Help End Shark Finning and the sale of Shark Products

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No, the easy out is to sign an online petition and rest satisfied that one has done all one can from one's armchair.

How's that petition to Beijing going? I'm sure it has China really worried.

Bottom line is this... even if you're right about your idea of petitions not being effective (which you're not)... they are a great way to rally support for a cause that might not otherwise get a lot of attention. I can't tell you how many people who knew nothing about the Shark Finning industry now do because I requested that they sign a ban finning petition. Many of these people are as passionate about stopping the issues surrounding sharks as I am. Thanks to an online petition.

I'm curious to hear your response to highdeserts question... I'm all ears.
 
Given the value of your online petition against sharkfinning by mainland China, my efforts have been infinitely more successful. If I can convince you to stop wasting your time with this online petition BS and instead fly over to Beijing and protest in Tiananmen Square while dressed in a shark suit, then I'll have accomplished a great deal. In fact, just to show I'm serious, I'll contribute $100 toward your one-way plane ticket as soon as you're ready to go.
 
FYI Mossman. The Thais, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Malaysians, Filipino's, Indonesians, Africans, south Americans even the Pacific Islanders are all finning sharks for the Chinese and Hong Kong markets (70+ million sharks finned per annum is a big number dude, where did you think they were all coming from?).

I now live here in the Coral Triangle and spent a few years in China and Hong Kong and can tell you the regional issue is vast. Create a market and they will be supplied where ever it comes from.

I must say for someone who doesn't believe in "people power through partitions", you seem to spend a lot of time and energy telling us we are wrong.

Focus Team; and get this thread back on track for those readers who want to make a difference.

PS; Sabah State in Malaysian Borneo, is drafting a government ban on all shark fin products for export or local consumption. Thats great news, and a lot to do with partitions circulated by several regional green groups that showed the government the people were watching and put them to shame. Enforcing it will be hard, but I guess that's where we come in......Bring it on! Still good to see them start to think longer term.

As Confucius once said "don't let arguing with dick-heads stop you from achieving your goals"
 
... I'll contribute $100 toward your one-way plane ticket as soon as you're ready to go.

Hey Mossman ... have I got a deal for you! If that c-note is burning a hole in your pocket so badly, here's one of the most respected organizations in the world doing research on sharks ...

Global Shark Conservation

I'll bet they'd be happy to take it! :wink:
 
Here is a group - Shark Savers - that is taking the anti shark fin message directly to those involved - Hong Kong and even mainland Chinese. They have produced a video in Cantonese that shows fellow Chinese explaining why they won't eat shark fin products. The following link is to the english version, but there is also a Cantonese version.

Shark Savers launches new Shark Fin Soup campaign

I know highdesert referenced this group before in another commercial, but this video is different. I think productions like this are just as effective as online petitions , and again it directly targets those who are most likely to have the biggest effect, the consumers of these products.
I'm sure there are still naysayers out there who feel this won't do anything at all, but I can tell you directly it has a big effect. When I'm in HK, visiting friends and family, and they see commercials like these, and I remind them what I've been telling them when I see sharks on my scuba vacations, it definitely adds more weight to the anti shark fin campaign. The younger generations (< 30 years) for the most part take the message much more seriously than the older ones, but I've seen change in some of my aunts and uncles, at least they say they won't go out of their way to buy shark fin anymore, and wonder how they can make the practice at least more sustainable, (if that's possible).
The gears of change grind slowly, but they are moving, and in a positive direction.
 
Whooo I can't believe it has been so quiet on this topic for 6 months now, I have just returned from a shark conservation expedition in the Middle east and our findings over a period of 3 weeks was just shocking, we fished for sharks for 14 days out of the 21 and caught and released.....4 Arabian Bamboo sharks only, we visited the fish markets for about 18 days and it is just shocking to find between 50 to 180 sharks a day.

Now taking an average of 32.88 sharks caught a day equals to nearly 12.000 sharks being killed in a year in just the waters around Bahrain and that is not even for their fins.... now tell me how serious is this problem world wide.

