The Shark Fin Controversy (One Hot Mess)
The blogs are all a-twitter about California's (and other states ) recent push to ban the possession and sale of shark fin. This is legislation designed to protect sharks against a practice called shark finning. Shark finning is the process of harvesting the fin of the shark and discarding the still live shark back into the ocean, where it will either drown, starve or be consumed by other predators. You might think that killing all sharks is a good thing. Much like one might think that killing all bees is a good thing. And you might be right. Of course, you would be betting against most of the credible scientific community. Look out, I'm going to blind you with some science : There are a number of reasons why sharks should be protected from senseless and wasteful killing through finning. First, sharks are apex predators in the marine food chain and, without a proportionate number of sharks, an ecological imbalance with potentially disastr...