This post is written for the “Save the Ocean” group-writing project by Steve, a final year undergraduate majoring in IT and is also working freelance at the same time. He writes mainly about nature particularly about wildlife in Malaysia and Worldwide. He is the owner of Save the Nature for the Future, and he does this out of his love and genuine interest in nature. He intends to create and spread awareness on his favourite subjects and at the same time shares his knowledge with his readers.
Food! Who doesn’t like it if it is delicious and satisfies your hunger? Exotic food such as seafood and wildlife such as crocodile meat are being consumed in events or for fun. But most of us don’t think beyond that when we consume them. Among them, seafood in particularly are the most anticipated and waited especially in Chinese and Japanese restaurants where consumption of such delicacies is almost always linked to having the status of luxury food. Most wedding dinners in particularly, Chinese friend of yours if held in Chinese restaurant, most of you would have encountered this dish at least once. Shark fins soup, nice to eat, but it’s bad to the nature in particularly to their population which is declining rapidly.
Image credit: Amy Mew.
When you SAY NO TO SHARK FINS SOUP, you are basically helping yourself in the long term. Shark populations are declining rapidly worldwide due to overfishing for their valuable fins. They are also victims of slash and dump, where their fins are cut and the wounded sharks are dumped into the sea immediately after fishermen got their fins. This cruel act is actually killing our sharks in slow and agonizing way. When these sharks die, you are disturbing the ocean ecosystem as well. They are the predator which eliminates disease and genetically defective individuals and they also act as the forces which stabilize the population fluctuations. It takes years for these sharks to achieve maturity and some species takes up to 15 years to reach maturity and produce as low as 2 offspring biannually.
When you consume exotic fish (and usually at the top of the food chain) such as sharks, swordfishes, rays, and etc, you are exposing your body with mercury which are unhealthy and hazards especially for the pregnant women when consumed too much. Mercury has three forms which is organic, inorganic and metallic. Methyl-mercury which is part of the organic mercury is the most dangerous. The mercury in fish (methyl-mercury) comes from mercury in ocean sediment which is transformed into methyl-mercury by microorganisms. It is then absorbed by the tissue of the fish when they swim via their gills and through digestive tracts as they feed. Avoid eating them, and possibly not more than once a week. Pregnant mom who consumed this fish can be passed to the unborn baby in the womb. Their brain and nervous system will be affected which will be noticeable during milestones development (walking and talking). Worst still, their memory, language and attention span may be affected as well.
In reality, there are a lot of substitute for this food. It is just a matter of whether you are willing to change. Chicken meat is a substitute for fish. Chickens provide protein to us, just like how fish do. Fish provides us with omega-3 oil, but do you know that walnuts, beans, flaxseeds, olive oils and winter squash are sources of omega-3 oil as well? Crab meat and chicken meat are being used as replacements for shark fins soup in some Chinese restaurants. This would be good news, as they provide us with same nutritional value and they are easily available and in abundance compared to sharks.
If each and everyone of us adapt a simple thought before we eat anything, it would in reality help and benefit nature and ourselves. We need them to survive and they need us to survive as well. Avoid exotic meals at all cost as it brings more damage to marine wildlife in particular. Although some argue that this exotic meals have medicinal values (not scientifically proven), wouldn’t it be better if you exercised for 15 minutes, 3 times a week which is sufficient to maintain your health in the long run rather than consuming food which comes from non-renewable resources?
Ask yourself this: Are you willing to change for the better and spread it to the people around you? I am, are you?
January 2008 is “Save the Ocean” month here at The Giving Hands. Click here for more information on how you too, can save our oceans, and remember to subscribe to The Giving Hands for your daily updates!
Subscribe NOW for more updates!
Thanks for some grammar Nazi editing :p
Btw, mind if I copy this and “re-blog” it over my site?
And keep up the good work. It’s been a busy month for me, but from the articles posted here, I would say it is a fantastic one. Keep up the spirit guys!
Good article! I would second the sustainable part of it. Commercial fishing methods are decimating fish stocks in some parts of the world.
Farmed fish is not really a solution as I have written about a few times on my site. Some farmed fish is downright dangerous to eat!
-Will
I agreed fish and shark population is declining heavily. But I can’t agree the chicken as substitutes. Read my blog why I say so because poultry farming is utilising more resources than a human can consume. Example, 50kg of grain, only produce 1 pound of meat. This 50 kg of grain can actually feed at least 150 peoples a day. It takes about a thousand tons of water to produce one ton of grain that we use to fed the cows, produce only 18 pound of meat. In the future, the world will be running short of water hence short of foods supply and subsequents crisis like peoples fighting for water, foods will happen.
We human being shall abstrain from taking the life of the others in the expense of luxury and joys for their mouth sense.
Hi Steve, you are most welcome. And, of course you may publish this post on your blog as well. Like I mentioned, some things are worth the bandwidth repeating :D
Hi Ji Yan, I could understand why all of us agree that we should not be eating shark’s fin. Because sharks are being killed unnecessary, and their populations are being decimated by such killings. Plus, sharks take a long time to mature and to be able to reproduce.
But chicken? I understand where you’re coming from when you mentioned the amount of water that is needed to produce one tonne of grain and so on, but do we have a choice between eating “animals that are fast declining” and “animals that aren’t environmentally friendly”?
If I were to choose, I’d choose the later option. Because human kind could always research and improve on the ways to more efficiently produce a tonne of grain. But shark populations would continue to dwindle and may never return.
I would say we adopt changes depending on where we are. Certainly, you don’t expect people from central Africa to adapt things which are suitable for people who are living at Northpole for example.There are really a lot of substitute around, but most of the time, we don’t realise it. Be it grains, chicken or whatsoever, if we tried to learn more about what we consume daily, certainly it would helps. The point which I emphasize on this was, try to reduce/avoid eating this exotic food as much as we could. Certainly we could not stop everyone from eating it, but if we can adopt a mentality of trying to change for a better world, it won’t cost us anything. No doubt that some of us are accustomed with some food, which is eaten nearly daily such as fish, but you can avoid buying/eating the “exotic” one as they are also important to the ecosystem itself. Just look for example, recently hot topic of Japan re-started the Whale Hunting in so called for “research”. Does it worth to kill such wildlife just for a term “research” and food? Why aimed at whale, and not tuna or other fishes?
Gotcha, Steve! That’s why in our turtle research, we do NOT sacrifice the turtles, NOT even if it was for the sake of knowledge!
For example, we’d rather not know the gender of the turtle hatchling (baby) because to do so, we would have to cut it open :( But of course, technology is so advanced that we can now use laparascopy to determine the gender of the turtles :D
It seems everyone these days knows the importance of being a conscientious consumer – especially when it comes to the food we eat. As more and more studies are being published about the high levels of mercury in certain types of seafood and the potential health risks associated with it, people are scrambling to find out the truth about mercury. The information is out there; the FDA has published recommendations about what kinds of fish to avoid. The problem is that the FDA information isn’t always accessible when you’re grocery shopping, the time when you most need it.
A simple solution would be for grocery stores to post the FDA advice right at their seafood counters. Oceana, a non-profit group that works for marine conservation, is running a campaign to stop seafood contamination and convince grocers to display the government’s advice about mercury. Kroger, Safeway, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, among others, already display the advice and have made it onto Oceana’s Green List. Check out local green list grocers in your area and support their effort to keep customers informed about safe seafood!