Educating the fishing communities of their impact now and how changing their impact can benefit them in the future, but it is about how the message comes across, because it is the fishing communities that have to buy into it to make it all change.

It is not all about the fins, it is the mind set for the people about sharks....it's all negative sharks are never been associated with any positive impacts and are just being targeted for being a shark.

So Expats who live in tropical destinations because you are working in the diving industry, get involved with the community and help them to change in a positive way and do it for them and the sharks...what do you get out of it? well you do more for sharks then only talking about it and signing petitions.
 
SinoScuba Welcomes Phase-Out of Shark Fin at Chinese Government and Public Banquets

BEIJING (July 3, 2012) -- SinoScuba, Beijing's first professional dive operator, today welcomed the announcement by China's State Council -- one of China's highest policy-making bodies -- that the use of shark fin as a menu item at official government banquets and celebrations paid for with public money will be phased out over the next three years. This is an important step in the right direction for conservation of sharks globally, as 95 percent of all shark fins are consumed in the Greater China market.

Approximately 70 to 100 million sharks per year are killed for human consumptions, many of them having their dorsal, pectoral and tail fins cut off, then throw back into the ocean, where they drown slowly. Shark fin soup is a traditional delicacy in China often served at weddings, but it has not been proven to have any health benefits, and is tasteless except for the soup in which it is cooked.

"I am happy to hear that China's State Council has announced it is taking such a positive step. Perhaps it will even consider accelerating its three-year timetable to reduce further the number of sharks that will be killed needlessly in the interim. This is an excellent example to set, and now we see that both China's public sector, along with private-sector thought leaders like Alibaba.com are joining together for shark conservation," said Steven Schwankert, founder of SinoScuba.

"We hope now that private citizens will follow the government's lead. At SinoScuba, we love sharks, and we are looking forward to more opportunities to educate the public about their importance to our oceans, including at SinoScuba Shark Weekend 2012, July 28-29," Schwankert said.

Businesses including the Alibaba.com Group, Peninsula Hotels, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, and Swissotel have already announced they will end or have ended the sale of shark fin products via their outlets. The government on Taiwan has already banned shark finning at the start of 2012. As Yao Ming, former NBA superstar and the anti-shark fin movement's leading spokesperson has said, "When the buying stops, the killing can too."

About SinoScuba

Welcome to the online home of SinoScuba, Beijing&#8217;s first professional dive operator with experience instructing divers from ages 10 to 60, from Discover Scuba Diving up to and including Assistant Instructor, and fun dives, including dives with six different species of shark at the Blue Zoo Aquarium. Our Beijing-based, native English-speaking instructors offer flexible schedules for courses in both English and Mandarin. We offer a full range of scuba equipment for rental and sale, and arrange dive trips around Asia for major holidays.
 
Votes for Sale at UN-linked Shark-protection Group
Donald Frazier, Contributor
5/22/2012
Votes for Sale at UN-linked Shark-protection Group - Forbes

HONG KONG—Confronted with a rising tide of bans and boycotts, the outfits that sell shark fin are fighting back – just this week, with a high-profile onslaught of ads in the industry’s epicenter that says sharks aren’t endangered, and charges that Western cultural supremacy lies behind the global campaign to shun this unlikely delicacy.

The protests, according to the leading trade group for shark products, are intended “to incite the public to discriminate against our own eating culture.” It claims Western conservation groups “use the shark issue as a fund-raising gimmick. We now make a vow to voice out and unveil those lies.”

But shark-finning interests fight this battle mainly behind closed doors. They pack the UN-endorsed group that’s supposed to protect sharks with friends – consultants who work for them, government officials who are supposed to promote their home industries, lobbyists who front shady educational groups, and even outright employees.

Just can't wait to get over the wedding part, so we can finally deplete the oceans' biodiversity.

The result: feeble, dilatory, and otherwise ineffective oversight of a business that according to research oceanologists takes as many as 73 million sharks a year, and damages ecosystems that support fisheries feeding hundreds of millions. According to the Pew Environment Group, shark populations have declined from 70 to 80 percent over the last 50 years, and 30 percent of species are now endangered including the hammerhead, whose fin is especially prized for soup.

