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Shark-fin soup, which can cost more than $100 a bowl, has for centuries signified wealth and status, and it became especially popular in the late 1980s as a status item for China’s rapidly expanding middle and upper classes. Ship captains often allow their crew members to supplement their income by keeping the fins for themselves to sell at port. Shark carcasses take up valuable hold space in smaller ships, and as they decompose, they produce ammonia that contaminates the other catch. Deckhands usually cut off the fins, which can sell for 100 times the cost of the rest of the meat. They then throw the rest of the shark back into the water. It’s a slow death: The sharks sink to the sea floor, where they starve, drown or are eaten by other fish.
The oceans belong to everyone and no one, and the general perception is that they are too big to need protection. We also tend to think of fish as an ever-regenerating crop, there forever for our taking. But roughly 90 percent of the world’s ocean stocks are depleted or overexploited; one study predicts that by 2050, the sea could contain more plastic waste than fish. Though most governments have neither the inclination nor the resources to patrol the oceans, Palau is trying a different approach, and whether it succeeds or fails may have consequences for the entire planet.
REUTERS/Jessica Helena Wuysang/Antara FotoReuters / Monday, February 22, 2016
Smoke is seen coming from four of eight confiscated Vietnamese fishing boats destroyed by the government in Mempawah Regency, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, February 22, 2016. The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, together with the Indonesian Navy, destroyed 30 foreign fishing vessels in different locations across the country, which were seized earlier for illegal fishing in Indonesian waters.
Palau vs. the Poachers http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/BBpD86Q?ocid=st
Shark-fin soup, which can cost more than $100 a bowl, has for centuries signified wealth and status, and it became especially popular in the late 1980s as a status item for China’s rapidly expanding middle and upper classes. Ship captains often allow their crew members to supplement their income by keeping the fins for themselves to sell at port. Shark carcasses take up valuable hold space in smaller ships, and as they decompose, they produce ammonia that contaminates the other catch. Deckhands usually cut off the fins, which can sell for 100 times the cost of the rest of the meat. They then throw the rest of the shark back into the water. It’s a slow death: The sharks sink to the sea floor, where they starve, drown or are eaten by other fish.
The oceans belong to everyone and no one, and the general perception is that they are too big to need protection. We also tend to think of fish as an ever-regenerating crop, there forever for our taking. But roughly 90 percent of the world’s ocean stocks are depleted or overexploited; one study predicts that by 2050, the sea could contain more plastic waste than fish. Though most governments have neither the inclination nor the resources to patrol the oceans, Palau is trying a different approach, and whether it succeeds or fails may have consequences for the entire planet.
They fail to realize or rather ignore the long-term global consequences
Palau vs. the Poachers http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/BBpD86Q?ocid=st
Shark-fin soup, which can cost more than $100 a bowl, has for centuries signified wealth and status, and it became especially popular in the late 1980s as a status item for China’s rapidly expanding middle and upper classes. Ship captains often allow their crew members to supplement their income by keeping the fins for themselves to sell at port. Shark carcasses take up valuable hold space in smaller ships, and as they decompose, they produce ammonia that contaminates the other catch. Deckhands usually cut off the fins, which can sell for 100 times the cost of the rest of the meat. They then throw the rest of the shark back into the water. It’s a slow death: The sharks sink to the sea floor, where they starve, drown or are eaten by other fish.
The oceans belong to everyone and no one, and the general perception is that they are too big to need protection. We also tend to think of fish as an ever-regenerating crop, there forever for our taking. But roughly 90 percent of the world’s ocean stocks are depleted or overexploited; one study predicts that by 2050, the sea could contain more plastic waste than fish. Though most governments have neither the inclination nor the resources to patrol the oceans, Palau is trying a different approach, and whether it succeeds or fails may have consequences for the entire planet.
They fail to realize or rather ignore the long-term global consequences
Do they catch a lot of sharks in their buckets?
