Every year millions of sharks die a slow death because of finning. Finning is the inhumane act of hacking off the shark fins and throwing its still living body back into the sea. The sharks either starve to death, or are eaten alive by other fish, and or drown (if they are not in constant movement. Shark fins are being “harvested” in ever great numbers to feed the demand for shark fin soup, an Asian “delicacy”. The reason I am writing this paper is to explain to people the shocking statistics and the relevance finning has in our day to day lives.
There is a common argument that sharks hurt humans so why does it matter if they die? Although occasionally someone does get injured or killed by a shark, the number who do is actually incredibly small. Actually you are sixteen times more likely to be hit by lightning than to get bitten by a shark. Although the number of human deaths caused by shark attacks is very small, these incidents are highly reported in the press due to their sensational and unusual nature. Sharks also have an image that has been formed about them, partly because of films like Jaws, but also because they don’t have…show more content… Vegetarians would agree that no animal should be eaten. The shark finning issue is different in an number of ways. First, finning means that a main part of the shark is wasted only the fins are used. On top of this finning a shark while the creature is still alive is cruel and is a practice that would be illegal in most countries’. Another big difference is that sharks are not farmed animals, they are part of the ecosystem and so many of them are being killed that their very existence as a species is being drawn into a significant deficit. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 143 shark species are at high chance of extinction either now or in the close future. That’s over 55% of shark