Blame prosperity. Many of the world’s Chinese crave the social status they get for offering shark fin soup at banquets and weddings. Now more and more of them can afford it, even at prices exceeding $100 per bowl, and consumption has gone up dramatically over the last two decades,

But overfishing can have devastating consequences for ocean life. And shark-finning itself – often slicing the fin from a still-living shark and tossing it back into the ocean to drown, making room for more of the highly-profitable fins—arouses widespread revulsion. A number of cities and states in North America have passed laws against serving shark fin, and a number of top Hong Kong restaurants and hotels have followed suit.

“The UN treaty is supposed to protect animals from becoming threatened by international trade, but pro-trade lobbyists have managed to rally the one-third of the vote needed to veto any proposal,” according to Peter Knights, executive director of the global anti-smuggling NGO, WildAid, referring to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES. Such vetoes cast in secret balloting kept the hammerhead off the list at a CITES meeting in Doha, Qatar in 2010.

In a more recent example, an event in Singapore, an influential member of the CITES shark group described the campaign against shark finning as a Western “attack on Chinese culture.” Dr. Giam Choo-Hoo claimed most sharks are caught by small-scale subsistence fishermen, most shark fin is a product of accidental catches, and sharks don’t need protection anyway. Everything he said in this forum flies in the face of a vast consensus of scientific data, and is extensively disproven by dozens of research organizations and academic institutions.

But Dr. Giam’s impartiality is in question. According to the Washington Post, he introduces himself as a representative of the shark fin industry. He advises leaders of the trade group, the Marine Products Association (which just recently took the words ‘Shark Fin’ off its name), and he vigorously slaps down measures to protect sharks at CITES meetings around the world, as described in a police investigator’s report endorsed by Sea Shepherd, the Seattle-based conservation group.

He’s not even a shark expert – his specialty is crocodiles, and he works for companies that make them into luxury handbags. But he does take the shark fin issue seriously. He explains that because shark fin soup is the “number one most prestigious thing to serve at a big event in China,” Chinese people do not want it banned, and he campaigns avidly for that result.

Others wonder why the 78-year-old veterinarian has a public forum in the first place. “Only here where the industry is strong and the press is weak can you characterize such a biased charade as an impartial debate,” Knights said.

Episodes like this cast a light on the inner workings of the UN-chartered CITES shark group. It is “quite informal,” explained Juan-Carlos Vasquez, communications head of the Geneva-based organization. Its members are supposed to have ‘broad expertise,” according to Susan Lieberman, deputy director for international policy for the Pew Environment Group. But taking part calls for a mere “show of hands” – and the people who turn up are often bankrolled by the industry, or are paid to promote it.

This results in some odd decisions. For example, species hunted for their fins such as the long-fin mako, the porbeagle, and the thresher have declined precipitously over the last decade. But CITES lists only a few species as endangered: the basking, the great white, and the whale shark. Industry advisers like Giam vote, veto, and lobby to keep most of the threatened sharks off the list. Then, citing the same list, they say only a few sharks are endangered – a widely-dismissed conclusion.

But CITES does not require members to disclose personal financial interest in the matters they rule on – another break with global NGO practice. (Vasquez says it is considering changes to this policy.) Nor does it require member countries to refrain from vote-trading – that is, a rich nation granting commercial advantage to a poor nation in exchange for a CITES vote protecting its own fishing industry.

The U.S. government has outlawed shark finning, and Canada is considering a ban on importing shark fin. But these measures will hardly make a dent in the global shark fin trade, where North America accounts for a mere three percent.

Meanwhile, overfishing for shark continues to alter the ecological balance of ocean fisheries in dramatic ways. Without a predator at the top of the food chain, surviving carnivorous fish and rays can wipe out commercially-valuable fish and scallops, and have already done so in many places. This takes a long time to reverse: sharks bear their young live, not many of them, and do it slowly.
 
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