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.

http://dsc.discovery.com/sharks/shark-finning.html

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.”

http://youtu.be/XyeKjrxZSRY

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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Heart Attack Takes 55 Year Old Husband

"Mon coeur ne vous quitta jamais une seconde,

et je suis, et serai jusque dans l'autre monde,

celui qui vous aima, sans mesure..."

Cyrano wears a plastic nose.

Headband hides the rubber band.

Abs of steel and a clogged heart.

Look sideways upon his dressing gown,

Ripple the waves of the river wash the sand.

Indie Ink Writing Challenge

I used the prompt to add a part of Chapter to a novel I am already writing. The emptiness and tedium of the sound of the word prompt was tempting. Ugh has both positive and negative uses
My subject matter is not G rated. If you are under the age of eighteen, I advise you do not to read as the fictional characters talk about drugs.
“Ugh.” is my prompt. 
***
   “Do you want to make some real money Seth?” Joe stands in a black jacket with padded shoulders.
   “Ugh?”
   “I have this buddy who pays for delivery. It is a drive to Miami. Tell your parents you are going on a school field trip or one of those fancy away swim competitions.”
   “My parents don’t care what I do, as long as I don’t talk to them.” Seth answers.
   “Being uninterested is better than a Mom who screams all the time.”
   “Mine just fight with each other.”
   “Can you leave tonight? “
   “No problem. What are we transporting? What is my cut?”
   “Hash. You can have a piece of the action.” Joe puts his palm down from his extended arm. The hand curves as in the statue of Poseidon. The gesture tells Seth not to ask.
   “How are we doing this?” Seth presses him.
   “ I know this guy who is a longshoreman at the docks. Some other people smuggle it into containers.”
   “Where?”
   “It is Broussard Port Everglades, South Florida, where the cruise and cargo ships come in. It is a long drive, one thousand two hundred miles. I can fill you in along the way.”
   Seth walks behind Joe his upper body strutting. Seth occupies more space than before.
   “When do we leave?”
   “Soon. Come on let’s go in here, I need something.” Joe puffs his jacket. He points to the door of a hardware store. “Let’s split up.”
   Seth sees a pair of steel-toed boots sitting on top of stacks of cardboard boxes. The leather is soggy red brown with a notched storm welt. They are size ten, “perfect.” Seth speaks quietly. He looks over his shoulder. Seth puts the boots under his jacket. He steps first with his left foot. Outside the glass double doors, he feels cooling air on his skin. He waits for Joe. His back leans on the unreinforced masonry. He admires the water resistance and electrical shock-proof boots by spitting on the soles. Seth Christens the pair for fortune.
   “Why did you lift those ugly shoes?” Joe startles Seth with a poke.
   “I ‘dunno, just seemed like a good idea at the time.”
   “Look what I got, a .32 short.” The gun still has a price tag on the revolver. Joe opens the barrel. He looks down the solid tunnel. “Didn’t get any ammo, the sales clerk was watching.”
   At 3:00 AM Joe shuts the car’s engine off. He coasts his Impala onto Seth’s driveway. He does not to disturb the family. The sky is indigo. The bitter air seeps into Joe’s bones. He shrugs. Seth walks in the new boots kicking from his hips, toes east and west. His collar is up to hide the cystic boil on the back of his neck. Seth did not have time to lance it with one of the stainless diabetes lances. In his pocket wrapped in sterile foil is a metal sword. The pointed piece of surgical steel encased in plastic is usually used to puncture the skin on one’s finger to take a blood sample. This lancet Seth will use to make a small incision, to drain the acne cyst later. He took a box from his father, the Doctor’s office.
   “I brought some Quaaludes for the trip.”
   “I have some speed and pot. That should do. All we need is some girls.”
   “What do we need girls for Joe?”
   “Entertainment. This is a boring drive. A chick might end your virginity.”
   “I’m no virgin.”
   “Right. Sing it.”
   “I know what you mean about uninteresting, my whole life is dull.”
   They head out on South 476 and on to I-95 south towards Baltimore. Seth watches the moon waning from his leather passenger seat. They are silent. Seth moves the electric window down. He lets his hair spin in the wind. At their first stop for gas, they spot three teen girls waiting outside. They are trying to score some alcohol.
   “Can you buy us some vodka?” The heavy set one asks.
   “I’m only seventeen, no I.D.” Joe’s lips part. He gives the fat girl his row of white teeth.
   She is charmed by the tall V shaped Joe. She giggles. She turns to her two friends. They reapply chap-stick and huddle towards him.
   “But I can get you some anyways.” Joe goes into the station. He takes the hand of the big boned teenager tenderly. He nabs a bottle of Popov, “you beautiful ladies ‘been partying last night?”
   She puts her big toe curled inward as a coryphée might circle behind, “yeah we are supposed to be at a religious camp for the weekend. We snuck out. We can’t find anything to do.”
   “Come on with us to Miami.”
   “Why are you going there?” She looks into Joe’s sapphire eyes.
   “Dropping sonny boy at college.” Joe lies.
   Some gasoline spills on Seth’s hands. He wipes his fingers in the rain on the passenger window. He swiftly pulls the aldehydes through his nostrils.  Seth opens the door for the plump girl to take shotgun.
***
copyright Caroline Gerardo May 15 2011
Indie Ink Writing Challenge

Preponderance of Crows May 21

Van Gogh Wheat Field

Preponderance of Crows

Copyright Caroline Gerardo May 13, 2011

Kakka बाली

The neigh Sayers hike with black t-shirts

Why exercise if the end of days is only nine away?

They speak in tongues, in whispers, in my dreams.

Flocks of crows are upon us.

My heart pumps crimson rust.

Once it filled with liquid amber.

Numerology tells the jackdaw to raid the tomb.

Flocks of crows are upon us.

The rook imitates human voices.

He calls koww and caw eh aw for Bali Kakka.

When he flies on my right, it is good omen.

Flocks of crows are upon us.

Rumor is Harold Camping has West Nile Virus.

A raven can use tools and make art.

I am a three legged corvid, we will all survive.

***

I first posted this just as Google softwear updates crashed. I was thinking it had something to do with criticizing the doomsday group.  The video and photographs I uploaded, I lost. Somehow, no copy but I had a clip of a different video. Video on Blogger takes forever to load.  

Haresh Daswani The Evolution of Insanity

I just ordered Haresh Daswani's the Evolution of Insanity
The Amazon mail it to me method.
I can't wait to read it in paperback, as my eyesight is tired from so much online typing and writing.