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Saturday, May 28, 2011

Sharks Are Friends Ban Shark Fin Soup

Indie Writing Challenge
Dispel a stereotype is my challenge from Jen O.
Please click on all videos to open before you read, yes all at once.
 I am experimenting with interactive links. Please provide input about the interactive aspect. Readers please provide comments. I will include your words and ideas. I will make changes each day this next week. If you want your personal link added, please post url in the comments. All free links in the text. Thank you  - have fun. 
I am looking for your story changes, ideas, and responses.

Should AB 376 be thrown out of California?
Is it prejudicial against Asian culture to ban shark fin soup?
Everything you say I intend to incorporate in the body of the text.
 ***


Sharks actually save lives. Sharks provide oxygen.

Sharks are an apex predator. They are a necessary balance in the universe. There are about sixty shark attacks on humans worldwide on humans. Sharks need a new Public Relations Representative. Over fishing and shark finning have placed many shark species on endangered lists. We will miss the mighty shark. http://bit.ly/dycB0S



The brutal practice of shark finning is a multibillion-dollar industry. While the shark is living, the fins are sliced off. The anglers throw the body back into the sea to drown. The process is wasteful and cruel.



Shark fin soup is a delicacy in Asian restaurants sold for up to three hundred and fifty dollars a bowl. The fin provides no flavor to the broth. Chicken and pork stock reduce to provide the taste in the dish. Believers think the fin provides mythical powers of strength and an aphrodisiac.

http://www.greenmuze.com/animals/wild/2100-shark-fin-soup-facts.html



Seventy percent of the world's oxygen comes from phytoplankton if we kill off sharks we will reduce the air we breathe. Sharks feed on many of these plankton-eating fish. Sharks keep the ocean in balance and provide the world’s oxygen supply.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800901002737



The ecosystem of the Atlantic Ocean is off balance. The disappearance of species of sharks is one cause. This demonstrates why we must conserve remaining shark species. Sea scallops disappeared from the lack of large predatory sharks in the coastal waters of the Atlantic. During the past thirty years, an explosion in the number of ray, skate and small shark species that they prey on, devastated organisms at the bottom of the food chain.

"Large sharks have been functionally eliminated from the east coast of the US, meaning that they can no longer perform their ecosystem role as top predators," said Julia Baum a fisheries biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada and co-author of the study.

"With fewer sharks around, the species they prey upon - like cownose rays - have increased in numbers, and in turn, hordes of cownose rays dining on bay scallops have wiped the scallops out."

Several of the larger shark species in the northwest Atlantic are verging on extinction, according to Baum and colleagues who analysed a dozen surveys dating from 1970 up to 2005.”

The Assembly Bill 376 has passed through the first hurdles. Many emails have come in in support of saving many species of sharks. Few have posted links or information. Above is a wonderful link from SuperMaren  to her utube swimming with he sharks.



http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/ssg_pelagic_report_final.pdf

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4 comments:

supermaren said...

I got married in Hawaii, and while we were there on our honeymoon. I wanted to go swimming with sharks. My new husband didn't want to go, but he also didn't stop me. And so I went with a few of my friends and took an underwater camera. It was one of the best experiences of the whole trip (besides getting married, of course), and I got a chance to see these incredibly majestic creatures up close. I created a slide show from those pictures, and I uploaded it to YouTube, as a contrast to your first video. http://youtu.be/XyeKjrxZSRY

Unknown said...

It's interesting that you put the first video up - just because when you first mention the word "shark" to someone - they immediately think Great White Shark - and they immediately think of "Jaws" and other shark movies in which they portray sharks to be these malevolent creatures that will attack on sight. In truth there are many types of sharks, and we are the ones who have invaded their territory, not the other way around! On vacation in Jamaica, I had the opportunity to swim and interact with nurse sharks - yes they have pointy teeth that would hurt if you get caught, but they were as gentle (or more) than the dolphins I swam with.

Great whites, similarly, are really gentle creatures much unlike the stereotype Hollywood has put upon them - think about it, if you were starving and someone was waving food in your face, wouldn't you attack if someone tried to take it away? If someone entered your private home and was trying to kill you or hurt your family, wouldn't you retaliate the best way you knew how? Maybe, just maybe we're not so different from sharks after all.

Caroline Gerardo said...

Super Maren and Bewildered Bug I found if you click on both videos and Jaws music plays with Nemo's little voice the sound layers are pretty good. Wish I knew how to make them run when you open the blog.

Anonymous said...

I feel horrible admitting this... but I have had shark fin soup. I honestly had NO idea what horrible things went into making it. I will certainly never eat it again. (It's not very good anyway.)