On March 23, the marine residents of the small coral enclave of Pleasant Tides awoke to a scene of horror. Lonnie Leftfin, a local public school teacher and coach of the Pleasant Tides High School marine soccer team, lay finless and dying in the town square, parasitic eels approaching to finish off this once-revered shark. Since then, dozens of shark protests have sprung up in Pacific Rim communities from California to Korea. Although some take a more hard-line stance, the principal message of the demonstrations has been to call for a moratorium on the practice of finning. Despite sharks’ pleas, humans have turned a deaf ear to this tragedy, as they continue their destruction not only of the shark population, but of the very oceans they inhabit. The protesters’ message, therefore, does not go far enough. They should be demanding not only a permanent stop to finning, but a dramatic change in how humans treat the ocean, and should be ready and willing to overthrow their oppressors by force if their demands are not met.
The practice of finning cannot be separated from the human economic structure that fuels its demand. Humans kill sharks for their fins primarily to make shark fin soup, a delicacy served at important events across Asia. Despite the presence of anti-finning laws in many countries, the industry continues to be highly unmonitored and extremely profitable—it is a multi-billion-dollar market, with one pound of dry shark fin being sold for roughly $300. An estimated 100 million sharks are killed for their fins and left for dead annually, according to shark specialists. Other shark meat is of low value, and shark corpses leave less space for fins on a fisherman’s boat, so the logical economic solution is to dump the still-living, finless shark back in the water. It will eventually suffocate or be eaten alive by other fish, as in the case of poor Mr. Leftfin.
Shark finning not only impacts the families and communities of sharks worldwide, but threatens to irreparably destabilize every marine ecosystem it touches. A healthy shark population is key to maintaining order in the ocean food chain and preserving the way of life of every marine organism.
Humans will never recognize this reality as long as they are motivated more by quick profit than their long-term obligation to sharks and, more importantly, to preserving the planet’s ecosystems. The sharks of the world can hope all they want that a revolution is coming to change this value system, but a much more productive route, if sharks continue to be slaughtered, is to lash out at the human overlords. Unless change comes immediately, sharks of every stripe should make sure every fisherman out to dismember these majestic fish meets the same fate as the species he pursues.
