I may not have had a lot of practice in self-denial, but I’ve found it remarkably easy to follow the suggestions of concerned conservationists in saying, “No!” to shark fin soup, an act that left me feeling warm and fuzzy about my small contribution to the cause of marine environmentalism.
Not that there’s anything new about trying to safeguard the ocean’s resources. As long ago as 1899, King Oscar II of Sweden - concerned over the introduction of trawl netting and its impact on the North Sea herring fisheries - convened a meeting of all of the nations of Europe with industries dependent on fishing. Its purpose was to examine ways of conserving the natural economy of the oceans and halt what, even then, was considered to be an unsustainable plundering of available fish stocks.
One hundred and fifteen years later and the world’s nations are still unable to agree on a universal protocol to protect dwindling ocean food supplies. In the interim the North Sea herring fisheries have disappeared, as has the traditional North Atlantic cod fishing grounds. Even the Southern oceans – long considered to be infinite in their ability to provide edible harvests for an expanding world population - are now at risk of over-exploitation.
And while giving up shark fin soup may help stamp out unnecessarily cruel practices, it does little to help conserve a creature that, if it became extinct, would take with it other groups of creatures who rely on sharks for their own survival; including, perhaps, ourselves.
As Walt Kelly’s comic strip character, Pogo, said in the 1979 Earth Day poster, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
