local society. This is something that everyone should be worried about.  

Some people might say that shark fin soup helps your health, but in fact shark fin soup is tasteless and does not contain anything that may help your health. “shark fins are tasteless”
(Shark Finning Videos). So many sharks are being killed and for something that isn't even worth buying as it is tasteless and expensive. Shark fins “contain high levels of  Methyl_ Mercury” (Shark Finning Videos)Millions of people want to eat shark fin soup for the nutrients that they think it has, the ‘power’ it gives you. They are not only killing sharks and wasting their money on something that actually contains high levels of Methyl_ Mercury.

Over the past few years there have been people that try their best to save the sharks from this terrible thing called shark fin soup. The Sea Shepherd crew are a group of very brave people who sail out every year on a trip to stop all the fishing that is hurting our oceans.  The president and founder of the Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson has started a new journey to help save the sharks.“Sea Shepherd conservation society has fought tirelessly for whales, dolphins, tuna and seals. Now they are taking on the most dangerous and hardest battle they've ever fought, for an animal few believe is worth fighting for, an animal essential warth various survivals, the Sharks.”
(Sea Shepherds) Remember when the buying stops the killing can too.

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