Shark Finning : The Most Misunderstood Animals

One of the major problems is shark finning. Shark finning is the practice of removing the shark’s fins after it has been caught. They keep the fins and the body is usually thrown back into the sea, and usually the shark is still alive when this happens. When this is done sharks are not able to swim, and eventually the shark dies from suffocation, blood loss or being eaten another predator. The reason why the fins are kept are because shark fins are one of the most expensive food items in the world and can be worth more than over $400 per kilogram. One of the problems with finning and the selling shark fins is that it has caused a lot of declines in shark populations. Shark finning is unmonitored and unreported so the actual amount of finning is unknown. Finning is done at random and unbiased, they go after any species, sex or size of shark. Research has been done on some of the fins brought in by fisheries and it shows that even fins from great white sharks are appearing in shark fin

Every Jaws fan knows the shark gets it in the end. What they do not know is that too many sharks have gotten it; and that has caused a rapid decline in the shark population over the past thirty years. Since the 1970's, sharks of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shores have declined eighty-five percent. Sharks are vital animal to our world's ecosystem, and if the decline is not controlled; we could be facing devastating problems in years to come. Information has been obtained from two books: The Shark Almanac by Thomas B. Allen and Sharks, An Introduction for the Amateur Naturalist by Sanford A. Moss. Sources also include a number of online references, among them BBC News, ENS News, The New York Times, and two online scientific

Shark finning is the process of cutting off the fins of a shark and discarding the body at sea (“Stop Shark Finning”, 2009). People catch sharks for its fins, meat, oil, skin and so on. Sharks fins are most commonly used in Asian cooking which is shark fin soup. According to Maddalena, Sommeran and Leander (2007), people have been demanding for shark fins dramatically recently, it is unclear how many sharks are caught annually but some of the conservationists estimate the number to be upwards of 100 million. Besides, shark conservationists are aware about the consequences of the high demand of shark fins, they advocate people to stop killing sharks and eating shark fins. Practice of shark finning is causing imbalance marine ecosystems and it

Shark fin is usually consumed in the form of soup by the Chinese. It is part of the Chinese culture to have shark fin soup in important days like someone’s wedding. If shark fin soup is banned, it might be racist and insolent to the Chinese culture. Furthermore, a lot of fishermen are relying on shark finning to make ends meet. If shark finning gets barred, a lot of fisherman would be jobless and it is extremely hard for them to find a job. Although sharks are becoming extinct and shark finning is seriously harmful the ecosystem of the sea, but it is not essential to embargo shark finning completely. Some restriction of shark finning may have to be suggested to help increase the amount of sharks back to a quantity where overfishing them won’t be a problem, but banning it completely may just cause too much controversy against the Chinese cultural and all the shark finning

Arising over 350 million years ago, the shark species has been labeled as a human devourer. Now, with the increase in human population, the demand for shark meat, fins, and cartilage are at an all time high; therefore, the existence of the shark is becoming a concern (Budker 1971). Individuals are conditioned to think of sharks as a negative aspect to the environment, which is prolonging the effort to save shark species from becoming extinct. With that in mind, some private as well as national organizations have accepted the challenge of educating and informing people about the existence of the shark specie and its importance to the sea.

The things that sharks are being killed for is sickening. So far, humans have decimated about 90 percent of the world’s shark populations for the sake of shark tooth jewelry and jaws that tourists buy in massive quantities, sharkskin accessories, phony medicines made from their cartilage, and a huge range of cosmetics, deodorants, moisturizers, sun tan lotions, and lip balms that use shark liver oil as a base because it makes our skin soft. (Check the ingredients of these items before you buy. If they contain “squalene” or “squalane,” leave them on the shelf.) (M. R., Ph. (2015, February 08). The Most Misunderstood Shark Fact Of All Time. From

Picture the beach, the golden sand and aqua water, the warm bright sun in the background, Imagine what is under the water, the aqua clear waters and the little fishes, but instead the ocean is full of nets capturing these harmless sharks. This is redicious to capture and kill these native Australian sharks. Shark culling has become the new issue for Australian media. Shark culling is not the answer for safer oceans.

Is shark culling okay given the number of shark attacks that have occurred? Recently it seems that the number of shark attacks has increased with seven fatal attacks in the past 3 years in Western Australia (WA). These recent attacks have led the WA Government being granted an exemption to start culling sharks with a catch-and-kill shark program. A lot of people including scientists and surfers are against this controversial decision. For people to make an informed decision they need to have an understanding of where the shark fits into the marine ecosystem, as well as the reasons presented for the use of shark culling and the arguments given that oppose such extreme measures.

The issue of shark culling has recently surfaced in the media. The article ‘Proof still required that shark culling works’, written by Glenn Hyndes and published on abc.com, addresses the fact that there is no evidence that shark culling is beneficial for the public, yet the law has been used by the Western Australian Government. This article was written on December 12th 2013, when shark culling was discussed in the media, has a very passionate, logical and concerned tone towards the topic. Hyndes has written this article for an audience of people who think sharks are a danger, people who want to protect sharks and the Western Australian Government.

People visceral when they see a shark and they try to capture and kill it. Only some people want to protect sharks. Sharks help by keeping the fish population down First, we can protect sharks by doing little things such as stop finning sharks, picking up our trash. Next people destroy environments by oil spills. Not picking up trash. Last if people don’t stop finning sharks and not throwing their trash away our environment will smell bad and we will have no sharks left.

To this day, many of us still see them this way. In fact, coastal states stared to host shark culling events. In these sometime month-long events, a state government will pay any fishermen to bring in a freshly killed shark generous amounts of money. Peter Benchley, the author of "Jaws" doesn't support shark culling, he in fact helped raise awareness about sharks becoming endangered. He wrote articles about how misunderstood sharks are (Benchley, Peter). This is now illegal in the United States, but is still practiced in countries such as Japan and Australia. Even in those countries, shark culling is on its way out. But

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s article “The Brutal Business of Shark Finning” reminds us that sharks play a key role in the ocean as both predators and scavengers.

More and more people have been introduced to a very dangerous practice called shark-finning. Even the people who are aware of the harmful effects they bring still continue on doing it. People are afraid of sharks due to their fierce appearance and the bad publicity they get such as the movies wherein sharks attack humans. Only about 5 people are killed by sharks every year. In fact, vending machines has a higher death rate of 13, while ants can kill about 30 people annually. Sharks are very beneficial to us, why do people keep on harming them? Why is shark-finning so important? Shark-finning gives both advantages and disadvantages economically, politically, cultural, societal, and environmental. It is important to recognize the

A human’s natural environment is not the ocean and they are not the natural prey of sharks (NOAA Fisheries 2015). Due to this, sharks often mistake surfers as their natural prey because from below they can look like a turtle or a sea lion (HowStuffWorks 2016). If a swimmer is splashing around a shark is more likely to go to them because they will think that it is an animal in distress and therefore a viable target (HowStuffWorks 2016). Sharks are carnivores and if they do kill a human it’s for survival not out of malicious intent. Sharks should not be culled because they are just surviving by eating their food source,

Another contributing element that needs to be considered is consensus, or agreement. Consensus of for and against the response by the Western Australian government. In the Goode and Ben-Yehuda’ hypothesis (2009), the concern does not need to be countrywide, but must be widespread acceptance that the group causes a very real threat to society. In Western Australia, fatal shark attacks have raised the awareness of ocean safety, caused the government ran a shark culling program to prevent further fatalities. This response invoked the public opinion on the shark cull policy, therefore the varying thoughts was voiced out by the people who from different groups. The majority of the scientists were holding the same standpoint towards shark cull.