April 26, 2013 — Shark fin soup could soon be off the banquet menu.
If you have been invited to a formal Chinese banquet or wedding in the past few decades, it is likely you were served a bowl of soup. Swimming within that bowl of soup may have been translucent strands: chewy in texture, thick like vermicelli and fairly innocuous in taste. If you lifted your spoon and ate a bite, you most likely had a taste of shark fin soup.
You were not alone, though. Shark fin soup was commonly served at Chinese weddings and banquets as a delicacy and a way of "giving face", or showing respect to honored guests. Many Chinese who eat shark fin soup do not even know what it is. The Chinese translation for shark fin is literally "fish wing", so it is not immediately clear to diners that the stringy tendrils are actually from harvested sharks.
As many as one-third of open ocean shark species are currently threatened with extinction, some experiencing a 99 percent population decline.
According to a study published by Shelley C. Clarke in 2006, the shark fin trade (which includes components for soup as well as medicinal remedies) kills upward of 73 million sharks per year. While only 15 shark species were considered threatened in 1996, more than 180 species were in danger as of 2010. At stake is a total collapse of the food chain due to the fact that sharks are apex predators and are critical to the health of ecosystems such as coral reefs. To further complicate the situation, recovery of the existing shark population is disastrously slow because of their lower reproductive rates.
A widespread international movement has addressed the overfishing of the world's most feared predator by imposing shark fin bans. These include the US Shark Conservation Act passed in 2012 as well as bans on shark fin products in California, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon. The European Union is considering a ban that would forbid shark fishing in EU waters and by all EU registered vessels.
Around Asia, the tide has also been turning in favor of shark conservationists. Major grocers in Singapore (including Cold Storage, FairPrice and Carrefour) have banned shark fin products from their shelves. Cathay Pacific Airlines banned the transportation of shark fin products on all its flights, and even Hong Kong Disneyland has removed shark fin soup from its banquet menus.