Another endangered species...

Peter Wu

5 January 2013

By its sheer numbers, everything that China has a demand or appetite for will stoke their prices or hasten their demise.

African elephants and their ivory is one, Rhinos and their horns is another. Sharks and their fins is the latest under the spot light.

In order to be exclusive and different, there are rumours that some Chinese are trying to revive its appetite for bear’s paws.

I am glad the Polynesian countries are so far resisting the lure to export sea cucumbers which they are awashed with. Without them, there will be no sandy beaches and will also turn the eco-system upside down.

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A Voracious Demand for Shark Fins By BETTINA WASSENER

Gary Stokes/Sea Shepherd One of the images captured this week in Hong Kong by the conservationist Gary Stokes.

A series of photographs taken this week by an environmental campaigner underline Hong Kong’s role as the epicenter of the global trade in shark fins. Shot in the city’s Kennedy Town neighborhood over three days, they show thousands of shark fins drying on the roof of a large industrial building.

The images were captured by Gary Stokes, a conservation photographer who is also the coordinator for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in Hong Kong. You can see more of them here here at his blog.

Shark fins are the main ingredient of a soup that is widely regarded a status symbol in Chinese culture and a must-serve at important events and celebrations like weddings. As I have reported in the past, the dried fins sell for several hundred dollars a pound. Often they are sliced from sharks that are then thrown back into the sea to die.

Revulsion over that practice, and a rising awareness that shark populations are under severe pressure because of soaring demand in an increasingly affluent China, has led to campaigning around the world to protect sharks in recent years. Numerous countries – and several state legislatures in the United States — have banned the possession, sale or distribution of shark fins.

China announced last year that shark fin soup would no longer be served at official state banquets. In Hong Kong, where popular opinion is shifting toward support for shark conservation, several top hotels have taken the soup off their menus.

The Hong Kong government has not discouraged the shark fin trade, however, and demand from mainland China, where most of the fins photographed by Mr. Stokes are probably headed, remains strong.

“The world’s lawmaking bodies are clearly failing us and the species that share this planet with us,” Mr. Stokes, who is British-born but lives in Hong Kong, said in a statement. “People will continue to be shocked” by images like the shark fin photographs “until this either becomes illegal or all the sharks are gone,” he said.