Shark Fin Soup Under Fire Globally, A-OK in NYC

Liquid Viagra to some, ecological insanity to others, shark fin soup has long endured as a controversial cultural touchstone, but it may go the way of whaling. The Independent reports that global opposition to shark finning—the procedure that cuts the fins off a shark and leaves it to die in the ocean—has reached a fever pitch, with environmental groups like New York City's own Shark Savers increasing their influence to countries like Canada and Australia. A Chinese legislator even proposed anti-finning legislation earlier this month but the bill is expected to die, given that 95% of the world's shark fins are consumed there.

Earlier this month, the Times profiled California's own proposed bill banning the sale and possession of shark fins. While many point to the sheer decimation of the world's shark population—down 90% as up to 73 million sharks a year are killed for the delicacy—as reason enough for the law, traditionalists and politicians like San Francisco mayoral candidate Senator Leland Yee protest that "its been in our culture for thousands of years."

A MenuPages.com search of New York City yielded 42 restaurants that have "shark fin soup" on the menu. We contacted Congee Village, the lauded Cantonese restaurant in the LES, and they initially denied selling the dish, despite their menu showing otherwise. After some pressing, the manager said they in fact sell it "when the customer wants it, not tourists or Americans" and that it doesn't sell "any better than anything else" on the menu. He said a ban on shark fins in New York City "wouldn't be a big deal, we'd just follow the law."

Shark fins are currently banned in Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and Guam. If Bloomberg can ban the trans fat in our chili fries and the cigarettes in our parks, why not the fins floating in our soup? Do it for The New York Sharks.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Christopher Robbins in Food on March 24, 2011 4:15 PM

Comments [rss]

Yvonne Chu

As a Chinese who grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong eating shark fin soup, I stopped once I found out that 1/3 of the species of oceanic sharks are now endangered, just from the last 20-30 years of eating shark fin soup. Thus if we don't act soon, these sharks will be wiped out. And once a species is gone, it's gone forever. Sharks are apex predators and play an important role in keeping the ocean ecosystem healthy.

I was amazed to see these friendly reef sharks that let people pet and hug them. Check out these sharks in this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

GothamExtremist

Yeah sting rays are mad cute too, until they poke a hole thru your heart with their tail. Are you serious? There are a million other things in the world much worst than the declining shark population for us humans to worry about. Dinosaurs were also at the top of the food chain, they died out, did we humans miss them? OMG to your comment.

Yvonne Chu

Sharks are apex predators and play an important role in keeping the ocean ecosystem healthy. Decimating shark populations has many consequences, including collapsing our scallop fisheries and threatening crab populations.

We don’t know all of the consequences of decimating sharks yet. For a long time, people were killing bats because to them bats are useless, scary blood-suckers. Now we know that some can eat 3x their body weight in mosquitoes each night. Similarly we have to be careful with the ocean ecosystem. In the ocean, phytoplankton produces half of the world’s supply of oxygen.

The shark fin trade has parallels to the ivory trade and our experience with ivory demonstrates that the only way we can enforce it is to cut the demand.

Some great articles on this:
http://bushwarriors.wordpress....
http://www.kqed.org/quest/blog...
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/...

shocktheday

Why are we imposing our morals on others ? What if Indians imposed the ban of slaughtering cows, would we conform ?

IMPOSE

Probably because cattle are in no danger of extinction, and the slaughter of sharks is having a profound impact on the world's oceans.

Perhaps some farming system could be worked out, but one of the articles cited above mentions that sharks take 15+ years to reach maturity, so that's off the table.

If anything, we'd benefit from less cattle, greenhouse-gas wise.

angry_pickle

Leland Yee protest that "its been in our culture for thousands of years."

Typical dumb cow. It's just a status symbol item. It barely has any taste at all and all you're getting from it is the silly smugness of being able to afford it and a nice dose of mercury.