Tag: shark finning

Key Points

 

– Hong Kong is the largest shark fin importer in the world, and responsible for about half of the global trade.

 

– The fins are often cut from sharks while they are still alive, and they are then thrown back into the ocean to die an agonising death.

 

– In May, customs officials made the biggest shark fin seizure in Hong Kong history: 26 tonnes of fins, contained  in two shipping containers from Ecuador, cut from the bodies of 38,500 endangered sharks.

 

– Shark fin soup is a feature at wedding banquets and other feasts in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, as because they are expensive and prized as a status symbol.

 

– 100 million sharks are being mutilated and killed every year for this gluggy soup.  The fins themselves don’t have much taste.

 

– When the demand for shark fin soup stops, so will the carnage.

Read the Guardian article here: