The Dorsal Fin

Forbes has an article about The Peninsula Hotel chain’s recent announcement that shark fin soup will be removed from the menus of all eight of its luxury hotels on January 1, 2012. The chain includes locations in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. According to the article other hotels in the region are “reviewing policies” on the dish, but the article notes that it appears that few others appear ready to drop the dish from the menu.

You can check out the entire article at Forbes.

We hear a lot about the shark fin soup market in the media, but how much of it is true?

GuyHarveyMagazine.com has an excellent article written by Chuck Thompson (with additional reporting from Virginia Lau) exposing the “4 lies” about shark fin soup. The article covers myths about the cultural history of the dish in China, flaws in international conservation efforts, cultural status and the cost of shark fin soup, as well as cultural views on sharks and animals, in general.

The report is long and certainly opinionated, but it is definitely worth reading in its entirety if you’ve followed any of the anti-finning movements or campaigns that have been in the media over the past few years. Check out the full article at GuyHarveyMagazine.com

Thanks to Shark Diver’s Underwater Thrills blog for the heads-up on this article.

Wild Aid has recently posted several animal conservation PSA videos to their YouTube Channel, including an English version of a shark conservation PSA above, which features 1984 Olympic gold medalist (10m platform diving), Zhou Jihong. The original version (posted a few years ago) of this PSA was in Mandarin and focused on the “duty” of humans to protect sharks and the world’s ocean ecosystems. Wild Aid has produced several shark conservation PSA videos featuring prominent Chinese athletes aimed at curbing demand in the Chinese shark fin soup market.

According to an AFP article, basketball player, Yao Ming has recently unveiled a new television commercial "aimed at wealthy Chinese" urging them to turn away from the consumption of shark fin soup. The commercial was produced by WildAid and features Ming pushing away a bowl of shark fin soup that is being offered to him in an upscale restaurant, accompanied by a narrator asking, “If you could see how shark fin is made, could you still eat it?”

Ming is quoted as saying, “We have species that need our attention and protection. They are endangered by excessive hunting by humans and deprived of habitats due to human greed.” Along with the television commercial, the basketball star’s image is also appearing on shark conservation billboard in China. Ming has been involved with WildAid in the past and made news in 2006 with his pledge to give up eating shark fin soup. Ming has also appeared in previous conservation PSAs for WildAid, including the one below which focuses on the hunting of elephants.

Hopefully, WildAid will post the new Yao Ming PSA online in the near future, as they generally do an exceptional job with their commercials (except that they tend to rely on the 100 million sharks a year “magic number”).

According to the article Chinese belly-gods warn: Eating shark fins to have ecological, health consequences, not only does the shark fin market pose a devastating risk to marine ecosystems, it may also pose a health risk to its consumers. Steve Trent of Wild Aid is pushing for promoting awareness about dangers of shark fin consumption in China, the world’s largest consumer of shark fins. Part of this awareness campaign includes Public Service Announcements like the one below (Warning: contains brief finning imagery)

According to Trent,

"Research shows they contain heavy metals such as mercury, which can cause damage to the nervous system and male infertility."

According to the article, Trent said that most Chinese shark fin consumers were not aware of the ecological effects of the shark fin industry. He also noted that many consumers did not even that shark fin delicacies actually contained the fins. This is due to the literal translation of &quotyu chi" meaning "fish fin". Due to this confusion, some consumers assumed they were eating highly nutritional domestic fish. Trent encourages responsible fishing practices and goes on to say that the "hunting of sharks should be carried out in a sustainable way, restraint should be exercised in consumption of the cartilaginous fish, and the practice of hunting sharks merely for fins should be banned."