Wednesday, February 06, 2008
happy chinese new year!
it seems oddly fitting, that on the eve of chinese new year, i'm sitting in my room at 3am writing my paper on shark legislation. having pored through countless agreements and resolutions on regulatory measures for shark finning and overfishing issues, and looking at statistics and random bits of trivia, i've learnt the following:
1) sharks are apex predators, which means there're very few of them
2) people like their fins, so they get fished a lot. even when people don't mean to catch them, trawlers just happen to drag sharks in
3) there're over 350 species of sharks
4) shark meat is used to make fish and chips in australia and a few other places
5) a dead shark's fin may sell for $100 or so, but a live shark in the bahamas generates $2.3 million in revenue each year
6) whales and dolphins are afforded more protection than sharks because they're mammals and hence considered wildlife, not fish
7) sharks are immune to cancer tumours and heal wounds amazingly quickly, among other things. however, you're as much of an idiot as those cavemen in history that believed eating the heart of your enemy would make you braver if you honestly think that eating shark cartilage will award you the same healing abilities.
8) allowing this trend of overfishing sharks will hurt you in the long run, since sharks get rid of all the sick and diseased fish, so with no sharks, you get more sick fish, and you eat the sick fish and die. that and the fact that the whole food chain will go mildly crazy. like the octopus eating up all the spiny lobsters in Tasmania since no more sharks are left there to eat the octopi. then you run out of nice seafood just because you wanted shark's fin soup. that and the fact that you end up with grumpy divers.
so moral of the story? it's late and i haven't slept and i'm mildly incoherent. plus vastly bored of researching. oh. and don't eat shark's fin for CNY. it's more ecological than not leaving your tap running or half flushing the toilet bowl.
p.s. since it's CNY, i kept it at 8 points. happy chinese new year everyone! (year of the rat!)
1) sharks are apex predators, which means there're very few of them
2) people like their fins, so they get fished a lot. even when people don't mean to catch them, trawlers just happen to drag sharks in
3) there're over 350 species of sharks
4) shark meat is used to make fish and chips in australia and a few other places
5) a dead shark's fin may sell for $100 or so, but a live shark in the bahamas generates $2.3 million in revenue each year
6) whales and dolphins are afforded more protection than sharks because they're mammals and hence considered wildlife, not fish
7) sharks are immune to cancer tumours and heal wounds amazingly quickly, among other things. however, you're as much of an idiot as those cavemen in history that believed eating the heart of your enemy would make you braver if you honestly think that eating shark cartilage will award you the same healing abilities.
8) allowing this trend of overfishing sharks will hurt you in the long run, since sharks get rid of all the sick and diseased fish, so with no sharks, you get more sick fish, and you eat the sick fish and die. that and the fact that the whole food chain will go mildly crazy. like the octopus eating up all the spiny lobsters in Tasmania since no more sharks are left there to eat the octopi. then you run out of nice seafood just because you wanted shark's fin soup. that and the fact that you end up with grumpy divers.
so moral of the story? it's late and i haven't slept and i'm mildly incoherent. plus vastly bored of researching. oh. and don't eat shark's fin for CNY. it's more ecological than not leaving your tap running or half flushing the toilet bowl.
p.s. since it's CNY, i kept it at 8 points. happy chinese new year everyone! (year of the rat!)
wen was dreaming at 3:12 AM