Our oceans are not limitless pits from which to take and they are not limitless sponges to absorb our pollution. The oceans are terribly abused by us and we all need to take stock and change the way we work with this endangered environment.

To place this in perspective, consider the following. Each year humans take out close to 150 – 200 million tons of fish, sharks, whales, turtles, seals and birds. 30% or 30 million tones are dumped back into the oceans as by-catch.  This is the equivalent weight of 30 million cars that are just killed and dumped.  This is incredibly wasteful  and disgusting!

Each year, somewhere between 70 and 150 million sharks are caught  and killed and many of these, if not most, are killed for their fins only.  The pressure for shark fins is increasing by the years and the most ridiculous aspect of shark fin soup is the fact that it is flavoured with chicken stock. Shark fin on its own is tasteless.

Some sharks take up to 25 years to reach maturity and they have very few young .They cannot keep up with the incredible fishing pressure exerted on them. Of the 500 known species of shark, more than half are seriously endangered and many are already on the critical list.  In the North East Atlantic for example, sharks like the mako, blue and porgbeegle have already suffered a 90% drop in their populations.

We need to protect the oceans and its creatures so please become very aware of this critical condition and do what you can to promote marine conservation.