Save Sharks. Stop the Finning!

[Original Fin]

Send a letter to your Senator(s)!

Monterey Bay Aquarium

[tank1970]

I have been a big supporter of banning shark killing - of course it's after a surf boarder was killed. I feel for the family of the boy killed but that is a risk we take when entering their domain.
I have seen how the Japaneses take fins - it's grotesque to say the least. The sharks are thrown back into the ocean alive with out their fins - truly discus sting

[Ninong]

You might be interested in something I posted back in June about the despicable actions of the official Japanese government delegation to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting in Doha, Qatar earlier this year.

Here's the money quote from my own comments:

My comment: Not a single shark species was added to CITES. It takes two-thirds of the votes to add a species. One species actually was added but Japan requested that it be brought back to the table a few days later for a new vote and in that second vote only 65% of the 130 nations represented voted to add it to the restricted list. Ten nations abstained. Japan had worked its magic in backroom deals with some of the smaller nations. Bribery is widely accepted in many parts of the world. It's only in the West that is considered unacceptable.

"China opposed the shark protection, in part because shark fin soup holds such a hallowed place in the Chinese culinary tradition. However, says Griffin, while China was adamant about it's position, it didn't lobby other nations as Japan did."

Japan successfully blocked every single proposal. That's not hard to do when you are the third largest economic power in the world and many of the 130 nations voting are really tiny and their representatives and leaders back home open to persuasion if the price is right.

Japan led the fight against adding the blue-fin tuna to the restricted list. That's because more than 90% of blue-fin tuna ends up in Japan, where it brings astronomical prices.

This is the thread I posted about it.

I wish we could save tigers, too. Unfortunately, that battle is just about hopeless. We have lost 97% of the worldwide wild population of tigers in the past century. They are being totally exterminated in many of their ranges, even in so-called tiger preserves. We're now down to less than 3,200 tigers left in the wild on the entire planet and they're expected to be completely extinct in the wild within the next decade.

They are being poached all over the world because the market in tiger parts is extremely lucrative. A single tiger is worth about $50,000 if you total up the value of the various parts.

For example:

Tiger penis is used in a soup as an aphrodisiac—a bowl of the ‘‘first boil'' comes for nothing less than $100 while subsequent boils cost less. In Taiwan , a ‘‘rich'' bowl of tiger penis soup goes for a hefty $320. Finally, after about five to six boils, the penis is dried up and sold for anything between $200-500. In the late 1990s, a Japanese manufacturer was producing a brand of Tiger penis pills which were on sale for over $27,000 per bottle.

Here's a hint: Viagra would be a lot cheaper and much more effective than a "rich" bowl of tiger penis soup.

[Ninong]

Okay, this is a little off-topic but here ya go: Global Summit to Save the Tiger in St. Petersburg, Russia. Vladimir Putin and Wen Jiabao are both there.

If they want to stop illegal trafficing in tiger parts, they need to do more than just fine them a few thousand dollars. They need to throw them in jail for several years on the first offense.

Isn't it amazing that Russia is the only country whose tiger population has increased over the past couple of decades. Could it be related to the fact that Putin is a very big fan of tigers? If you want to disappear in a hurry, just get caught poaching some of his beloved Siberian tigers.