Niagara Should Follow Toronto’s Lead With A Shark Fin Ban

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Well good for the majority of those sitting on the City of Toronto’s council, and good for one of the oldest and most exploited creatures on this planet – the shark.

A shark writhing in pain after having its fins chopped off, before being tossed back in the ocean alive.

This October 25, following many hours of debate, all but a few members of that council, including the mayor, Rob Ford, voted in favour of a ban aimed at closing Toronto’s doors to shark fins, traditionally used by members of the Chinese community in soup, by September of next year.

The Toronto council, given the size of its Chinese community and the fact that it has been the largest single market for shark fins in Canada, deserves high marks for courage in taking this stance. It has placed an opportunity to do its part to prevent the final extinction of another life-form on this planet against a gruesome activity that involves sawing off the fines of live sharks then throwing the bleeding creature back in the ocean to certain death.
Right now  would be a good time for municipal leaders in our greater Niagara region,  both on the Ontario and New York sides of the border, to pass similar bans and to call on our provincial, state and federal governments to do the same. Other jurisdictions on both sides of the border have done it, including Oakville, Brampton and Mississauga in Ontario, and wholes states in the U.S. like California, Oregon and Hawaii.

Chopped off fins ready to go to market.

There are at least a few restaurants in the greater Niagara region that offer shark fin soup on the menu. One of them, around the casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario, was picketed by an animal advocacy groups a year ago.

If you wonder what this is about and why you should care, even if you hate sharks, we are talking about taking one of the most mysterious and oldest-surviving creatures on this earth – not to mention an essential member of the web of life in our already stressed seas and oceans – yanking them up on the deck of a boat alive, then cutting off their fins and throwing them back, alive and bleeding. In that state, they have as much of a chance of surviving as you or I would if someone cut off our hands and arms up to the elbow and threw us bleeding in to a pool.

Enjoy your shark fin soup!

And what is the point of all of this, especially when we are talking about a situation where dozens of species of sharks are on international endangered lists?

What we are told by some is that the eating of shark fin soup is a traditional Chinese delicacy and it’s part of the culture, and the rest of us have  no right to interfere in it. Some members of the Chinese community, during the debate at Toronto council, charged that banning shark fins is an act of discrimination against people of Chinese descent.
To that I reply that CBC radio did a good segment recently that quoted younger members of the Chinese community saying they agree that this tradition must come to an end for the sake of saving an integral part of the planet’s tapestry of life. Their views were heartening.

As for those clinging to this idea that they must go on slaughtering these creatures until they are virtually extinct, let me say something that may come across as politically incorrect, and I’m sorry if it doesn’t sound delicate. To hell with this aspect of your culture if the extinction of yet another species on this planet hangs in the balance.

There are a lot of cultures out there with a lot of traditions that they managed to give up. For example, I have some Anglo-Saxon roots and we used to holding five-minute trials against people before calling them witches and burn them at the stake. These witch burnings were cultural events in the sense that the whole family would show up in the town square or commons to enjoy them.

There are all kinds of “traditions” that cultures of people on this earth have had that for one reason or another we have moved on from. Shark fin soup has most certainly got to be one of them or we just move on destroying life on this planet to a point where there is no web of life left.

Some may say then why don’t you ban eating steak, chicken or pork chops? We’ll that is a valid question and it makes room for lots of other discussion. But at least in those cases, we are not talking about in-the-wild, endangered species, and we are not talking about cutting them apart while they are alive.

Let’s hope we can all get past this shark fin business. It is sad that municipal governments in Ontario and elsewhere have to be the first to step to the plate and say the slaugher of these rare creatures is wrong because our federal governments in Ottawa and Washington, D.C. won’t.

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