Because you can never have too much evidence of evolution these days. Visit site »
Second fatal shark attack in a week. This is bound to cause a ridiculous, over-the-top media frenzy that will piss me off. Visit site »
Andy and I share an interest in sharks (although he’s certainly got more experience with them than I do!). Today, he writes a nice post about a huge threat facing our favorite fishes: finning. This is the practice of catching sharks, slicing off their fins, and throwing them back into the water to die. The reason? Shark Fin Soup. It’s a delicacy, and companies are willing to pay top dollar for shark fins. Problem is, sharks are being slaughtered in record numbers, to the point where areas once brimming with the amazing predators are now almost completely devoid of them. It’s bad news for the whole marine ecosystem to lose apex predators. What can you do? Help the anti-finning movement by avoiding any restaurant that sells Shark Fin Soup. Visit site »
According to this, Yahoo! has a 40% investment in a shark finning company. The two of you out there who are as interesting in sharks as I am will know that this is one of the most deplorable acts committed upon mother nature by humankind — one in which sharks are fished, de-finned alive (i.e. their fins are sliced off with a big ass knife), and dumped back into the ocean, where they will die a slow, agonizing death because they are unable to swim (and therefore, unable to breath).
Why? Because the fins are used to make shark-fin soup, a delicacy in many foreign countries — and because the fisherman in question are often third-worlders who get paid pennies for going shark fishing on tiny canoes which simply can’t hold the whole shark, so they are forced to dump the fish back into the water. If they were harvesting the whole shark, the practice wouldn’t be so bad. Upwards of 100 million sharks are slaughtered each year for their fins.
100 million. How many sharks kill humans every year? Now who’s the monster of the sea? Visit site »