"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." - Abraham Lincoln (attr)
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Someone on the Shark's Fin Industry: we get a lot of flak. its dumb cuz none of the chinese businessmen want to stand up against that dumb greenpeace video that's fake
[The] bulk of our products these days come from unionized fishermen who are regulated by fishing laws in japan, korea and australia
[the videos are] mostly fake.
the species they use in the videos are either 1. not valuable, or they do the cutting all wrong
there's one where they hack off the dorsal only.
-_-
my grandfather will be turning in his grave if he sees the tail discarded like that
look at it this way. the great white is endangered. but if you bring the great white to me, I won't buy it from you. its worthless.
Me: that is not incompatible with an anti-finning stance what
even if you cut the right shark and you cut all the right parts off, this does not invalidate anti-finning people's points
Someone: most australian trawlers are bound by law to show the entire body on land these days
the basking can only be brought in if it was by catch.
the blue shark reproduces like rabbits; the americans use them for sport fishing.
illegal finning only happens on trawlers not out for sharks
then if they catch a shark they hack their fins off and throw them over.
can we limit them? sure. even we stop buying from such people - they can't supply the volume
we buy from specialized fishermen who can provide the volumes we require. and yes we deal a lot in dogfish and school sharks these days. they're "greener"
the meat is exported to europe, and the fins are kept in asia
Me: what do the europeans do with shark meat?
so basically the sharksfin industry lacks good PR
Someone: they sell it as meat. up to 3 years ago, the germans were selling school shark as rock salmomn
[Then] green peace stepped in
and said they have to sell a pot as a pot and not a kettle
Me: so do they still sell shark meat in europe
Someone: then they twisted the krauts arms and the krauts now ban the import of meat, but they allow their fishermen to continue bringing in dogfish and school shark
works both ways for the germans
people like us, we get hit bad
Me: so where does the meat go to now
Someone: it still goes to europe
one of our biggest suppliers is a british.
he gets us the dogfish fin singaporeans crave so much
Me: I'm told real fin goes to HK
Someone: no not really
we have our own supply too
and people do eat the bigger fins in singapore
Me: well mostly
what about non-singaporean [middlemen/sharksfin traders]
they aren't as bound I believe
Someone: theres this man in singapore. 75% of the raw fins around the world goes through him.
Me: so why not improve PR?
and also which of the sharks on the endagered list are commercially exploited?
[NB: Of the 400+ shark species, over 100 (i.e. about a quarter) are commercially exploited, and not all of them are endangered - this calls the conservation motive into question]
Someone: i can tell u. out of that, 8 pages of sharks
we only use 12 species.
popular ones are the tiger, dogfish, oceanic white tip, the assorted black tips.
Me: Tiger Shark - Lower Risk/Near Threatened
Dogfish - Near Threatened
Oceanic Whitetip - Lower Risk/Near Threatened
Blacktip reef shark, Blacktip shark - Lower Risk/Near Threatened
Smoothtooth Blacktip - Vulnerable
[Addendum: And if you think Shark Finning is animal cruelty and are not vegan, try watching some abattoir videos]